Flying into 2018
Keep an eye out for some more exciting projects to finish off the year for Black Cockatoo, but first, check out the Taribelang Aboriginal corporation and what they have achieved.
Whilst 2017 has been somewhat quiet for Black Cockatoo, please note that 2016 and most of 2017 was spent working on projects for the Department of Education and Training. During this time, our team progressed a lot of work with many Aboriginal communities from South East Queensland and Wide Bay. Of particular note was the work we did with developing relationships and understanding of the Australian Curriculum with our Indigenous communities. Often I would hear community say,” The curriculum doesn’t represent and share our stories” and from Educators in schools, I would hear, “I don’t know where to start, who should I contact, what stories should we embed?”
With this knowledge, we developed a process similar to that of ‘speed dating’.
By inviting both the Indigenous community and Educators in schools to our events we started to identify opportunities within the curriculum that would support the local story. Firstly, we poured through each Learning Area and Year level in the Australian Curriculum to identify opportunities that were obvious and not so obvious to embed knowledge within. For us it was all about Acknowledging Country and ensuring that the local voices were being heard.
The ‘speed dating’ sessions also embraced the opportunity for our Indigenous community to be guided by school educators around the opportunities they saw for better alignment for the various workshops, talks, walks on country and activities that our Indigenous community were offering.
As a result of this day, the local Taribelang community and Elders of the Bundaberg region (QLD) have gone on to develop tours on country, taking educators to 4 culturally significant sites in and around Bundaberg. Their tours are ensuring that the local story is being embedded within the curriculum as Uncle Willie Broome gives permission to those on board to now embed within the curriculum.
Its outcomes like this that makes my heart sing!!
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