A stellar community crowdfunding campaign led by Wes Hindmarch and Gai Halcrow, with donations from many residents – ranging from $20 to $1500 and bringing in $3600 on its launch day – brought the seven-week cultural education program to KVPS students. Starting in May, our KVPS students have been lucky enough to experience the program, developed for them with Gadhungal Marring in consultation with Relieving Principal Jen Arnott.
From talking to other parents, and from witnessing my own child’s delight in the learning, the benefits are clear: the students are experiencing a new, deeper relationship not only to Dharawal culture but also to this Country where they live and play. Several parents have talked about the way their children are using Dharawal language words to greet wildlife and have taught their parents nouns and greetings, as well as dances. There is an excitement, and a retention of information, that some parents have found different to their child’s usual response to school. And the Dharawal version of ‘Heads, shoulders, knees, and toes’ has been popular with the younger students.
Led by Nalani Timbery, with a guest appearance from Aaron Taylor for some yidaki (didgeridoo), the sessions are arranged by theme. Beginning with a smoking ceremony, the syllabus moves into creation stories and language learning, traditional dance, music and song, bush foods, and finishes in ochre-making and painting as part of a completion ritual.
For several children at KVPS who’ve been lucky enough to attend recent First Nations cultural activities such as Bulla Midhong at Paringa, or corroboree at Winderong, or to take part in Drew Longbottom’s bush knowledge workshops at Wildwood, this term has been an opportunity to extend and explore the knowledge more deeply, with some beginning to make their own associative connections and ask interesting questions of the leaders. (Since we’re currently reading The Word Spy at home, I’ve also been fielding questions about why different languages have different words for things, and where words come from in the very beginning.) This permeation of the ‘Gadhungal Marring day’ learning into contexts beyond the specific content shows how important it is for children to experience deep cultural learning outside of their own. If we learn about one society and one cultural context we learn the information; if we learn from several languages and cultures we learn something also about the system of a language and the system of a society.
For the First Nations students at KVPS, it’s a huge win for mental health and development: we know now that children learn and feel better when they feel a sense of belonging and community.
This is the impetus for the Gudjaga-laali Junior Rangers program too, as well as offering pathways to young people who may make good Indigenous Rangers for National Parks in the future. Funded by the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA), the Junior Ranger activities can include school-based activities as well as excursions. The Gadhungal Marring model focuses on out-of-classroom learning, partly because the children they’re working with rarely get an opportunity to get out into nature or away from contained environments.
Here in the Valley, Gadhungal Marring works with Year 6 students from Shoalhaven schools, with Winderong serving dual purpose to teach cultural and bush knowledge in the bush, and to teach food-growing and regenerative farming principles, using the permaculture gardens and farm.
“What we’re finding is that the kids love hands-on things that they haven’t experienced yet,” Education Officer Aaron Taylor says. “There’s often a little bit of hesitancy at first […] A lot of the kids are growing up in the suburbs of Nowra. You know, a lot of fast food, not a whole lot of backyard veggie patches and chook barns and that sort of thing. Social media’s a big thing, and Netflix […] so something like Winderong where you milk a cow by hand and go and dig a carrot out of the garden is completely foreign to them. So it might be a bit difficult at first but the rewards that come after, the way that they engage and get to explore their curiosity, that’s so rewarding [for them].”
The morning I arrive at Winderong, that’s exactly what the group has been doing. I meet them in the BBQ area finishing morning tea after a morning session at the milking shed. It’s a group of all girls this time, from both schools, although last term it was mixed. The program is offered to all First Nations Year 6 students at the school, but signing up is voluntary. Though they all know each other is Indigenous, the students may not have mixed much with each other at school, so there are some getting to know each other and forming new bonds with each other, and with the other school too, when the two groups come together for an end-of program camp and a graduation ceremony.
Often these are young people with other pressures in their lives that make school attendance hard, so Aaron picks them up from home in the Gadhungal Marring bus and drops them back in the afternoon. It’s only the second run of the program, which started last term, but it does seem that the promise of the Gudjaga-laali day encourages attendance on other days, too.
When I ask Project Coordinator Shakeela Williams about whether the program is producing any budding rangers, or looks like it will, she tells me about a boy they had last term who was so engaged that he sought extra knowledge and handmade his mother a coolamon for Mother’s Day. This is something Taylor has mentioned on the phone, too, and I sense in them both what seems a joy and excitement at the way he’s grown with the knowledge.
As Williams and I stand chatting near the corroboree ground the girls weed the circle, quieter now than the exuberance of the hilly walk to get here – another new experience for them. JJ tells me it’s easy to forget not everyone is used to the things they do all the time at Winderong: going barefoot, walking a lot, getting your feet wet, having sore muscles; as the team of co-facilitators learn from the participants, they make adjustments.
One of the girls now complains of boredom. Williams easily validates her experience, suggests trying another patch of ground for a while. I imagine she must’ve been equally unflappable in her previous work in Sydney’s corporate banking sector. The whole team here is bringing a high-quality experience to these young people, from Williams’ astute and unobtrusive project management, to Taylor with his many years of bush regeneration background, to Jacob Morris bringing his knowledge of the language and linguistics, and supported by Winderong’s ranger, Deb, herself with 25 years’ experience with native plants, and JJ, who holds space in the group so beautifully, reflecting the girls’ interest and supporting their curiosity. The weeding is about care and respect for this site of cultural importance. There is a calm energy in this place, and a kind of strength that one feels coming up from the earth, as though we are supported, or held.
Jacob has told the group it is a special place, and gently but firmly laid down the rules: “No swearing. No spitting. No disrespect. Be the best that you can be, and that you are. If you make a hole [as you’re weeding] fill it back up.” The girls are invited to notice the place, to connect with it as they work. They’re invited to come back and dance here too, at the next corroboree, as some of the last Gudhaga-laali group did.
When it begins to rain, the group heads back to the BBQ area for lunch made from the harvest they’ve gathered this morning – many trying things such as pineapple sage and exotic lettuce for the first time. It is then Jade, a Winderong worker, tells me they can butter their sandwiches with butter they made themselves from the morning milking.
I would like to thank Keisha, Avalon, Sofia, Layla, Rylea, Taniesha and Mia for sharing their Gudjaga-laali space with me. It’s not easy to have someone gawping at your activities and taking notes, especially as an adolescent.
