Australian Women's Book Review: Online

Hecate's
Australian Women's Book Review

ISSN 1033-9434
Editor:  Barbara Brook
Contributing Assistant Editor:  Katie Hughes
Photomontage:  Set in Stone, Adele Flood

Volume 12, 2000

Leaving Traces of the Journey

Aboriginal Women by Degrees: Their Stories of the Journey Towards Academic Achievement edited by Mary Ann Bin-Salik, University of Queensland Press, 2000. Paperback

Reviewed by Terry Whitebeach

“The stories in this book tell of strength of character, glowing pride in being Aboriginal, and determination to enhance the situation of Aboriginal Australians”. Thus begins Mary Ann Bin-Salik's epilogue to Aboriginal Women by Degrees, an account by thirteen Indigenous Australian women of their arduous journeys to achieve academic qualifications in Australian and overseas universities.

These are the narratives of very strong women, all but two of whom were the first in their families to go to university.

What initially strikes the reader about these women's achievements is that there were few role models and no culture of university education within their families or communities that automatically would provide informed support and direction during the years of university study. For each of these women, the journey through formal education was a ground-breaking discovery, fraught with difficulty and, in some cases, with disappointment and temporary disillusionment.

Nevertheless, they persevered. Why? They speak for themselves:

We needed role models for our children: Lyn Devow

I could see the vital need for our people to have their own qualified teachers. I could see the need for us to manage our own schools: Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann.

Ignorance has caused so much of the world's woes. Education is the only combatant for ignorance: Davina Woods.

That the basis of Indigenous people's exclusion from formal education is rooted in the racist history and perceptions of mainstream Australia that are still too deeply entrenched at the end of the twentieth century, is almost a given:

It has taken Aboriginal people so long to get into certain places not because they didn't have the ability, but because there were powerful people who didn't want us there or thought we shouldn't be there: Larissa Behrendt.

Jackie Huggins' experience is reflected time and again by Indigenous people:

I convinced myself I could achieve academically, after receiving only low expectations all my life from teachers in the system.

In my own teaching at Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education and the Institute for Aboriginal Development in Alice Springs, I hear that story so many times. Most of the mature-age Central Australian students undertaking degree and diploma courses were once, to quote my friend and student Arrente elder Pat Dodds, in “the special class for dumb Aboriginal kids”. Pat tells stories of secondary school students in Alice Springs denied access to Maths and Physics classes, sent to clean up playground rubbish, or clean and cook, during these classes, because Aboriginal students were “too stupid to study science”. Quite a lot of her drive to succeed academically is fuelled by the desire to prove those schoolteachers wrong.

Davina Woods, who holds a Bachelor of Education, and a Diploma of Teaching, and is enrolled in a Master of Arts at the University of South Australia, was told by the school guidance officer, when she consulted him in year 8 about undertaking an academic course, that she was wasting the government's money because “Your people never finish school anyway. Your lot never finish anything they start”.

Lilian Holt, BA, MA, first Murri to be employed by the ABC, now Director of the Centre for Indigenous Education, University of Melbourne, had her sights set on becoming a lawyer or anthropologist. But, despite her 72% scholarship pass, her school principal persuaded her otherwise:

End of story. Into the commercial class I went.

So, it was in the face of entrenched racism and sexism, as well as carrying strong family, community and financial responsibilities that most of women in Aboriginal Women by Degrees took up a period of extended academic study. But, bearing in mind what they didn't have, often - a traditional western educational background, money and influence, and acknowledging that these thirteen women are remarkable individuals by anyone's standards - the women attribute the strength and determination that enabled them to persevere and succeed academically largely to family, community and culture:

We were rich, culturally and socially: Isabelle Adams.

Thanks to my grandmother and her stories I was very proud and strong about my Aboriginality…we had a strong sense of security and family: Eleanor Bourke

The common bond of family and belonging survives. This 'kinship of history' extends through to our grandchildren: Mirrakopal.

Like many Indigenous people, Mirrakopal's experience of family was disrupted by institutionalisation, but she had the experience of family from aunts and cousins, who “drew [her] back into the family over the years” and through a modified classificatory kinship system of:

those of us who shared our lives on the same mission community … once identified, the wider Aboriginal institutionalised community embraces you as kin; a member of their extended family.

Nerida White remembers a childhood rich in story-telling, family sing-songs and food-gathering expeditions:

They were skills that fed us and kept us together as a family, but sadly they were not acknowledged in school as legitimate learning experiences.

Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann's early education was steeped in the oral tradition of a “people of deep feeling”:

From my parents and my people I learned our culture which is the very essence of our being … Every day I learned through indigenous pedagogy. I learned from listening, from watching silently as nature unfolded around me; and from imitating the quiet reflections of my parents and elders. I waited as the bush enveloped me with its cloak of silence and quiet peace.

In this more traditional setting, and in ancient Australia, as Mary Ann Bin-Salik points out in her introduction:

The intellectual achievements of Australian women were a given. We had our own intellectual life grounded in spiritual, intellectual and philosophical reasoning which was passed down through the ages by an oral tradition to each generation of women.

A far cry from the “alien environment, with little or no encouragement for cultural diversity or inclusiveness” that Nerida White and other Indigenous students have found in universities.

“Culturally, life was very different what we had known”, Veronica Arbon remarks, in an understated way; she persisted, however, “because education became the solution, a way out of welfare dependency and poverty”.

Without exception, the women pay tribute to the support of family, spouses, community, other students and, where they existed, Aboriginal support units within institutions. In what Isabelle Adams calls the “austere environment and aloof nature of the academic world”, this support often was/is the crucial factor in making it possible for the women to complete their desired courses of study.

There were immense sacrifices made by the students and their families, many losses sustained, in quality of life, leisure time, closeness of family and personal relationships. The women are frank about the burdens heaped upon them by dint of their success: within the white world they are expected to be experts on every issue that affects Aboriginal people whilst often suffering temporary or even permanent estrangement and/or censure from their own communities for being too flash. But to a woman, these losses, though counted, are not begrudged; the impression we gain from the various accounts is of immense courage, humour, determination, and “stickability”, as well as a strong sense of responsibility to give back to their own communities, and to the wider Indigenous community, the fruits of their labour:

What you should never forget is who put you there in the first place and I believe it is your responsibility to return that favour back to your people: Jackie Huggins.

Equally, as the women pay tribute to where they have come from, they generously and good-humouredly offer encouragement and advice to their younger sisters. They understand and accept the responsibility of being role models. They have all taken time out of packed lives to reflect on their journeys and to smooth the paths for those following. In some cases they have helped set up the support units and networks they themselves lacked and would have appreciated so greatly. Larissa Behrendt pays tribute to these pioneers:

Young Aboriginal people are able to go through the doors of university so easily only because others have bruised their hands banging those doors open.

Aboriginal Women by Degrees needs little critical deconstruction, in my view: it is one of those books that are both needed and valued as a handbook and guide for Indigenous women taking an academic path, and is valuable for its documentation of the struggles against racism and sexism. It is a heartening testament to the daily, yearly, encroachment on those twin evils that still beset society. It is cause for rejoicing that Mary Ann Bin-Salik, Lilian Holt, Veronica Arbon, Isabelle Adams, Miriam Stead Raymond, Larissa Behrendt, Davina Woods, Nerida White, Lyn Devow, Jackie Huggins, Veronica McClintic, Eleanor Bourke and Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann have not only walked their paths to academic success but have also left clear traces for those who follow.

Terry Whitebeach is a Tasmanian writer who lives in Alice Springs and teaches at two Indigenous tertiary institutions

Hecate's Australian Women's Book Review

ISSN 1033-9434		Editor: Barbara Brook Contributing Assistant Editor: Katie Hughes *Photomontage: Set in Stone, Adele Flood*
Volume 12, 2000

Leaving Traces of the Journey Aboriginal Women by Degrees: Their Stories of the Journey Towards Academic Achievement edited by Mary Ann Bin-Salik, University of Queensland Press, 2000. Paperback Reviewed by Terry Whitebeach “The stories in this book tell of strength of character, glowing pride in being Aboriginal, and determination to enhance the situation of Aboriginal Australians”. Thus begins Mary Ann Bin-Salik's epilogue to Aboriginal Women by Degrees, an account by thirteen Indigenous Australian women of their arduous journeys to achieve academic qualifications in Australian and overseas universities. These are the narratives of very strong women, all but two of whom were the first in their families to go to university. What initially strikes the reader about these women's achievements is that there were few role models and no culture of university education within their families or communities that automatically would provide informed support and direction during the years of university study. For each of these women, the journey through formal education was a ground-breaking discovery, fraught with difficulty and, in some cases, with disappointment and temporary disillusionment. Nevertheless, they persevered. Why? They speak for themselves: We needed role models for our children: Lyn Devow I could see the vital need for our people to have their own qualified teachers. I could see the need for us to manage our own schools: Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann. Ignorance has caused so much of the world's woes. Education is the only combatant for ignorance: Davina Woods. That the basis of Indigenous people's exclusion from formal education is rooted in the racist history and perceptions of mainstream Australia that are still too deeply entrenched at the end of the twentieth century, is almost a given: It has taken Aboriginal people so long to get into certain places not because they didn't have the ability, but because there were powerful people who didn't want us there or thought we shouldn't be there: Larissa Behrendt. Jackie Huggins' experience is reflected time and again by Indigenous people: I convinced myself I could achieve academically, after receiving only low expectations all my life from teachers in the system. In my own teaching at Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education and the Institute for Aboriginal Development in Alice Springs, I hear that story so many times. Most of the mature-age Central Australian students undertaking degree and diploma courses were once, to quote my friend and student Arrente elder Pat Dodds, in “the special class for dumb Aboriginal kids”. Pat tells stories of secondary school students in Alice Springs denied access to Maths and Physics classes, sent to clean up playground rubbish, or clean and cook, during these classes, because Aboriginal students were “too stupid to study science”. Quite a lot of her drive to succeed academically is fuelled by the desire to prove those schoolteachers wrong. Davina Woods, who holds a Bachelor of Education, and a Diploma of Teaching, and is enrolled in a Master of Arts at the University of South Australia, was told by the school guidance officer, when she consulted him in year 8 about undertaking an academic course, that she was wasting the government's money because “Your people never finish school anyway. Your lot never finish anything they start”. Lilian Holt, BA, MA, first Murri to be employed by the ABC, now Director of the Centre for Indigenous Education, University of Melbourne, had her sights set on becoming a lawyer or anthropologist. But, despite her 72% scholarship pass, her school principal persuaded her otherwise: End of story. Into the commercial class I went. So, it was in the face of entrenched racism and sexism, as well as carrying strong family, community and financial responsibilities that most of women in Aboriginal Women by Degrees took up a period of extended academic study. But, bearing in mind what they didn't have, often - a traditional western educational background, money and influence, and acknowledging that these thirteen women are remarkable individuals by anyone's standards - the women attribute the strength and determination that enabled them to persevere and succeed academically largely to family, community and culture: We were rich, culturally and socially: Isabelle Adams. Thanks to my grandmother and her stories I was very proud and strong about my Aboriginality…we had a strong sense of security and family: Eleanor Bourke The common bond of family and belonging survives. This 'kinship of history' extends through to our grandchildren: Mirrakopal. Like many Indigenous people, Mirrakopal's experience of family was disrupted by institutionalisation, but she had the experience of family from aunts and cousins, who “drew [her] back into the family over the years” and through a modified classificatory kinship system of: those of us who shared our lives on the same mission community … once identified, the wider Aboriginal institutionalised community embraces you as kin; a member of their extended family. Nerida White remembers a childhood rich in story-telling, family sing-songs and food-gathering expeditions: They were skills that fed us and kept us together as a family, but sadly they were not acknowledged in school as legitimate learning experiences. Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann's early education was steeped in the oral tradition of a “people of deep feeling”: From my parents and my people I learned our culture which is the very essence of our being … Every day I learned through indigenous pedagogy. I learned from listening, from watching silently as nature unfolded around me; and from imitating the quiet reflections of my parents and elders. I waited as the bush enveloped me with its cloak of silence and quiet peace. In this more traditional setting, and in ancient Australia, as Mary Ann Bin-Salik points out in her introduction: The intellectual achievements of Australian women were a given. We had our own intellectual life grounded in spiritual, intellectual and philosophical reasoning which was passed down through the ages by an oral tradition to each generation of women. A far cry from the “alien environment, with little or no encouragement for cultural diversity or inclusiveness” that Nerida White and other Indigenous students have found in universities. “Culturally, life was very different what we had known”, Veronica Arbon remarks, in an understated way; she persisted, however, “because education became the solution, a way out of welfare dependency and poverty”. Without exception, the women pay tribute to the support of family, spouses, community, other students and, where they existed, Aboriginal support units within institutions. In what Isabelle Adams calls the “austere environment and aloof nature of the academic world”, this support often was/is the crucial factor in making it possible for the women to complete their desired courses of study. There were immense sacrifices made by the students and their families, many losses sustained, in quality of life, leisure time, closeness of family and personal relationships. The women are frank about the burdens heaped upon them by dint of their success: within the white world they are expected to be experts on every issue that affects Aboriginal people whilst often suffering temporary or even permanent estrangement and/or censure from their own communities for being too flash. But to a woman, these losses, though counted, are not begrudged; the impression we gain from the various accounts is of immense courage, humour, determination, and “stickability”, as well as a strong sense of responsibility to give back to their own communities, and to the wider Indigenous community, the fruits of their labour: What you should never forget is who put you there in the first place and I believe it is your responsibility to return that favour back to your people: Jackie Huggins. Equally, as the women pay tribute to where they have come from, they generously and good-humouredly offer encouragement and advice to their younger sisters. They understand and accept the responsibility of being role models. They have all taken time out of packed lives to reflect on their journeys and to smooth the paths for those following. In some cases they have helped set up the support units and networks they themselves lacked and would have appreciated so greatly. Larissa Behrendt pays tribute to these pioneers: Young Aboriginal people are able to go through the doors of university so easily only because others have bruised their hands banging those doors open. Aboriginal Women by Degrees needs little critical deconstruction, in my view: it is one of those books that are both needed and valued as a handbook and guide for Indigenous women taking an academic path, and is valuable for its documentation of the struggles against racism and sexism. It is a heartening testament to the daily, yearly, encroachment on those twin evils that still beset society. It is cause for rejoicing that Mary Ann Bin-Salik, Lilian Holt, Veronica Arbon, Isabelle Adams, Miriam Stead Raymond, Larissa Behrendt, Davina Woods, Nerida White, Lyn Devow, Jackie Huggins, Veronica McClintic, Eleanor Bourke and Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann have not only walked their paths to academic success but have also left clear traces for those who follow. Terry Whitebeach is a Tasmanian writer who lives in Alice Springs and teaches at two Indigenous tertiary institutions