MAINTAINING THE HERITAGE OF OUR ANCESTORS
Desperate attempt to maintain traditional knowledge and practices.
Aaron Davey worked with the
Cultural Centre to select core activities like spear making in which over a period of time the traditional materials were collected for students to have their own fishing spear by end of term. Another teacher Nate Brown successfully worked with students in the gathering of resources to build a traditional bough shed in the school grounds. The project involved both male and female students
Boys in the Cultural Class led by Aaron Davey and Elders were the first students to follow a culture class over a full two-year period in Kowanyama. Aaron Davey the student’s teacher is now a teacher in Agricultural Sciences at Clermont a Central Western Queensland town. He loves the bush and was able to work closely with a small group of men to run classes with the boys almost every week. Photographs were taken and published in available local news magazines and featured in Aaron’s final year at the student graduation ceremony. An exhibition of cultural objects was organized for the event to acknowledge student achievement. The reality for classes like this depends entirely upon the school’s capacity to deliver cultural studies appropriately. In a few short years since these courses key Elders involved have either passed or are in nursing care. Some families maintain traditional practices not depending on the school to teach their children their culture. Others need to follow their lead knowing that a rich culture is more than spears and dilly bags and a museum full of artefacts.
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