Three Aboriginal female authors taking part in the Adelaide Writers Week, Dylan Coleman, Ali Cobby Eckermann and Jeanine Leane, see their role as explaining Aboriginal culture to non-Aborigines.
They were asked for community radio how to remedy Indigenous Australians’ literacy levels being much poorer than those of non-Indigenous Australians.
They answered that one reason is urban Aborigines not finding themselves reflected in school curriculums; literacy is much more than learning English; and the written word is one-dimensional, whereas Indigenous art is a much broader and deeper form of literacy.
The three women were talking to Daniel Fitzgerald for “The Wire”, a programme offered to 270 community radio stations five days a week.
Hear the report at http://www.thewire.org.au/storyDetail.aspx?ID=10108.
Comments
Few understand Nature and our place in it like Aborigines do
There have been very few individuals in the whole of Western civilisation who have an equal understanding to Aborigines of the natural world and humanity's place within it - Einstein & Shakespeare being two prime examples.
I've written quite extensively on this subject, eg:
The phenomena of Aboriginal holistic knowledge (‘pattern thinking’* as Mowaljarlai put it, where every thought is cross referenced in a nanosecond in the 3D mind grid of a corpus of cultural knowledge, over 80,000 years in the building) was expressed by Albert Einstein, when he stated: “The Scientist’s religious feelings take the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, in comparison with it, the highest intelligence of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.” i.e. the traditional Aboriginal mind, having an acute, highly-detailed and intimate understanding of Nature's laws and the knowledge of how to maintain ecosystems in harmony, is a much closer reflection of this 'higher intelligence' than any other people on Earth.
...and Shakespeare's quote: "And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything" reflects this universal truth, that Nature speaks directly to us - if we only listened to Her.
Oodjeroo told us that we only had to LISTEN to the old-growth trees, the "old men of the forest" to learn all we need to know about our environment - they are the channels of Earth's consciousness, hence Aborigines call them "Knowledge Trees" - I know this for a fact, as I've lived beside one for nearly 20 years and have learnt so much ...
I very much look forward to listening to this broadcast.