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In my early years of highschool we did a visual arts unit where we looked at Aboriginal art styles and then had to re-create it through a series of dot paintings. While this is a good activity, it merely scrapes surface level and is overly generalized. In future practice I would be more specific in helping educate my students on the different type of styles dependent on certain groups with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. For example I may look to do an activity which compares different styles from the Koori nation (NSW) and Noongar nation (Western Australia).

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in primary school we weren’t ever explained the importance of the acknowledgment of country, and i remember a lot of my classmates having it memorised word for word as it was repeated every week in assemblies. there is so much to teach about the acknowledgment matters, and how it connects to country but also how it can be made personal to every student

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Listening and hearing from Elders from the land on which the school is built upon

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Teachers should go into detail of the significance and importance of the games and not teach it as something that just needs to be done or completed off the curriculum. They should spend lessons acknowledging the land they’re playing on and talk about ways that the sport reflects the beauty of the culture.

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Biology - one dot point on Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander people and culture

This is only one example of such but in many areas it is lacking - it feels as though the creation of a syllabus only includes Indigenous culture because it has to

In changing that, it would be better to acknowledge more content as natively Australian or being used in a specific way for Aboriginal people

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Designing and throwing a boomerang. Teachers encouraged it by saying “who can throw the furthest”. Without actually explaining the importance of boomerangs, why they are used. Maybe connecting with an Elder and having a proper cultural lesson on it.

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In kindy We dot painted boomerangs and had a sheet of different aboriginal symbols and what they meant and it made me think they didn’t have real language and it was very simplistic

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in high school, we mostly focused on the negatives e.g how Aboriginal people had higher crime rates, more health issues, addicted to drugs etc. Also looked at the 1965 Freedom Ride which challenged racial discrimination against Aboriginal people.

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In junior school, we would make damper or bush tucker every camp, as a way of ‘connecting with the land’ however there was limited acknowledgement of the origins of this practice

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We did dot painting- and boomerang decorating. I think that this is such a normalised thing (dot painting) I think if it is going to be done there should be a lesson behind the cultural significance and how it is a way for indigenous peoples to share their stories and history.

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I’d say definitely the acknowledgment of country as in primary school whenever we did presentations it was a requirement to have this but it was more of a tokenisation gesture than anything else as I wasn’t really taught the meaning and history behind why we had to have it and why it was so important. Also we only ever really acknowledged the injustices within that acknowledgement to country and during naidoc week

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my schools library was named after the first aboriginal judge in australia. his grandson went to my school and was in my head and at every single assembly or event through thigh school he gave the acknowledgment of country. you could tell he also thought the practice was tokenistic and it separated him from his peers at these events when he would have to go and sit somewhere else during assembly’s and was ultimately and unfair responsibility to place on a teenager.