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Context
The Ganai Project is based around the Woolum Bellum KODE school,
in the Latrobe Valley district of Victoria.
More
about Woolum Bellum…
At
one time, the Latrobe Valley had high rates of employment
because of the power industry but today unemployment rates
are among the highest in the country. For the Indigenous community,
unemployment is a long term issue and youth unemployment is
a particular problem. The majority of parents of students
at Woolum Bellum are unemployed.
Many of the Koorie families have been in the area for many
years, after being resettled from a number of missions, such
as that at Lake Tyers.
Ganai is a traditional Koorie language of the area. Woolum
Bellum's school charter priorities were developed in consultation
with the Koorie community and include Culture, Communication
and Information Technology. All of these are involved in the
Ganai Project, which received IESIP SRP funds to develop a
CD ROM teaching resource for Ganai language.
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Beginnings
Doris
Paton was the manager of the Ganai Project and is now Program
Coordinator of the Koorie Unit at the Central Gippsland Institute
of TAFE. Lynne Dent was the first Ganai LOTE teacher at Woolum
Bellum and is now Koorie Education Field Officer, assisting
other schools to introduce Ganai language into the curriculum.
Doris
and Lynne talk about the origins of the Ganai Project:
Doris: When the school started in 1995 there was an
opportunity for the community to put the local language into
the school. They thought it was appropriate for the kids in
the area to learn their own language but at that time there
were no materials. Absolutely no resources, no materials.
Lynne was the only person in our community who had language
experience so she was asked to teach the language at school
and she went out and asked Elders if it was okay for her to
do that, and they said yes. There was an Elders reference
group and it was really their vision for the language to be
revived in the community.
Lynne: Because I taught Bandjalang for all of
those years I could have easily done that, but I thought it
would be really good to actually have our kids learn their
own language. The idea was that it would work in with the
school to build self esteem and I felt it was more important
to have something that was their own.
There was absolutely nothing that I could go and draw on,
like work books or resources or anything. I taught preps to
year 10 and initially it was all in one day, so it was quite
hard. But then I settled into it and I started to think of
things to do that made the language alive so that the kids
were using it every day. Some people believed that it was
better to teach language to adults, and adults would pass
it on to their kids, but I saw it coming from the other end,
that if we taught the kids, they would be happy to use it
and not scared about it. So they would go home and greet their
parents in language and that would start the parents remembering
stories. And it did actually happen like that, so it was really
good. Kids would come back with little stories, saying mum
remembered this and dad remembered that, and it started snowballing.
And then we had a vision to target cultural workers and introduce
language to them. They had a lot to do with tourists as well
and we thought it would be good for them to at least greet
people in Ganai and talk about specific sites using those
language names.
Doris: In the community at the time we didn't have
many people who knew a lot of language. Elders used words
when they spoke to each other and in our family both my parents
speak some of the language and that was quite common.
Lynne: But later we found out that there were more
Elders who knew language. They would come up to us and say
'I actually still speak language'. We had thought this, but
it took a while for it to happen. And they were able to help
and the first thing we did was to make some audio tapes.
Lynne has compiled a set of notes about teaching Indigenous
languages in settings where the language is having to be reclaimed.
Read
Lynne's notes… |
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Nambur
Ganai: The CD ROM
The CD ROM is introduced by an animated bataluk (goanna)
Doris:
And then the IESIP SRP came along and we were able to develop
the CD ROM. It was a huge opportunity but it took a while
for the multi media people to grasp what we wanted.
Lynne: We didn't want a lot of text. I said we don't
actually teach like that. If we were going to teach something,
we'd go to the site and we'd talk about things there. We'd
touch things and make it real and that's how we wanted the
CD, with a lot of visual and oral stuff. All of the ideas
and the games that we play in class are on the CD, so it's
reinforcing what we do in class all the time.
Doris: When a student works on the CD they're 'going
to the sea' or 'going to the bush'. And there's information
and cultural stuff as well. The language program is cultural
language. It's about cultural knowledge. The whole basis of
it is the Bataluk Trail, which is a significant cultural trail
in the area.
Lynne: We see the CD as a stage of the language development
of the community. It can be used in schools where the language
has already been established and in kindergarten as well.
We now have language workers in pre-schools and they will
be trained in using the CD. Because it's oral and visual,
it can work at many levels.
Doris: And now we're developing a whole kit to go with
the CD. Our Elders reference group are thrilled with it because
they see it as a way of keeping the language alive in the
community and not just for now but for future generations.
But the CD is only the next stage of the whole community program.
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The
benefits for students
Karen Cain is principal of Woolum Bellum. She had previously
been principal of a district high school in Tasmania but is
also trained in Special Education and has worked in settings
from Kindergarten to Year 10.
Karen Cain
Karen
discusses the benefits of having Ganai language in the curriculum:
 We
have an Indigenous teacher of LOTE and she's using the CD
ROM with every class. We know from experience that Indigenous
students can really connect with information technology as
a means of learning because it's very visual, it's controllable,
it's non-invasive and it's flexible. But the CD ROM is literacy
based. It's about reading. It's about following instructions.
It's about listening. It's about children being able to record
their responses. And it's quite an interactive program. With
Ganai language, they see that we're valuing it because it's
just a normal part of our school program. Children and community
are starting to see that this is real schooling, and I think
that's important too. It's building children's confidence
in using language, both Standard Australian English and Ganai.
So it's making the connection between the two languages and
again that tells kids that both languages are valued. 
More
about using information technology…
Lynne
and Doris talk more about the importance of Ganai language:
Lynne: Some of it's about pride and self esteem. Kids
need their own identity and language is part of it.
Sometimes you can see real change, how proud they are, how
confident they are. We have a big awards day every year where
we invite principals from other schools and parents and the
whole community. There was a Year 10 boy at the back of the
room and he took the hand of a non-Aboriginal man, just saying
wunman njinde [hello]. The man was just looking at
him, like 'what's going on?' And I turned and looked at him
and he had this big smile on his face as he ushered the man
to his seat. Pride and confidence.
Or at the Federation dance, the kids were really proud of
getting up on the stage and doing a dance, interpreting a
dreaming story. Whereas before they weren't confident about
doing that and they were too shy or too shamed. We had one
girl who talked the whole of the story, in language.
Doris: Because of the history of the families of the
area, being moved off the missions and being dislocated from
culture and knowledge, the kids have found through the school
and through the language program a way of reconnecting. The
language has been an important part of that. Then they go
out and learn about things in their country, and they're really
quite proud of the fact that they do have language and that
they can use it and they do know a bit about their country.
I think that's really important for their own personal self
esteem and identity.
I guess we realise that the kids can't and won't live the
way we used to live. We're just so far removed from it now.
We're urban people, but that connection to land and to identify
and to culture… it really, really means a lot. For our survival
even. We have a lot of things happening in the community that
aren't very good, but that connection will give kid a lot
of benefits as they get older. |
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