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What is the Indigenous Literacy Foundation?
The Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF) aims to tackle some of the disadvantage
experienced by kids in remote Indigenous communities, whose standards of reading
and writing are generally years behind those of other Australian kids. ILF provides
specially-chosen books to more than 230 remote communities around Australia. It’s
about practical ways that readers, writers, publishers and booksellers can help
close the literacy gap in Australia and share the love of reading and writing.
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How did it start?
In 2004 Suzy Wilson, from Riverbend Books in Brisbane, heard about the problems
with Indigenous Literacy in remote communities, and found it hard to believe that
many children didn’t get to see a book until they first went to school. She started
a fundraising idea which grew.
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Who does it?
ILF is managed in communities by Debra Dank, an Indigenous Program Manager based
in Darwin. Debra Dank is a teacher who grew up on a remote community in the Barkly
Tablelands in Northern Territory. She has over 20 years teaching experience, worked
as the Literacy Development Facilitator at The Fred Hollows Foundation, establishing
many connections with remote Indigenous communities throughout Australia. The Indigenous
Foundation worked in partnership with The Fred Hollows Foundation (2006- 2010).
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How is it funded?
ILF is funded by donations, volunteers and 'in kind' support from the Australian
Book Industry, including the Australian Booksellers Association, the Australian
Publishers Association and readers and the Australian Society of Authors as well
as writers. You can help too. The How to Help
page has full details.
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How are the books chosen?
Early childhood literature specialists donate their expertise in choosing some books,
and The Indigenous Literacy Program Manager liaises with parents in Indigenous communities,
teachers, principals, and the children themselves to find out which books would
be most appropriate and useful for early learning and at primary school level.
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What are the specific programs?
- 'Book Supply' gets culturally appropriate and useful books to schools and individual
kids in more than 230 remote communities.
- Book Buzz is a gift of 12 specially-chosen
new board books for early childhood in a drawstring bag for preschoolers and very
young kids. (On request, these are also translated into local languages.)
This is for them to take home and read with older brothers and sisters or with someone
in the family, if possible, or they can bring them to preschool or school. Book
Buzz is also designed to get kids used to books, and the idea of reading
and looking at them, because otherwise they may not see a book before they go to
school.
- ILF is also funding specific projects that remote communities have identified themselves,
like developing and writing a children’s book as a community.
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Why isn’t the Government teaching Indigenous kids literacy skills, and providing
books? Why don’t you make them do it?
State and Territory government education departments do provide primary schools
with small libraries in remote areas, but there are very special challenges and
disadvantages which create obstacles to children’s learning and access to books
(particularly in the home, and before kids are old enough for preschool or school).
ILF is not a lobby group, although it supports the development of properly funded
education in remote areas. The project exists independent of any government, political
party or activist group.
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Why do these kids need special help?
These are the sorts of disadvantage we’d like to help tackle with the Indigenous
Literacy Foundation:
Language difficulties
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When these kids get to school, they come knowing perhaps three or four Indigenous
dialects or languages, plus what’s known as Kriol, a kind of Indigenous-flavoured
English.
So then they arrive at pre-school and find that all the teachers speak a strange
form of English and all the books are in English.
To imagine ourselves in the place of these kids, imagine that as a preschooler,
you spoke English, Yiddish and a dialect of Botswana with all your family and friends,
but at school everything is taught in Norwegian, and all the textbooks are in Norwegian,
and everything you write down has to be in Norwegian as well. And not only that,
but all the books and all the ideas about how to live life are about Norwegian fisherman
on the moon – everything about the lives of the people in the books and on the satellite
TV you’ve seen is nothing like you’ve ever experienced.
Cultural assumptions
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Many people who hear 'Kriol', or 'Aboriginal English' spoken assume it is the only
language of Indigenous people, and it’s often wrongly assumed to be 'pidgin English'.
A further assumption is then made that this is 'simple' and that Indigenous people
have very limited knowledge of, or ability in language. In fact, most Indigenous
children in remote areas know three or four complex languages, and it’s these they’ve
grown up with, not the English we know.
Further misunderstandings are common. While we might simply see a bunch of kids
of similar ages in a community, each child has grow up from birth with assigned
special names and relationship groupings, responsibilities, totems, and obligations.
An oblivious teacher can put schoolchildren into reading or conversation groups
that contradict strict relationship rules, causing a culturally forbidden 'wrong
way' problem.
The long pause between asking a question and getting an answer can add to the wrong
idea that an Indigenous person can’t understand or is 'slow'. In fact, a kid asked
a question by an English speaking teacher in a remote school, has to listen to the
question, perhaps containing some unfamiliar words, then mentally translate it into
Indigenous English, then into one of his or her local languages, perhaps pausing
to 'grab' an extra word or two from a dialect, or another language, formulate the
answer, and then translate that back into 'Aboriginal' or 'school English' to answer
the teacher.
The question 'Who is your grandfather?' could get a confused glance not because
the child doesn’t know or understand the question, but because there are so many
different kinds of grandfathers and words for grandfather, taking into account a
rich linguistic heritage with lots of prefixes, matrilineal and patrilineal sides
of the family and other kinship obligations and skin-name considerations.
Special problems at remote schools
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Although the classrooms have aides, usually aunties, mums or grannies of some of
the children in the classroom, the teachers are usually non-Indigenous, from a long
way away, without any local languages, and who stay very short times. The turn-over
rate of teachers in remote communities can be astonishingly high – some teachers
only stay for a few weeks, or a few months. (On one ILF visit to a school, there
were seven teachers, and five had been there only two weeks.)
While some teachers in remote communities are remarkably dedicated and skilled,
the lack of continuity is a constant problem. Some kids are used to having a new
teacher each term, or even several per term. This makes it very hard, or impossible
for parents and teachers to be able to develop an understanding, for parents to
feel their concerns will be heard and acted on, or for teachers to know children
well individually, and understand their learning needs.
Indigenous literacy and education specialist have noted these problems and the Literacy
Program Manager in Darwin, Debra Dank, who manages our programs, has reported these
and many other problems observed in her 25 years of teaching experience of remote
learning and in Indigenous schools in Queensland, the Northern Territory and elsewhere.
Relevant issues include school attendance rates, perceptions of literacy as not
important because there are few job opportunities or other ways to use the knowledge,
lack of books available at home, and a lack of culturally appropriate books in school
libraries or relevant curriculum, a lack of role models in communities for higher
education or literacy skills.
Mistrust
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ILF programs are co-ordinated with communities who have had many unfortunate experiences
with 'outsiders'. It takes time to built relationships with people in communities.
One of the ways we do this is establishing relationships with 'Local Ambassadors',
community members who can advocate the project within their own area. Debra Dank
reports that it can take some time to be able to get the message across that there
are people from a long way away who care about the kids in communities, who want
to help, who have asked the community how best to do that, and are providing books
and other materials for kids with no strings attached, and asking nothing in return.
There is no 'catch'.
One of the aims of the project is to encourage community and individual 'ownership'
– of books, of ideas, what is available to read. ILF wants to foster trust, and
new ways of educating kids and giving them the opportunity to feel the love and
joy books can bring.
Health problems
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Particular health disadvantages in some Indigenous communities have contributed
to widespread hearing loss among kids. (The Darwin Menzies School of Health Research
says only one in five kids in a remote community has normal hearing, a WA Department
of Education and Training study in 2006 found that more than 70 per cent of students
in remote communities had middle ear infections that cause permanent hearing loss.)
Lack of nutrition can have significant effects on the brain development and learning
abilities. The health situation and outcomes for remote Aboriginal and Islander
communities is the worst in Australia. Most children live in overcrowded and substandard
homes. It’s universally common for these children to have relatives, including parents,
who die in their 40s and 50s.
Isolation problems
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Why do you want money donations? Why can’t we just send our old books?
Firstly because these kids, like all kids, deserve at least a handful of their own
new books. And also because we are not set up logistically to collect, evaluate,
and transport used books. ILF is currently run largely by volunteer work and donated
freight and funds, and so our programs are tailored to what we can do well. It’s
very important for the books to be chosen by early childhood literacy specialists,
and also that they are culturally appropriate for the communities to which they
are supplied. Books can be rejected for unexpected or unknown reasons. Some children’s
books may be about an Indigenous custom, or display artwork that is alien to other
communities, or a book could unwittingly violate cultural ideas of proper behaviour,
or even be about a fictitious child who has the same name as a person in the community
who has passed away –a name that should not be spoken. All of these complex and
important considerations have to be taken into account.
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Is the Indigenous Literacy Foundation doing any good?
Yes.
On a recent field trip to the Northern Territory for the project in 2009, committee
members, staff, ambassadors (many Australian authors) and other book industry folk
saw how enthusiastic and committed the project staff are, how they are welcomed
into remote schools in communities in the Katherine area, Barunga, Manyallaluk and
Wugular. They saw how bright and enthusiastic the kids are about reading, writing
and illustrating their own stories as they participated in workshops with the ambassador
authors. They saw the libraries set up for kids, and were able to add to them by
handing over books and literacy aids, as well as the Book Buzz packs for
the littlies, to keep for their very own.
There are different ways of measuring the value of the project, and accounting for
'results'. Evaluation of the programs, the interest of the kids, and analysis of
the needs and requests of communities and liaising with remote schools is ongoing.
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