Past student’s arts and cultural activities

Mural by Art Teacher Rachel Morgan with students 2008

Past Student Culture and Arts Activities.

Maintaining traditional knowledge, language and practice is a primary responsibility of families and community but the School’s curriculum should reflect Aboriginal Community needs and a dutyto includecultural studies. Community members and RAATSIC recently developed appropriate materials for teachers, and there is talk again of the inclusion of language classes.Covid 19 has clearly impacted the school this year but there is an urgency to the issue of cultural studies that has been subject to longer term challenges.

In the past cultural activities at the school have been heavily dependent upon teachers with both the interest and capacity to organise and implement class activities either in class or in the bush.

Experience has shown that often for some reason Art Teachers often seem to manage classes with community members and Elders quite well. They have left legacies which were often permanent in the form of installations or teaching resources. Examples being a P CAP funded illustrated bush foods book by Alison Kindt, the rainbow and flying fox mural under the school by Rachel Morgan and students and The Late Marie Edmiston’s basket classes. All were labours of love with student and community participation. In the early eighties Kowanyama School Principal, Ray Armit assisted in the development a Board registered subject for Higher School students called The River. One of the key objectives of the course was the ongoing accumulation of teaching materials in recorded interviews, art works and cultural information for future classes. The course continued with the interest of both Principal and Allison Kindt. Upon transfer of Ray and the departure of Allison cultural studies ceased. The course experienced difficulties with liability issues relating to bush classes and the perceived dangers of student’s use of spears, lighting fires, ground ovens etc. In the following years boxes of Allison Kindt’s valuable class materials were rescued from a trip to the dump by a concerned teacher and lodged with the Land Office. A teacher from the early seventies, Neville Simpson, remarked recently that under Principal Ian Bonney the school had successfully included cultural studies as a matter of course. Neville was the author of a series of excellent large format posters on the seasonal use of traditional resources. Community members and the Kowanyama Land and Natural Resources Management Office collaborated in production of the Savannah Poster. A digital version of the poster is now available from Kowanyama Archive for copying for future teaching purposes at Kowanyama. Two indigenous school staff spent countless hours sourcing, sorting and logging a special Kowanyama section in the library. This no longer exists as a discrete collection. In 2017 a significant collection of stories illustrated by the author, The Late Grace Dick (past Teacher’s Aide), was salvaged from the dump. It was copied and Grace got a copy before she passed, commenting that she had not seen a copy for more than fifteen years. Positive recent efforts by teachers, Nate Brown and Aaron Davey show it can be done. Their efforts have been described in a number of issues of Kowanyama News. Achieving literacy and numeracy objectives shouldn’t be a barrier to creative development of culturally appropriate curriculum, rather than just a series of “interesting activities” to occupy student time.

A challenge facing the school is continuity of staff and the capacity of (2014-15) the community to give sustained direction on curriculum structure that reflects Kowanyama’s cultural and social needs and survives the numerous future school staff changes. There are exciting future opportunities for future creative teaching for both the school and community.

This article is written in good faith. It is hoped it can help in planning a way forward. This is not a personal attack on teaching staff and honours the good work of past and current Kowanyama State School staff. Editor’s note