Achievement

• It is rare to hear from Indigenous students and young people directly in research and reports.
• Indigenous students, their parents and their teachers shared their experiences as part of the federal government’s ongoing “Footprints in Time” study.
• Our findings show young Indigenous school students are engaged in their school lives.

Our research

• Since 2008, it has followed the development of Indigenous children to understand what they need to grow up strong.
• It involves annual waves of data collection and follows about 1,700 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children living in urban, regional and remote locations.
• Our new primary school report has been produced as the majority of children in the study have now completed primary school.

Students are engaged

• There is a prevailing assumption in education debates that school engagement is a struggle for Indigenous students and their families.
• Yet more than half of the children in this data set were very highly and consistently engaged with school right across the primary years.

Racism is a problem (despite what some teachers think)

• Our report found a disconnect between teachers’ approaches to cultural identity, the training they have received and racism experienced by parents and students.
• Many teachers spoke of taking a “colourblind” approach, with teachers having the general sense racism is not an issue in their classrooms.
• As one teacher noted:
  I aim to treat each child the same as any other in terms of race.
• I also aim to teach this to my students.

Time to change homework approaches?

• This included weekly homework to revise what is taught in class, as well as readers and flash cards.
• When asked what they would like to change about school, children reported reduced homework.

Opportunities to learn Indigenous languages

• While learning to read and write in Standard Australian English is important, so too are Indigenous literacies and languages.
• Almost 90% of parents surveyed said they wanted their child to learn an Indigenous language at school, but only 21% of children had this opportunity.
• Primary school teachers most frequently reported they would benefit from learning to teach Indigenous children successfully (61%), followed by learning about Indigenous culture in the local area (59%), and then learning to teach Indigenous knowledge appropriately (58%).

What next?

Our report highlights several areas where we can make positive – and necessary – changes. These include:

The National School Reform Agreement

• These priorities should be addressed in the next National School Reform Agreement.
• The agreement is a joint agreement between the Commonwealth, states and territories, designed to lift student outcomes in Australian schools.
• Kate E. Williams has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council, National Health and Medical Research Council, and Queensland Department of Education.
• She is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Early Childhood & Inclusive Education at the Queensland University of Technology.

• Yumba-Meta is a community-controlled organisation that has delivered comprehensive support programs for 50 years to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
• Medium to long-term housing options include community home ownership, seniors’ housing, and transitional housing to facilitate employment, education or to break the cycle of addiction.

What we did

• We interviewed Yumba-Meta staff and used yarning and photoyarning with Yumba-Meta residents and Elders to hear about the history and evolution of Yumba-Meta.
• Photographs are used as both prompts and a way for participants to share their thoughts and ideas.
• This includes homes under the employment and education program, supported accommodation, women’s shelters and diversionary places.

Safe at home

• Our research found a sense of pride is instilled when families and individuals have a home – somewhere grandchildren can visit, a place where young people can learn from Elders, and a safe place to go.
• We found health improves over time with safe and affordable housing, especially for older generations who have struggled in the past with housing issues such as chronic overcrowding, and racism that prevents Indigenous people renting and purchasing homes in Townsville.
• Young people saw that having their own bed and homes with less people allowed better sleep and space for learning and study.

Before and after

• Descriptions of life living rough with little ability to eat healthy food were juxtaposed with their new life in a stable home: having food in the fridge and cupboard, and making good personal choices.
• These yarns showed the impact organisations like Yumba-Meta can have, by providing supports on multiple fronts while people heal and make positive changes in their lives.

What ‘home’ means

• These things might be taken for granted in other communities, but previously for Yumba-Meta residents, this stability was often out of reach.
• Jessa Rogers is a First Nations Senior Research Fellow in the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology (QUT).
• Vicki Saunders is a Gunggari woman and Senior Research Fellow in the Jawun Research Centre at Central Queensland University (CQU).

• Triangle of Sadness follows the familiar plot of a castaway story.
• The castaway story has helped promulgate a view about human nature as eternal and unchanging.
• However, the castaway story reflects on the relationship between individuals and society.
• Triangle of Sadness and other modern castaway stories, reach back to one of the first English-language novels, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719).
• More than a survival tale of a man shipwrecked on a desert island, Robinson Crusoe is also a fascinating moral fable of individualism.

Work and enslavement

• Robinson remains true to this spirit once he is shipwrecked, claiming the island to have “no society” and declaring the land as his personal kingdom.
• Robinson becomes a farmer (using seeds from the shipwreck), raises cattle in accordance with European agriculture, hunts with muskets and hoards gold.
• In one of the most shocking parts of the novel, he captures and enslaves a man, who he calls “Friday”, converting him to Christianity.
• Much of the novel is about work.
• Defoe was highly influenced by Hobbes and Locke, who provide the model individual for Robinson’s colonial adventure story.

Beyond individualism

• Rousseau envisaged a kind of democracy which allows for individuals to be free in their collective decision-making.
• In Rousseau’s educational treatise, Émile (1762), initially Robinson Crusoe is the only book the young boy is allowed to read.
• Hierarchies of birth and privilege were overthrown and liberty was proclaimed for all based on the equality of human beings.
• (Although as many critics, including Mary Wollstonecraft, pointed out this idea of equality was limited, and excluded women.)
• The depiction of slavery in Robinson Crusoe and the politics of individualism were called into question by G.W.F.
• In Hegel’s philosophy, individuals were always part of social relationships and needed to be thought of in relation to communities.

• Farmers decide what technologies to use to extract water, be it manual lifting or solar water pumps.
• Farmers purchase, run and maintain the operation themselves on their own farms or as part of small groups of farmers.
• Small-scale irrigation can help smallholder farmers to increase agricultural productivity and incomes.
• For these reasons, it can contribute more rapidly to the achievement of national agricultural and development goals, compared to large irrigation schemes.
• Small-scale irrigation contributes to the resilience of smallholder producers by preserving their food security and nutrition during times of drought.

What we found

• Women’s dietary diversity is a measure of quality of food access, defined as the consumption of different food groups over the previous 24 hours.
• We found that women’s diets in that region were generally poor and identified high seasonal fluctuations in diet quality.
• We used standard measures like weight-for-height deviations, also known as wasting, which is a measure of acute malnutrition.
• It is challenging to address through a single intervention such as irrigation.

Boosting the impact

• Irrigation should, therefore, be promoted as a nutrition intervention, in addition to its potential for higher yields, incomes and employment.
• They should have greater input into decisions about technology and crop choice, and control over irrigated output.
• Addressing nutritional deficiencies: Policy makers should promote irrigated foods that not only generate income but also address local nutrient deficiencies.
• The International Food Policy Research Institute, where Elizabeth Bryan works, receives funding from a large number of donors.