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IDENTITY, racism, displacement, country, nuclear testing, sovereignty and the Stolen Generations are being explored in a survey of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art at the University of Queensland Art Museum, from July 28. Touring from the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial brings together 30 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists from across the nation. The exhibition features artworks of various media, from painting on canvas and bark, weaving and sculpture, to video, prints, photography, metalwork and glasswork. NGA Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art curator Tina Baum said the exhibition marked the ongoing resistance, resilience and defiance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people against colonisation, from first contact through the 1967 Referendum and up until today. The exhibition runs until November 11. Entry is free.

IDENTITY, racism, displacement, country, nuclear testing, sovereignty and the Stolen Generations are being explored in a survey of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art at the University of Queensland Art Museum, from July 28. Touring from the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial brings together 30 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists from across the nation. The exhibition features artworks of various media, from painting on canvas and bark, weaving and sculpture, to video, prints, photography, metalwork and glasswork. NGA Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art curator Tina Baum said the exhibition marked the ongoing resistance, resilience and defiance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people against colonisation, from first contact through the 1967 Referendum and up until today. The exhibition runs until November 11. Entry is free.

Goolagong honoured with highest award in tennis

EVONNE Goolagong Cawley's extraordinary career and advocacy has been honoured by the International Tennis Federation. The ITF has announced it will bestow its greatest accolade, the Philippe Chatrier Award, on the Australian champion at a gala event next month. Goolagong, a Wiradjuri woman, won the French Open and Wimbledon in 1971 while still a teenager, going on to become the world No.1 and total seven grand slam crowns. The award also honours the post-career work of the individual. Since moving back from the United States in 1991, Goolagong has worked with Tennis Australia to increase female and Indigenous participation in the sport.

Dja Dja Wurrung stories brought to life on mill

This Friday, Saturday and Sunday night the historic Anderson's Mill at Smeaton, about an hour south of Bendigo, will come to life with stories of Dja Dja Wurrung clans, from central Victoria.It is history under represented and often misinterpreted. The new 20 minute projection work Now You See It, created by Djaara cultural advisors and artists, Aunty Marilyne Nicholls and Rebecca Phillips with lead artist Jim Coad from Video Architecture, also features a soundscape created by musician and composer James Henry, and stories of the mill.

Barty named Indigenous tennis ambassador

WORLD tennis No 18 Ashleigh Barty has been named Tennis Australia's national Indigenous tennis ambassador in a move to attract more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth to tennis. Barty was welcomed to the Northern Territory and given a tour of the new Darwin International Tennis Centre at Marrara, which will host the National Indigenous Tennis Carnival in September. As part of her trip to the Top End, Barty flew to the remote Wurrumiyanga community on Bathurst Island and conducted a tennis clinic at the local Murrupurtiyanuwu Catholic School.

Western Desert mob develop own Da Vinci code

THE Mona Lisa has served as a point of reference for a series of self-portraits to be exhibited during the Desert Mob Aboriginal art festival in Alice Springs this year. Ten women from Utju (Areyonga), 220km west of Alice Springs, spent a week at Charles Darwin University recently, learning and practising portrait painting as part of the Certificate II in Visual Arts. Lecturer Suzi Lyon said they were all highly accomplished artists, but keen to expand their skill set. Ms Lyon said the artists looked at several portraits, but particularly liked the pose of Leonardo Da Vinci's 16 th Century masterpiece.

Alexis Wright adds major prize to stellar career

WAANYI writer Alexis Wright has won the Stella Prize for Tracker, her book about Eastern Arrernte man Tracker Tilmouth. "I want to express my gratitude to my friend Tracker Tilmouth, a visionary leader in the Aboriginal world," she said. "I thought very deeply about how to develop this book by using our own storytelling principle of consensus, to give everyone the opportunity to tell their part in the story. I worked on this book because I felt that Australia needed to hear what Tracker had to say. It is important. It involves the future of Aboriginal people and our culture."

Mauboy got a lotta love for Eurovision

Jessica Mauboy has released the song she will sing at this year's Eurovision Song Contest, which will be held in Lisbon, Portugal in May. "I love the Eurovision Song Contest. I have since I was a little girl watching it with the family in Darwin," Mauboy told SBS. "Eurovision, to me, is people brought together through a real love of music and all the joy that music can bring. I can't wait to perform this song live in Portugal and see it connect with a global audience at such a special time." You can listen to #We Got Love and the official Eurovision video clip here: goo.gl/QQis2z

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IDENTITY, racism, displacement, country, nuclear testing, sovereignty and the Stolen Generations are being explored in a survey of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art at the University of Queensland Art Museum, from July 28. Touring from the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial brings together 30 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists from across the nation.

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A new method using culture-based storytelling to teach maths to Aboriginal children is reaping results.

Aboriginal school children on average lag two years behind their non-Indigenous peers when it comes to maths, but according to one expert we can bridge the gap by paying better attention to culture.

"Maths and science are very much seen, from an Aboriginal point of view, as a white fella thing," said Dr Christopher Matthews, of Griffith University, who is just one of a handful of Aboriginal people to earn a PhD in mathematics.

Dr Matthews is from the Quandamooka people of Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island), but grew up in Toowoomba.

"I actually got caught cheating on my two-times table when I was in grade two," he laughs.

However, that attitude changed when he discovered algebra.

"It was like an epiphany. I remember sitting there one day and thinking 'Why is this so easy?'"

Dr Matthews excelled at maths, and headed off to university, eventually gaining a PhD in applied mathematics.

He decided to help his people learn maths when he observed how often maths is relied on to make environmental decisions affecting Aboriginal land.

"We need the capacity to engage in this decision making and to review the scientific papers," he says.

And so Dr Matthews set out to develop a new way of teaching maths at school.

Teaching maths as storytelling and dance

Dr Matthews realised you could help children struggling with maths by linking it to their own stories about the world.

"Maths involves creating symbols and putting them together to represent the real world," he said.

Most students only experience maths in the abstract form without getting to relate it to something meaningful to them, Dr Matthews said.

"As people we all want to understand the world around us and we do that through our own cultural lens.

"But fundamentally, we are looking at ways of understanding the world and that's pretty much what science and maths is."

Brolgas, kangaroos and storm clouds

Dr Matthews' approach to teaching maths involves Aboriginal children making up stories about equations - sometimes in the form of dance.

The numbers in the equations become characters who take certain actions resulting in a particular outcome.

The actions either bring things together (addition and multiplication) or take them apart (subtraction and division).

For example, Aboriginal children turned the equation 4x2 = 8 into a dance about flying brolgas. A group of two children, acting as brolgas, flew together, and then linked up with another group of two, and then two more groups of two to become a group of eight.

Or to illustrate 7-3 = 4, a group of seven kangaroos went out one day when three were hunted, leaving four behind.

In another equation, children grouped together to create a cloud that moved over country, and then some of them dropped off as the rain.

"The subtraction was the loss of rain from the cloud," said Dr Matthews, who now now heads up the Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Mathematics Alliance (ATSIMA).

Dr Matthews is heartened to see children linking their Aboriginal identity to maths given the racism he himself experienced at school.

"I was the only Aboriginal kid in the class."

Ironically, it was this tough school experience that led Dr Matthews to bury himself in the geeky but "safe" world of maths.

Mathematics educator Caty Morris, of ATSIMA, helped Dr Matthews evaluate the maths as dance trial and says it transformed the children's view of maths.

"They realised that maths was more than all those equations on the blackboard in the classroom. It really opened their eyes to the potential of mathematics," she said.

"I think it's a fantastic whole new way of looking at how mathematics can be taught. For one thing, you're getting the kids to 'be' the mathematics themselves."

She says Dr Matthews' approach has enormous potential in the classroom, and this potential was already starting to show - and not just for Indigenous children.

Maths for all

According to Professor Tom Cooper, the head of the YuMi Deadly Centre for maths education at the Queensland University of Technology, the principles involved in Dr Matthews' approach to maths as storytelling are "very powerful".

"It's the basis of our teaching now," he said.

The YuMi Deadly maths program aims to improve maths education for disadvantaged students, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, by adapting to the specific needs of the children. Since 2010, a total of 250 schools have adopted the program.

"You've got to look at your kids and you've got to get to know their culture. You must always start your teaching from something that interests them," Professor Cooper said.

Children must be encouraged to make up their own symbols, he says, and relate them to stories about their own world, before being expected to acquire more generic symbols used in the world of mathematics.

Professor Cooper says movement is also a key feature of the program.

"All mathematics must be taught with the body," he said.

"So if we're teaching distance, then we run distances. If we're teaching numbers, everyone lies on the ground and makes numbers with their body."

He said the results of the program spoke for themselves.

"So many schools tell us that it's changed the way they teach and improved dramatically the learning they have ... We have evidence that it has improved NAPLAN."

And it is not just the obviously disadvantaged that can benefit. Professor Cooper said some elite schools had taken on the program.

"It may simply be people who don't learn well by sitting in rows and being given symbols - people who learn better by acting out," he said.

Dr Matthews believes his early failure in primary school was because his maths teacher demanded rote learning and quick recall.

"My brain just doesn't work like that," he said. "I get anxious."

It is no surprise to him that many children find maths as storytelling a preferable approach.

"We all carry our own cultural understandings and I think if you allow kids to be creative within that they can actually bring that to the table."
Hear more about Dr Christopher Matthews and his approach to teaching mathematics on RN Life Matters.

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Maths, story and dance: an Indigenous approach

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A new method using culture-based storytelling to teach maths to Aboriginal children is reaping results. Aboriginal school children on average lag two years behind their non-Indigenous peers when it comes to maths, but according to one expert we can bridge the gap by paying better attention to culture.

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Every year in Australia, the National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) results show Indigenous school students are well behind their non-Indigenous peers. Reducing this disparity is a vital part of Australia's national Closing the Gap policy. The tenth Closing the Gap report will be published on Monday.

Unfortunately, the relevant Closing the Gap target - the proportion of students meeting National Minimum Standards (NMS) in NAPLAN - obscures the scale of the challenge. For some groups of Indigenous students, the difference is more a gulf than a gap.

Using an updated version of our equivalent year levels metric, introduced in Grattan Institute's 2016 report Widening Gaps, we estimate year nine Indigenous students in very remote areas are:

five years behind in numeracy

six years behind in reading, and

seven to eight years behind in writing.

In other words, the average year nine Indigenous student in a very remote area scores about the same in NAPLAN reading as the average year three non-Indigenous city student, and significantly lower in writing.

But it would be a big mistake to see this only as a problem for isolated outback communities. Most Indigenous students live in cities or regional areas. So, even though learning outcomes are worse in remote and very remote areas, city and regional students account for more than two-thirds of the lost years of learning.

What the current metrics say

Three of the seven Closing the Gap targets relate to school education. They cover year 12 completion, school attendance, and literacy and numeracy.

The 2017 Closing the Gap report indicated Australia is on track to halve the gap by 2020 for year 12 (or equivalent) attainment. We are off target for school attendance, with no meaningful increase in Indigenous attendance rates in the past three years.

Read more: Radical rethink of Closing the Gap required, despite some progress

The final target is to halve the gap for Indigenous children in reading, writing and numeracy by 2018. As of last year, the only national target on track was for year nine numeracy, while close to half the measures were on track at the state and territory level. But even this picture is misleadingly optimistic.

The case for a new target

Measuring the gap using national minimum standards has two main problems. First, it ignores the difference between students who just meet the minimum standard and those who excel. Second, the standards themselves are set too low. A year nine student can meet the numeracy standard even if they're performing below the typical year five student.

Our equivalent year level metric addresses these issues, and is much easier to interpret.

So what does the data say?

The gap grows as students move through school

At a national level, year nine Indigenous students are on average three years behind non-Indigenous in numeracy, 3.4 years behind in reading, and 4.2 years behind in writing.
Indigenous students are three to four years behind by Year 9

Mean NAPLAN scores from 2010 to 2017 (2011 to 2017 for Writing) translated to equivalent year level (EYL) using an updated version of the methodology in Widening Gaps (2016). The EYL scale is based on the average performance of metropolitan non-Indigenous students over 2010-2016.

The gaps have grown since the students were in year three, when Indigenous students ranged from being on average 1.2 years behind in numeracy to just under two years behind in reading and writing.

Indigenous students make on average about two years less learning progress from year three to year nine - a substantial progress gap.

The bulk of the lost learning is in the cities and the regions

Year nine remote Indigenous students are 4.1 years behind metropolitan non-Indigenous students in numeracy, 4.6 years behind in reading, and six years behind in writing.

Very remote Indigenous students are still further behind - 7.7 years behind in writing.
Regional and remote Indigenous students are even further back

Mean NAPLAN scores from 2010 to 2017 (2011 to 2017 for Writing) translated to equivalent year level (EYL) using an updated version of the methodology in Widening Gaps (2016). The EYL scale is based on the average performance of metropolitan non-Indigenous students from 2010-2016.

But year nine gaps are still about three to four years for Indigenous students in metropolitan and regional areas, which is where 80% of Indigenous students live. In fact, our analysis shows cities and regions contributed about 60-75% of the national gap in 2017.

There are some signs of improvement...

Since 2010, for Indigenous students:

most states have shown big gains in year nine numeracy (worth up to nine months of extra learning), and Queensland has improved the most in year three and five numeracy

the five big states (NSW, Victoria, Queensland, WA, and SA) have improved reading outcomes in years three, five and nine, although Tasmania, ACT and NT have generally stagnated, and

writing results have generally gone backwards - as have non-Indigenous results in writing.

Across writing, reading and numeracy, metropolitan Indigenous students have generally improved more than regional or remote students. A noteworthy exception is very remote NSW Indigenous students in years three and five, who have made six to 12 month improvements in reading and numeracy, and even bigger gains in writing.

...but the gaps are still not closing fast enough

While these trends offer encouragement in some areas, better Indigenous results do not necessarily mean Indigenous students are closing the gap. For example, the year five reading gap is widening in Queensland, because non-Indigenous students have improved even more since 2010 than Indigenous students have.

The following table shows how the achievement gap has changed since 2010 for each jurisdiction and year level. To be on track to meet the 2018 target, a gap must have shrunk by at least 45% by 2017.
No state is on track to halve the gap by 2018 in any subject or year level

Percentage change in the gap in equivalent year level between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in each state from 2010 to 2017 (2011 to 2017 for writing). A green cell (with a positive number) indicates that the gap has closed substantially, while an orange or red cell (with a negative number) indicates a gap that is growing. Yellow cells indicate little change in the size of the gap.

There are places where the gap is genuinely closing - for example, numeracy in Tasmania, and year nine reading in Victoria, SA and Tasmania - but they are few and far between. And nowhere is the gap closing fast enough to be on track.

Read more: The gap of Indigenous disadvantage is being closed too slowly: report

What should be done

There is no easy way to improve Indigenous education outcomes at scale. But here are three things that would help.

First, measure and track the learning gaps more accurately. Presenting the gap in years of learning brings home the reality of educational outcomes for too many Indigenous Australians. The national target should reflect this reality, and could easily be changed as part of the current Refresh of the Closing the Gap agenda. Our submission to the Refresh process makes this recommendation, and includes additional analysis not covered here.

Second, systematically evaluate schools where Indigenous outcomes are particularly high, or learning progress particularly strong. Even better, try to understand examples of improvement at scale. For example, researchers should try to identify the causes of the recent gains in very remote NSW schools in year three and five, to see if there are lessons that would apply more broadly.

Third, acknowledge the implications of the current gaps for targeted teaching. Given that so many year seven and nine Indigenous students are working at an early- to mid-primary school level, policymakers need to ensure teachers in remote secondary schools have the training and support to teach basic reading, writing, and numeracy. Few secondary school teachers have these skills - they are trained to teach subjects, not foundational skills meant to be mastered in primary school.

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Closing the gap in Indigenous literacy and numeracy? Not remotely - or in cities

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Every year in Australia, the National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) results show Indigenous school students are well behind their non-Indigenous peers. Reducing this disparity is a vital part of Australia's national Closing the Gap policy. The tenth Closing the Gap report will be published on Monday.

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Tips for teaching Aboriginal students

Many non-Aboriginal teachers do not have a lot of experience teaching and engaging Aboriginal children. To reach them and get them interested in learning, you must sometimes leave behind the textbook solutions you studied.

Know cultural needs

Aboriginal students can avoid direct eye contact to an adult as it is considered rude in Aboriginal culture. When teachers misdiagnose Aboriginal students' classroom behaviour we can speak of 'soft racism'.

Aboriginal children are also less likely to answer questions in the classroom because traditionally, Aboriginal culture has been passed on through the telling of stories; it's not about questions and answers or because they don't like to be the centre of attention.

"I realise that many children might know the answer, but aren't comfortable speaking up. Instead, I try to incorporate more ' hands on' learning and a greater variety of practical experiences into our lessons," explains Aboriginal teacher Matthew Pinchbeck of NSW.

Use story telling with visual cues in your teaching to support Aboriginal students learn better, rather than having them read and process materials directly.

Aboriginal students may have difficulty letting you know when they don't know something or are struggling to understand, due to a sensitivity to feeling shamed. They will keep quiet when something is too difficult to avoid 'getting it wrong'. Check with them that they are understanding and absorbing without them feeling shame if they are not.

Bear in mind that many Aboriginal children had early, often untreated ear infections which might have lead to hearing loss and explain why they are not listening or speaking loudly.

Parents might not be the most significant adults in a child's life because many Aboriginal adults share raising children in a community.

Don't expect them to underperform

If Aboriginal student numbers are low, teachers might ignore Aboriginal students, expect them to deliver low results or victimise them.

"I dreamt big," says Aboriginal gold medal winner and politician Nova Peris. "Most people would have looked at an Aboriginal girl from the Territory, with its statistics of alcohol abuse, youth suicide, domestic violence, imprisonment rates and substandard education, and point to every reason why I should not succeed. But I was determined to be successful."

Sky News international editor and Wiradjuri man, Stan Grant, remembers: "Aboriginal kids like me were too often denied opportunity, ignored or held captive to the low expectations of others. Indeed at age 14 I, along with my black cousins and mates, was encouraged to leave school, our principal said there was no meaningful place for us."

Instead, have high expectations. "I want them to reach for the stars," says principal Paul Eaglestone from Looma Remote Community School in WA. "We're all about student gain. I prefer high targets, even if sometimes students do well but don't quite get there." The success of his school proves him right.

"I give the students examples," explains Len Yarran from Balga Senior High School (WA). "I tell them there are people who came from alcoholic households, suicides in their family, backgrounds where there was no hope, and they have changed their lives. Some of them are in really influential positions."

High expectations = high outcomes

Children of Asian background are often perceived to be "smarter" than their other classmates. Researchers found that they enter schools with no significant academic advantage, but outperformed their non-Asian classmates significantly in Grade 5 .

They found Asian families ("Tiger Mums") were more likely to set higher expectations for their children. Greater effort from the students, and not advantages, contributed to academic success.

Similarly, if teachers set high expectations for Aboriginal students they can motivate them to succeed.

"Classmates who were straight-A students were never told they couldn't do medicine. I was a straight-A student but I was black," recalls Dr Kris Rallah-Baker, Australia's first eye doctor. A careers adviser told a young Kris that he would not get into medicine .

Relate examples to their environment and community

Teaching Aboriginal students needs to convey a "relatedness" , which is a key feature of Aboriginal world views. It stems from the connectedness to every living thing, which is the foundation of Aboriginal tradition, culture and spirituality.

Including Aboriginal stories and achievements also helps Aboriginal students feel more valued and accepted, and boosts their sense of identity.

When your lessons are relevant to students and applicable to everyday activities results can improve significantly. This sense of relatedness helps them answer the question "Who am I" and "Where do I fit in", rather than "What do I want to be?" .

Aboriginal children look at this macro view of the world before narrowing it down to the micro . Students would look around and notice who is not there rather than who is there.

The Teaching Indigenous Maths Education (TIME) program at Queensland University of Technology related mathematics classes to everyday tasks such as shopping and sports. Students were much more engaged, and some gained A-level results for the first time while none received an E-level .

Will Lutwyche taught for 2 years in remote Tennant Creek, NT. He learned that in order to engage his students he had to bring local stories into the classroom.

"In the end their stories really drove the history unit, along with the stories of community members. It was more relevant and integral to their lives, and their families and the town of Tennant Creek. They engaged well with it and started to reflect deeply and use critical thinking, which is not always easy to do without relevant content."

Help them fake power to become powerful

In the TED talk below, social scientist Amy Cuddy reveals typical body postures of people who feel inferior and the messages this sends to their brain.

By faking a posture of power, even if for just two minutes, the brain receives signals of more power which reduces cortisol (the stress hormone) and increases testosterone (the hormone of power).

Why not invite Aboriginal students to fake these postures until they, like a student Amy coached, become more self-confident? (Video runs for approx. 20 minutes)

Consider intergenerational trauma

Aboriginal history is horrific in many places, for example assimilation policies or the Stolen Generations, and parents can pass on their trauma to their children which then becomes intergenerational. Teachers need to recognise this trauma when they assess the choices Aboriginal parents or students make.

Some Aboriginal parents don't want the Stolen Generations topic taught at school at all as they fear it can open wounds for the children as their aunties, uncles, mothers, fathers or grandparents might be affected. Most kids already know through their families.

Effects of the Stolen Generations still have implications on each student's life. When teaching about this chapter, teachers need to protect students' privacy and not expect them to talk about their personal stories.

Be aware of a greater sense of autonomy

Aboriginal children have been raised to be autonomous individuals with a right to express their needs and opinions and have them taken seriously. But a strong character can get them into trouble in a classroom .

Include community spirit

Aboriginal students are more used to working for the collective good rather than focusing on individual achievement. It is foreign for them to be tested as 'individuals' for their knowledge, when their usual context is seeing what the group can achieve collectively .

Looma Remote Community School, about 120 km south-east of Derby, WA, uses a high level of community involvement and togetherness as a crucial factor to its success in education. Every morning, students, and often parents, play 'heads and tails' in morning assembly. Parents and carers often join sack races and tugs of war at sports carnivals and eat lunch with children.

Remember English is a foreign language

For many Aboriginal children English is their second, third or fourth language. Teachers should explain things in more than one way and more than once to enable Aboriginal students to understand and learn. In Aboriginal culture knowledge was passed on through repetitive story-telling.

If possible, Aboriginal children should be taught in their first language. "Learning to read and write requires the brain to be neurologically developmentally primed," explains speech pathologist Mary-Ruth Mendel . "Children's brains need to be stimulated in the first language that they speak."

Bilingual programs and children's textbooks help Aboriginal children to live in two worlds and improve literacy rates.

Story: Cultural knowledge a must for language teachers

Here are some insights from Jasmin Martin, an Australian teacher living in Germany :

"I teach English here to the locals, and I see that the same approach that you described has to be taken with each student of a second or third or fourth language.

"Even Germans are a little apprehensive of English and the domination of English within their own language and dialects. I could not imagine trying to teach English to Germans, without knowing any German or having any sense for the way they think or live.

"Likewise, I could not imagine teaching English to Aboriginal communities in Australia, without knowing anything about their culture, language and what makes them tick, even if I have lived in Australia all my life and also lived up north in Darwin for many years."

Promote Aboriginality

For Aboriginal students to have a full and productive life, they need to receive an education that enhances and promotes their Aboriginality. Teachers can encourage cultural pride through programs such as, among others, music and dance.

Some students are trying to find their identity and what opportunities are there for them, and sometimes schools are the only safe place for them to do that. Teachers can support students by encouraging them to have pride in culture and with inspirational role models.

Address racism and use an open dialogue in a positive way: "This is the past; however, you are the people that can change that, this is how things have been done in the past, but you can make Australia a better place."

With boosted confidence and positive influences suspensions and detentions will drop and attendance rates increase.

Give students more chances

Many behavioural problems can be managed by taking the time to listen and giving students a "second, third and forth" chance .

Consider broken homes

Many Aboriginal students come from dysfunctional families where they need to dodge domestic violence or alcohol abuse. Many have emotional problems that materialise when they reach their mid-teens. Providing pastoral care lets them develop trust and feel safe and valued .

In remote communities, some Aboriginal kids might not have been taught values at home. If teachers spend half an hour teaching basic norms they have a much better chance to connect with their students .

There is a lack of positive role models for Aboriginal students, especially boys who have no father figures in their lives through death or separation. They need basic strategies for their immediate needs, for example extra attention, food or a talk about what happened the previous night at home.

Offer homework classes

Students (especially of remote communities) don't have computers at home, sometimes not even a desk.

Story: Education NRL-style: One metre at a time

Cherbourg State School in Queensland has implemented a popular reading program borrowing some ideas from National Rugby League (NRL) rules.

Each classroom is divided into 4 NRL teams. Students gain 'metres' on a virtual field for their attendance, work ethic and behaviour.

If a team has 100% attendance for any given day it automatically makes 10 metres.

Further metres can be made if the children read magazines or do puzzles of a night at home.

There are also physical activities played outside for extra metres.

"[The program] is about boosting numeracy, literacy, behaviour and the idea of team building to reach and end goal," says Steve Belsham, Australian Rugby League development officer

How to create a culturally responsive classroom

"It's very easy to say I want to have a culturally responsive classroom but to know what that looks like was a bit more difficult than I thought," admits Will Lutwyche who taught Aboriginal kids for 2 years in remote Tennant Creek, NT.

He found the following components to work well:

Build trust. "You need to get to know the kids really well before you can [teach]," says Will. "There needs to be mutual trust to establish your legitimacy. They can't gauge your authenticity straight off."

Acknowledgement of Country. Before a class, acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land where you teach.

Embrace diversity. Honour students' diversity within Aboriginal culture by letting them mark their nation, language group or moiety on a Aboriginal Australia wall map. Note that within the same community there might also be cultural ceremonial differences, kinship differences and totem differences. What works in one community most likely won't work in another.

Liaise with Elders. Run your curriculum ideas by Elders first. They can also introduce you to contacts in the community and people who can speak to the class.

Invite community members. Get community members into the classroom to share their stories and have a yarning circle.

Explore family trees. Will found it effective to explore children's family trees.

Let students teach. Have students run a lesson, which is often something they've never experienced before and fosters their self-esteem.

Use local resources. To support community context, use local resources that align with the curriculum. Will found written resources relevant to Tennant Creek buried deeply in books, and a DVD about the Coniston Massacre which occurred just south of Tennant Creek.

Promote calmness. Will found it very helpful to introduce routines, such as doing vocabulary at the beginning of each lesson, and then quiet reading or writing, or a bit of mindfulness practice to calm students down.

Don't yell. "Once kids realise I'm not going to get angry with them, they settle down," says Will.

Prepare students for walking in two worlds

In some parts of Australia Aboriginal people have "a huge hesitation" about the embrace of Western education, according to Aboriginal elder Noel Pearson . Many Aboriginal people are afraid of losing their children to a bigger world, and their children losing their identity and culture.

Educational systems designed to Western standards give Aboriginal people little to motivate them to have faith--on the contrary, many feel disrespected and marginalised. Academics think of Aboriginal people as "guests in the dominant educational domain". This 'guest paradigm' defines the relationship that Aboriginal people have with 'Eurocentric' education systems.

Teaching both worlds might be the answer to these problems.

Aboriginal leaders try to foster "a [cultural] centre of gravity" in their children so that they are able to "operate in two worlds" . Only when children accommodated both western and traditional Aboriginal culture would they be able to build their socio-economic strengths and maintain, revive and re-double the strength of their cultural determination, Mr Pearson said.

The Boonderu Music Academy in Roebourne, Western Australia, recognises that Aboriginal culture is based on song and story telling and encourages kids to enjoy school through the use of music first and worry about grades later. This approach entices students to go to school, validated by an attendance rate of 80%.

"My generation have learned now, that to live in this society, we must walk in two worlds," says Kendall Smith, one of the mentors and music teachers at the academy. "We must learn to adapt to be white man world, in that way, but then as soon as we get home, doing what our old people have done for 45,000 years -- going out bush, hunting, singing law and ceremony songs... that is the key to the survival of our Aboriginal people.

"While everyone else was learning how to drink and do drugs, we sort of kept to ourselves and played music. We were trying to find another way," Smith said.

Story: Better marks at a community-owned school

The Aboriginal and Islander Independent Community School, also known as "Murri School" after the name of Aboriginal people of Queensland, operates since 25 years in Brisbane .

The school is community-owned, develops its own policies and decides on teaching directions.

Unlike most mainstream independent schools the Murri School does not charge parents expensive fees. Since many Aboriginal parents are unemployed the school only charges a small fee for food. It provides students with three meals a day and transport to and from school.

Because of this financial and practical help the Murri School does not have any issues with students not attending school, unlike many mainstream schools with Aboriginal students.

Students are thriving and score well in the National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) exam.

"Our children achieve higher in the tests after being schooled in our system then they do after being schooled through Education Queensland," says Tiga Bayles, board president, Aboriginal and Islander Independent Community School Brisbane.

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Ways of teaching & engaging Aboriginal students

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Teaching Aboriginal students requires sensitivity for their special needs and knowledge about Aboriginal cultural protocols. Successful programs relate content to real life and work around Aboriginal parents' limitations.

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Paul Pholeros: How to reduce poverty? Fix homes

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In 1985, architect Paul Pholeros was challenged to "stop people getting sick" in a small indigenous community in south Australia. And it meant thinking way beyond medicine. In this sparky, interactive talk, Pholeros shares his work with Healthabitat, which works to reduce poverty through practical design fixes -- in Australia and beyond.

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Michael Mieni: Using Aboriginal traditions to teach tech

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Michael Mieni is the first-ever Indigenous IT honours student at the University of Technology Sydney, and he wants to make sure he isn't the last: By using Aboriginal traditions to bridge the digital divide in Indigenous communities, he says, we can reveal untapped brilliance.

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Small business owners, political candidates, and arts organizations can all benefit from customizable leaflets. If you're looking to improve your advertising, try our software for free leaflet design.

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Small business owners, political candidates, and arts organizations can all benefit from customizable leaflets. If you're looking to improve your advertising, try our software for free leaflet design. Try it now The best leaflets reinforce their message with compelling design.

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National Indigenous Times; Latest Indigenous news and views

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Australia's best - and fastest growing - indigenous news website, focusing on national affairs, the arts, culture, sport, native title, and education.

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Did you know that Greater Shepparton has the highest population of Aboriginal people in Victoria outside of the City of Melbourne? In fact, when you consider the City of Melbourne is made up of over 500 suburbs, Greater Shepparton as an area actually has the highest number of Aboriginal people in Victoria.
CLICK HERE to join the Facebook event for the official project launch.
In 2016, Greater Shepparton City Council came up with an idea to celebrate the local Aboriginal people and their culture through street art. Street art has become quite prevalent in Northern Victoria and if Greater Shepparton was to commence a street art project, it would be pertinent that the project links back to Greater Shepparton in some way.

The Aboriginal history and culture is rich within the Greater Shepparton region and what a perfect theme for a street art project!

Council, in discussion with the local Aboriginal community, noticed an interest amongst the locals in recognising significant figures who are not currently recognised within the region. Instead of the community putting their own hands up to potentially be featured within artwork, they felt it was much more pertinent to recognise their ancestors and significant elders that they look up to. The two names that popped up the most were Uncle William Cooper and Pastor Sir Douglas Nicholls.

Consultation began with Rumbalara Cooperative, Yorta Yorta Nation Aboriginal Corporation, the local Aboriginal community and the families of both Uncle William Cooper and Sir Douglas Nicholls.

Both individuals were approved to be featured within a mural through both the Yorta Yorta Aboriginal Corporation Elders Committee and the Rumbalara Cooperative Elders Committee.

Research commenced regarding most suitable artists who have a proven record in painting large sized portraits of people. Given this project is going to feature portraits, it is incredibly important that the likeness is matched to a tee!

Goulburn Valley Water offered Council their wall on Fryers Street to showcase the first mural and have also offered Council the opportunity to showcase the second mural on the adjacent wall.

Council has committed to recognising two Aboriginal females that will be selected by the local community and both females will be announced later in the year.

About Pastor Sir Douglas Nicholls KCVO OBE MBE

Pastor Sir Douglas Nicholls KCVO OBE MBE, who has an annual AFL round dedicated to him was born 9 December 1906 at the Cummeragunja Reserve and was a prominent Aboriginal from the Yorta Yorta people and is known to many as 'Uncle Doug'.

Sir Douglas Nicholls was the first Aboriginal person to be knighted and in 1976 was made Governor of South Australia. Earlier, during the commencement of his football career for Fitzroy, Sir Douglas Nicholls was subjected to on field taunts and ostracised by his team-mates due to his colour. Sir Douglas Nicholls was at an early stage changing in a separate change room to his team mates until he was befriended by team mate Haydn Bunton who ensured Nicholls was made welcome within the Fitzroy Football Club team.
Learn more on Wikipedia
Sir Douglas Nicholls, due to his skill, vision and lighting speed, became a popular player amongst the spectators and is now recognised as a football legend.

About William Cooper

William Cooper, born on 18 December 1860 and known to many as Uncle William Cooper was an Aboriginal political activist and community leader.

William Cooper who was a Yorta Yorta man, campaigned for Aboriginal rights, particularly land and is also recognised for protesting against the Nazi Government of Germany due to their poor treatment of the Jewish people. William Cooper led a delegation to the German Consulate in Melbourne to deliver a petition which is recognised as the only petition against the Germans following Kristallnacht. On 6 December 2008, the 70th anniversary of the protest against Kristallnacht, William Cooper's grandson, Alfred "Boydie" Turner, also known as Uncle Boydie was presented with a certificate from the Israeli Ambassador stating that 70 Australian trees were to be planted in Israel in honour of William Cooper.
Learn more on Wikipedia
29 March 2017 marked 76 years since William Cooper passed away in Mooroopna in 1941.

Greater Shepparton City Council invites all residents to the grand launch of the female mural that features Aunty Margaret Tucker (MBE) and Nora "Nanny" Charles - two significant past local elders. Read more

Greater Shepparton City Council invites all residents to the Remembrance Service at the Private Daniel Cooper Mural on Sunday 27 May at 11:00am. Read more

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In 2016, Greater Shepparton City Council came up with an idea to celebrate the local Aboriginal people and their culture through street art. Street art has become quite prevalent in Northern Victoria and if Greater Shepparton was to commence a street art project, it would be pertinent that the project links back to Greater Shepparton in some way.

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What Is It Like To Be Aboriginal? | Tui Raven | TEDxUWA

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Discover how Indigenous Community Volunteers works with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to build a brighter future.

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Updated October 25, 2016 15:35:06

Rottnest Island: Black prison to white playground

Today Rottnest Island, off Fremantle, is a popular holiday spot, but few realise the island's dark past as a prison for Indigenous men.

Glen Stasiuk, a lecturer and Indigenous researcher at Murdoch University, was just a teenager when he first went camping with his mates on Rottnest Island - Wadjemup - in the 1980s.

He went skin diving, became inexplicably sick and had to be airlifted back to the mainland. He went back a year later and again became very sick. His mum told him it was probably about time he went and spoke to his Noongar nana.

"It's worra," she said. "It's worra, it's menditj. It's a sick place."

Stasiuk had camped at Tentland. For years and years, Tentland was the camping area on Rottnest; the place where families and teenagers pitched their tents, had a few drinks, and threw some sausages on the barbeque.

What campers didn't know was that they were sleeping on the unmarked graves of at least 373 Aboriginal men. It's the largest deaths in custody site in Australia and the largest known burial ground of Aboriginal people.

"See that spot over there with the Aboriginal flag?" Dr Stasiuk points as we're walking around the burial site.

"That's where they uncovered the first skeletal remains in 1971 and I reckon that's just about where I pitched my tent."

The inmates buried here were among almost 4,000 men and boys from all across Western Australia imprisoned in the Aboriginal-only Rottnest Island Prison between 1838 and 1931.

When the first white settlers came sailing up the Derbarl Yerrigan, or Swan River, in June 1829, the local Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation thought they were ancestors coming back from the spirit world to protect them.

"They thought they'd been under the sea and bleached 'til their skin was white," says Dr Noel Nannup, elder-in-residence at Edith Cowan University.

But the visitors didn't leave. A call was sent upriver from Fremantle to the Upper Swan: " Worra! Get your family and get out of harm's way."

The impact on the local people was immediate.

"All of a sudden fences were going up, people were being pushed off their land and we were marginalised," says Karen Jacobs, a Noongar woman and former member of the Rottnest Island Board.

"Then they started bringing in a law that passed judgment over us, when we'd had our own governance structure for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.

"They cleared the land and blocked all the freshwater springs that ran through the city. This meant all the medicinal plants, all of the traditional vegetation and animals were all gone. Our whole hunting ground was gone within three years of settlement."

With a rapidly dwindling food supply, Noongar men started shooting any animal they saw - a sheep, a chicken, a cow - not understanding the white law that animals can belong to people. To them, animals belonged to the land.

The consequences of this misunderstanding were harsh. Aboriginal people started being arrested for theft, for trespassing, and it didn't take long for the prisons to fill up.

Authorities could see that Aboriginal prisoners were distressed and depressed by incarceration. There is no cultural history of imprisonment in Indigenous culture. As the problem got more serious, it was decided that an Aboriginal prison would be built on Rottnest Island.

The original idea was somewhat compassionate: that prisoners could freely move around and spend some of their time hunting for food. And that did happen, in limited and varying degrees, over the years.

The first boat arrived at Wadjemup in July 1838, with six prisoners on board. There was no prison yet; the prisoners would have to quarry the stone and build it; they slept in a large coastal cave.

For the first few months, prisoners gardened and cleared the bush and were allowed to hunt for food in the afternoons. But conditions deteriorated when Henry Vincent began his long reign as superintendent.

The mining of limestone and building of the prison began. Vincent was loose with his use of the cat o' nine tails. Prisoners were worked ruthlessly in the heat, inadequately clothed and chained together at night.

"Henry Vincent was barbaric. He would beat prisoners, kick them," says Dr Stasiuk, the author and director of Wadjemup: Rottnest Island as a Black Prison and White Playground.

"There's evidence he got clips and ripped a prisoner's beard clean out. Another time he beat a prisoner to death with a set of keys.

"He would hang prisoners sentenced to death in front of lore men who were about to return to the mainland, as a warning to the community that if they break the law, this is what could happen to you.

"He had no problem with shooting prisoners if they didn't do as they were told. He chained them up at night with a long pole system. It was hell on earth."

Vincent still has a cottage and a street named after him, and plaques in his honour. "Prisoners died under his watch and he's commemorated but these Aboriginal prisoners aren't," Dr Stasiuk says.

While conditions became more grim at the Rottnest Island Prison, the same was true for Aboriginal people back on the mainland. As the colonial frontier spread further north and east from Perth through WA, more and more Aboriginal men and boys were being sent to Wadjemup.

"As colonisation spread through to the Kimberley, it became increasingly lawless," Dr Stasiuk says.

"As you headed out into more remote areas, people could get away with a lot more and so there were beatings, killings, shootings, people being arrested under false pretences.

"There was no doubt what it was aiming to do; reinforcing what had been done down south in Noongar boodjar [country] with the Pinjarra Massacre. What happened with Midgegooroo and with Yagan is one way to disconnect and remove Aboriginal lore men from their countries and absolutely break the last bastion of resistance."

These men and boys were arrested, often on trumped-up charges, chained together around the neck, hands and feet and marched to the nearest police station. One of the worst cases involved 40 men and women being chained together at Bidyadanga and forced to walk 700 kilometres south to Roebourne.

They faced a legal system they didn't understand, often without legal representation, and were sent on boats down to Fremantle. Men from inland language groups were terrified by the ocean, a completely foreign body of water.

By the 1880s, more men were arriving at Rottnest Island than ever before and conditions were at their worst. Overcrowding peaked and disease was rife. Tiny cells were jammed with up to 10 men. There were no toilets, no beds and the damp floors were made of dirt.

The cells were filthy and freezing cold in the winter. Disease spread rapidly - mostly measles and influenza - and at least 60 men died one winter.

"Prisoners were coming on to the island from Fremantle and they were coming into contact with Europeans who had colds and flu and dysentery and other diseases Aborigines hadn't been exposed to," says Professor Len Collard from UWA's School of Indigenous Studies.

"You can imagine a prisoner coming into a cell, coughing and sneezing, and all of a sudden he projectile vomits over everybody, he can't control his bowels because he's got dysentery. They're in this six by 10 foot square: where you gonna go to?"

More than a hundred years later, a friend of mine is staying at the island's most upmarket accommodation - The Rottnest Lodge. She wakes up terrified in the middle of the night from a nightmare in which she's watches blood run down the walls. It turns out the room she's sleeping in is a former cell in the infamous Rottnest Island Prison Quod.

"There are a lot of innocent people who don't realise what they're renting," Professor Len Collard says.

"Have the authorities, the state government, the Rottnest Island Authority, have they got moral and ethical responsibilities to inform the public about what they're renting? Or not?"

Nearby is the old hospital turned morgue, where hundreds of men died. It's now used as a kitchen for the staff who live on the island. It's doubtful the staff know the horrors that unfolded inside.

This is the great incongruity of this island - its startling beauty, the way cares just fall away when, on approach, you see its waters and white sands sparkling, and the dark, devastating and embarrassingly invisible history.

Take Tentland. How could it be that our largest deaths in custody site, the largest known Aboriginal burial ground in Australia, could be allowed to become a camping site? How could it be that it took more than 20 years and multiple discoveries of skeletal remains before it was shut down in 1993?

Australia hasn't done a very good job of remembering and acknowledging past trauma, but Rottnest Island is a masterclass in forgetting.

Change is on its way, though. The burial ground has recently undergone a transformation, with a landscaped path marking an "indicative" perimeter and interpretive signs installed.

All eyes are now on the Quod, which is due to be handed back to the state government in May 2018 when the current lease expires. Hopes are high that it will become a centre of remembrance, a place of healing. When that will happen and who will fund it are still up in the air.

"It's all around the world - Hiroshima, Auschwitz, 9/11's ground zero, Port Arthur - to recognise what happened in the past was horrific. But don't deny it. Reflect and learn from mistakes to move forward," says Dr Stasiuk.

"It's happening, but it's taken a bloody long time to get there. Way too long. I'm 44 now and this was being discussed when I was a teenager.

"I don't want to see my kids taking their kids to Wadjemup and having this same story not have a conclusion or a healing outcome. I don't want to go through another generation of this."

The trauma of the state's early years still resonates amongst WA's Aboriginal population, and the marginalisation continues.

"We have to heal. There's so many families impacted by it," Dr Nannup says.

"I've found five of my mother's people buried over there and two of my dad's. What do I tell my grandchildren? It's a place that's like a battlefield and the rest of the community don't know. We try to tell our children and keep it alive but no-one even recognises it.

"To this day we're viewed as the dregs of society. We're still having people being put in prison because they haven't paid a traffic fine.

"They may even lose their life in there - for not paying a traffic fine! Please. It's just dreadful. It's a battle. Constantly, it's a battle."

Topics: history, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, indigenous-culture, prisons-and-punishment, fremantle-6160, wa, australia

First posted October 25, 2016 14:16:33

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Rottnest Island: Black prison to white playground

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Updated October 25, 2016 15:35:06 Rottnest Island: Black prison to white playground Today Rottnest Island, off Fremantle, is a popular holiday spot, but few realise the island's dark past as a prison for Indigenous men.

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Kahoot about Australia

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Volunteering Australia has released The Value of Volunteering Support Services research project. The research found Volunteering Support Services enabled nearly 12.3 million volunteer hours in 2017. This volunteering is worth $477.5 million, and would not have occurred without the engagement of Volunteering Support Services.

The report provides evidence that despite an increasing demand for the services of Volunteering Support Services, government contribution has remained static.

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Volunteering Australia has released The Value of Volunteering Support Services research project. The research found Volunteering Support Services enabled nearly 12.3 million volunteer hours in 2017. This volunteering is worth $477.5 million, and would not have occurred without the engagement of Volunteering Support Services.

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The Dreaming, also called dream-time, or world dawn Australian Aboriginal languages altjira, altjiranga, alcheringa, wongar, or djugurba, mythological period of time that had a beginning but no foreseeable end, during which the natural environment was shaped and humanized by the actions of mythic beings. Many of these beings took the form of human beings or of animals ("totemic"); some changed their forms. They were credited with having established the local social order and its "laws." Some, especially the great fertility mothers, but also male genitors, were responsible for creating human life- i.e., the first people.

Mythic beings of the Dreaming are eternal. Though in the myths some were killed or disappeared beyond the boundaries of the people who sang about them, and others were metamorphosed as physiographic features (for example, a rocky outcrop or a waterhole) or manifested as or through ritual objects ( see tjurunga), their essential quality remained undiminished. In Aboriginal belief, they are spiritually as much alive today as they ever were. The places where the mythic beings performed some action or were "turned into" something else became sacred, and it was around these that ritual was focussed.

The Dreaming, as a coordinated system of belief and action, includes totemism. Together, they express a close relationship: man is regarded as part of nature, not fundamentally dissimilar to the mythic beings or to the animal species, all of which share a common life force. The totem serves as an agent, placing man within the Dreaming and providing him with an indestructible identity that continues uninterruptedly from the beginning of time to the present and into the future.

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The Dreaming | Australian Aboriginal mythology

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The Dreaming: The Dreaming, mythological period of time that had a beginning but no foreseeable end, during which the natural environment was shaped and humanized by the actions of mythic beings.