Meeting with Koorie workers in Bairnsdale, 11 November 1999 - notes
This meeting was attended by 8 members of the Bairnsdale community including the Youth Worker attached to 'Voices of the Future', the Gippsland/East Gippsland Co-ordinator for Home and Community Care, a Koorie Juvenile Justice worker and several Koorie Educators.
Koorie Education Development Officers
There are 2 in East Gippsland, both based in Bairnsdale. They assist every school with 5 or more Koorie students. They liaise with principals and teachers to discuss curriculum, programs, welfare and other issues.
Koorie Educators
Koorie Educators directly support Koorie students in individual schools.
"In the last 18 months the number of Koorie students at Bairnsdale Secondary College has increased from about 45 to 66. That presents a huge management problem for just one Koorie Educator. We have several students at risk there for all different reasons. We've been looking at establishing an Annex School within the school. This year especially has been difficult because there's been a Year 7 intake of 23. Many of them come with poor literacy levels, low self-esteem, behavioural problems. They come to school with all sorts of baggage, including lack of discipline. We believe that maybe the solution is to set up something separate where we can socialise the kids and settle them into secondary school, getting on with the timetable and getting on with their education. We spend too much time doing that. It's very hard work, very stressful."
"If a Koorie Educator stays in the job for 20 years or 30 years, the very top bracket is $26,000 a year. They are the experts who get loaded down with every issue for every Koorie kid in the school. That's not fair."
"Their job is not teaching. It's arbitrating and counselling and all this kind of thing. If you brought in a qualified counsellor you'd have to pay them a lot more than the pittance these guys are getting. Yet the school can't function without them there. They've got life experience that's given them the qualifications to be there. To expect them to hold a piece of paper to get a proper payment is really rubbish. They've got skills that no university could give them."
"The teachers can't cope with the kids, so we have to cope with them. Our duties are just as hard as a teacher. At least we're prepared to try and cope with the problems. Don't they know how to get a kid to participate? What sort of training did they have?"
Koorie teachers
The Koorie teacher training program run by Deakin University was mentioned. There was funding to train 41 teachers over 4 years. Most if not all of those 41 qualified Koorie teachers, however, were "poached into other areas, like ATSIC" and didn't end up teaching in schools.
The comment was made that the same things happen to the best and most experienced of non-Koorie teachers.
Koorie students
'Voices of the Future' reported no Koorie involvement at present. "There are lots of reasons including financial, no parental support. But the main reason is that the kids feel completely and utterly isolated from the white kids there."
"Our kids are floating around town with no identity. Nothing to say or tell them about their culture. They're having to cope with pain and stress and what happened to the generations before. Their families are abusing alcohol. The kids get molested, discriminated, racist abuse. It takes a kid 15 years to understand what an education system is about. They don't come in with any understanding from the generation before. The teacher only has one method of teaching and one method of communicating. The system needs to learn respect for our culture and how to build some self-esteem in our lives. The school system needs to change for us; it needs to come half way. Koorie Studies is one of the most important way of changing; and support for Koorie Educators."
A couple of years ago there was a very successful program of providing Aboriginal adults to sit with Aboriginal students in the classroom to get them to focus on what the teacher was saying and to organise themselves. This was particularly successful to help the children settle into the secondary school. "Aboriginal kids feel a lot stronger if they've got an adult with them. And teachers were seeing that there are Aboriginal people in the community who are respected and capable." This program was discontinued for lack of funds.
Koorie families and communities
"A lot of issues in the Koorie community are holding the Koorie community back. We need to talk about these things. Our community is full of disease and a lot of it leads to mental illness. And that stops our people developing in education. Koorie Educators aren't concentrating on curriculum and academic; they're concentrating on welfare and social issues. Our kids come to school, often having been up all night - there's a party all night at home . A lot of Koories are creating their own barriers. We've got to get smarter or we're going to dissolve and disintegrate.
"Conquer and divide: the land's been conquered and divided us with money. That's the reality. We've got to unite otherwise we're going to drink ourselves into the grave. In a fortnight we've had 4 deaths: 2 overdoses (heroin), 1 suicide of a 24 year old and 1 elder of the community contributed to his own death by his own lifestyle. I'm not blaming anyone - I'm just stating the facts. I'm sick to death of our young people being told to leave school and the issues not being spoken about. We're pointing the finger at all the non-Koories. We've got to start getting together and pulling together."
"When I go into the homes of the old people their health has been ruined - mainly by alcohol. They've got the shakes. In the mainstream they consider old people to be 50 years and up. In the Aboriginal HACC it's 37 and up. We've got young people as young as 12 drinking daily. That's got to be affecting their development. I'd like to take some of those young ones and let them listen to what those old people are saying. I could do that if I wasn't bound by client confidentiality. Drug and alcohol workers talk to them but they haven't seen the true impact - apart from the funerals."
"We've had one funeral a week in the past few months. And everyone goes to every funeral. It's not like in the white community where maybe a dozen people turn up. So it's a real impact. Where's the counselling? We don't have counsellors. Who talks to our kids? And who talks to our staff members? Nobody. We sit together and talk and try to help each other. But we're not trained."
Resources
"We are constantly battling for resources - especially financial resources - to put things in place. The only funding we can access is if we go for a KODE school: Koorie Open Door Education schools. We'd like to have a public meeting with the Koorie community to see what they want. People have said before they don't want to be separate in a KODE school. Schools help us out a little bit out of their global budget. But most of that is earmarked so we've got to go and beg. We seem to be begging most of our lives and mostly the answer is no. We get the funding for pilot projects but there's no more after that."
It was commented that the ASSPA [Aboriginal Student Support and Parent Awareness] Committee at Sale College was being "run by staff. They're saying where the money should go. Whereas actually it's the parents' and children's money."
Teacher awareness
"In South Australia, before a teacher gets a job, they would have had to do cross-cultural studies. There are several regional centres with high Koorie student populations. The Koorie Educators have to run professional development programs. When we do that we've got to run around begging for resources. It's not compulsory so if they choose not to go to PD days - they're not over-rapt in Aboriginal PD days. You struggle to get half a day. If you say a whole day, they turn up their noses. If you say you want to take them to the Aboriginal Co-operative and put on a dinner for them, a lot of them don't want to go and eat the food because the food might be dirty. We did it one day and they came down and found out different. But they choose to do whatever they like. We're called in as education workers to sort out the problems (in the schools) and we don't always get these people taking on our suggestions. Why do we have to battle all the time to get people there and to create awareness when there's a model in South Australia?"
Another Koorie Educator reported a comment made to him 4 years previously when he was discussing a PD event and planning to provide Koorie food: "Don't give them Koorie food - a lot of my friends don't view Aboriginal people as humans."
"When we set up PD days within their schools the same things happen. A lot of the teachers have given up. We get told - even by Koorie parents - 'You're the worker, you're getting paid, you deal with it'."
"There's racism there within the teachers. I get teachers who don't even say g'day to me. Look at me and just look away. There's that misperception there on acceptance."
Aboriginal Studies
"I believe that Aboriginal Studies should be compulsory on the curriculum. For too long non-Aboriginal people think we eat other people. Quite a lot of non-Indigenous Australians probably haven't met an Aboriginal person. There's schools in our State and Aboriginal kids in those schools who don't know anything about their heritage. I learnt about mine when I was about 36 years old. People ask us why we're so advantaged all the time. And some people ask whether there's a work ethic amongst us. In this region, when missions were set up they put shovels and rakes and pitchforks in our hands. And our people did grow the best crops in this region. When they went to market they got the best sales. The non-Koorie farmers kicked up so our market gardens on the reserves were closed down. That goes for livestock as well. Our culture is alive - it's a little bit sleepy but it's alive and vibrant. It should be compulsory from primary to secondary. It is only taught in sprinklings."
Co-Commissioner Roberts advised the meeting that Aboriginal Studies is a VCE subject but only offered in 12 schools in the State.
"VCE level is too far. It should be from very young years. And part of not only staff training but also student learning. We have in this area a trained primary school teacher (Koorie) who's capable of writing curriculum in Aboriginal History. But there's no funds available to employ her for that. If that was done that could help to break down the barriers and the attitudes. We have some really skilled older people in making artifacts but they sit at home because no-one wants to use their skills. They should be doing their craft and teaching it to the young people. But their skills are not valued."
"The racism won't change until Koorie culture is compulsory in the curriculum."
Race relations
"At the secondary school here, if there's a fight, the Koorie kid might not even be anywhere near it, but they'll always pin it on him. The Koorie kids will be named and they might not even know that it was even on. They get labelled straight away. That gets the kids just so made."
"Those issues have been pretty full on this year. They've been dealing with it by suspending the Koorie student for a term or for the whole year. The secondary college down the road - the way they deal with the Koorie kids after a couple of incidents is to put them out the door."
This was confirmed by the other Koorie Educators present. "When the kids muck up, they get kicked out of school. And it's for a good long period of time. The kids see it as grouse: 'We're out of that system, we don't have to deal with it any more'. White kids get put on in-school suspension which means they sit outside the office and do their work all day. The Koorie kids don't get that opportunity to feel like part of the school. It's 'You follow these rules - and we know you really won't and we know you really can't - or you're out'. The kids need to feel a part of the school, to feel ownership of the school and to feel valued and accepted. Then they might start accepting other cultures in the school and the rules of the school."
"There's teachers around who've got really bad attitudes towards Aboriginal people. Just because the town feels they can't work beside Koorie people - it runs through the police force as well. They blame young Koorie people for what the other youth do."
"They can be walking down the street and they'll be pulled up. If they don't give their names they can be put in the van. Yet they won't do it to the white kids. You wonder why our kids have got the chip on their shoulder and they're feeling really resentful and angry. It just goes on too much. The police or the school ring us up and say 'Come down and help us sort out these problems'. Half of them are made by themselves."
"The Aboriginal population is 2% but in the prison system it's 45%. We've got Aboriginal people assaulting other Aboriginal people and the police sway 'That's a Koorie issue - you deal with it'. That's been going on for years."
"The Koorie kids are racist within themselves. Those who want to be part of the school and obey the rules get called coconuts."
"The other students say racist names to our kids and our kids deal with it with their fists. They come up before the court and the ones who did the name-calling walked free. In the court, it was such bad things they had said against the Koorie people - racist comments - the court wouldn't even read them out in the courtroom."
"We're still fighting for exactly the same things our elders have fought for for generations."
Last updated 2 December 2001.
