The Book My Grandmother Gave Me on My First Birthday

Reflections on a dated book and Indigenous education

“Despite general beliefs in Australian mateship and equality, we have become an increasingly stratified society—where the gap between those who have the most of what there is to get widens over those who have the least available.”—Colin Tatz, 1971

My grandmother died when I was nine. One of the things that has always held me close to her was a book she gave me on my first birthday in 1973.  It was edited by Barbara Leach, with beautiful photographs by Roderick Hulsbergen. It was a book I flipped through constantly while growing up. It was a book about the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. It had never made sense why my grandmother had given this book to the baby version of me. Later,  around the age of 28, I met the granddaughter of my grandmother’s lover on a TESOL course in Brisbane. She went home and told a family member she had met a Kerensa on the course, and they wondered if it was the Kerensa from way back when. Consequently, I reconnected with my uncle and learned that, aside from being a theatre performer and artist like myself, my grandmother had been deeply passionate about Indigenous rights.

I won’t say the book’s name, as the language and terminology are dated, reflecting terms used 54 years ago. The pictures and the culture fascinated me for years, and I even took the book with me to Indonesia. Growing up, I never actually read it—I just flicked through the images. Throughout my teaching years in Indonesia, I dreamt of going out bush and learning more about the people whose land this belongs to. I would look at the photographs of land and people I was unfamiliar with.

During this holiday, I finally began to read the book. Its essays were written by “white fellas” and academics, but rather than  exoticising or placing Aboriginal people as objects of study, it is actually a harsh criticism of government policy and a strong analysis within the context of Aboriginal wellbeing. It stressed the importance of respect, dignity, culture, and land. The “Stolen Generations” is horrific, and at the time of writing, this term didn’t exist, though the book reflected and criticised assimilation policies.   It also discussed the importance of studying and researching Indigenous knowledge and language. Reading this book, as dated as it may be, it is a surprisingly honest and scathing account of what government policy really was like and just how slowly things have gone since then, despite very logical recommendations.  I swung between a sense of pride  - 5,183,113 voted in favour of counting Aboriginal people in the constitution, against a small minority of 527,000 people. Whilst on the same page, saying that as late as 1970, South Australia still had a statute that said Indigenous people had to be hanged in public. I feel ashamed of the  lower salaries Indigenous cattle workers were paid, despite being preferred workers due to their skill.

Seeing old ABC clips on my Facebook feed in 2025, I sometimes feel that people were more empathetic towards Indigenous rights and issues back then than they are today. I often find the comments sections of social media these days depressing and disturbing—horrified at how, as a country, we seem to have genuinely regressed into a more spiteful culture. My mother must have been influenced by my dad’s mother, as she even had me dress in what would now be called “blackface” for Australia Day celebrations when I was about seven. I am simultaneously proud and ashamed of this. She didn’t do it out of spite or humour, but because she believed the celebration needed to acknowledge the country’s First Australians. These days it would be inappropriate, and even more sadly, the belligerent voices have become so much louder and more resentful of acknowledging Indigenous Australians' history, pain and importance.

The chapter on education, “So Who’s the Problem?” written by Colin Tatz, could have been written today. He highlights the deficit view that teachers held of Indigenous Australians back then. (Something that is still trying to be addressed today, and on the other hand, something  that many teachers  are pushing back against.)

“From an Aboriginal point of view, we are the problem; outsiders engaged in trying to reshape their lives, their attitudes, trying to make them not just plain citizens, but model ones.” Colin Tatz

The history of Aboriginal education in colonised Australia began in 1814 in Parramatta with the aim that adults would be influenced by their children to see the value of the white man’s ways. The school closed in 1823, but it was the prototype for imposing a foreign culture on Indigenous children. There were a series of failed schools where the majority of children died.  In each of these scenarios assimilation was the goal, a gradual dilution of Aboriginal culture. In 1837,

Edmund Foxcroft wrote:

“The teachers, hampered by lack of real knowledge of the natives, thought their customs ‘vile’… hence the hostile attitudes they adopted…”

Just under two hundred years of negative experiences of education.

Two hundred years later,  teachers are still going into communities with limited knowledge. Teachers going through initial teacher education still receive only one unit on Indigenous education, and many struggle to meet their AITSL standards during their initial teacher training practicums. As early as 1950, the recommendation was that teachers should begin in teachers’ colleges but then complete one to two years of anthropology and specialised studies. Aunty Barbara Nicholson (in Together We Can't Lose, 2011) argued that it should not be fresh graduates going off to teach in these schools, but our best teachers for three to five-year secondments—and I can’t help but agree ( though there are many positives for new teachers including their curiosity and not being worn down by the system).

Over fifty years ago, there was already evidence that bilingual education is more beneficial than monolingual education, yet even today only a small number of schools implement it. As a result, the process of alienation of Indigenous children went into full swing. There was also deep evidence and a calling for Aboriginal people to maintain their cultural identity. Today we still find ourselves short of allowing this to happen - Closing the Gap is criticised for potentially being a subset of assimilation policy due to alack of focus on building cultural identity.  

Some of the recommendations made in the 1950s in the Northern Territory included bilingual instruction, specialised primers, and educational aides, with education seen as a continuum from preschool to adult education. As discussed in the book—and still true today—most teachers are trained to teach middle-class, urban children, and many struggle to cope with the geographic and climatic environments of remote communities. These remote locations are sold to teachers - it's an adventure, it's a way to save, it’s learning about another culture - in some places - it’s a revolving door. My current students had three teachers in 2025. And whilst learning about another culture is important, in the words of former principal whom I had met on my practicum and who had grown up and had been a principle in the  Kimberly, said, “Teachers should not be going into schools expecting that the students teach them. It’s not a holiday. They are there to teach. ”

Another aspect Tatz discusses was the importance of preschool, which for a long time was not seen as an integral part of education by Aboriginal administrators. Again, he hints at the need for a two-way education system (or even an Aboriginal Way of Learning), a concept many contemporary writers and pedagogues discuss today. Indigenous children are not less intelligent; rather, they need a syllabus that reflects their understanding of the world and provides different contexts for demonstrating knowledge. They also need to know that those teaching them have high expectations and believe they can learn

One of the issues that many teachers in remote communities are familiar with is attendance, particularly in secondary schooling. Ties to kinship and cultural activities affect attendance, along with geography. However, these are not the only reasons.

“The reasons for this are numerous: motivation of children and parents, their economic circumstances, and the question of cultural identification.” 

Motivation is often linked to economics, but also to attitude. Aboriginal leader Joe McGuinness said in the early 1970s that the official attitude (of the government)  was that attaining educational levels equivalent to a nine-year-old would be enough for Indigenous students (which he did not believe was acceptable). He also argued that going to school was not sufficient; there needed to be post-school training and technical training centres “on reserves'.

In the community I am living in, I wish we had opportunities to give our young people after they finish with schooling. On my professional placement, I was told students wouldn't be able to write a paragraph.  It was implied to accept a lower standard rather than aim for the short essay I had planned. I hate hearing how the only thing I am creating is a safe space. (Think about it - what judgment value is being placed on the community I am in). In my new job, literacy levels are below their age group, and it seemed it had been accepted over the last few years (whereas my current principal believes we should be doing better due to the low teacher/ student ratio.) Sifting through the piles of photocopies of those who had gone before (and who had honestly done their best), I could not help but think how boring the materials were.

It’s a fine line between meeting your students where they are at, and having a deficit view and/or setting high expectations.

Tatz implies that the idea of education as a means of moving forward had failed many miserably, and that for many, their position in society—and the work they attained—would be no different:

“Without that school business, my boy bin diggin em holes; with school business, my boy still bin digging ’em holes.” 

In a job I interviewed for and that I really wanted, I foolishly asked the question, “What does the community  and the students hope to gain out of school?”  There was awkward silence. In hindsight, I see this now as another factor feeding into motivation, but also as a failure of society. (And possibly the reason I didn’t get the job.)

At the time of printing this book in 1971, there had been only three Indigenous university graduates—far too few to influence motivation. Seeing is believing; you can’t be what you can’t see. 

Sports figures are far more visible and clearer examples of pathways that can change life outcomes. This is the unifying nature and passion for sports like AFL.

I discussed this with a teacher colleague—how we should run workshops and create opportunities for those who want to pursue other pathways. We needed to bring in community members who had experienced different kinds of success to speak to students. I was disappointed when the Indigenous sex education trainer didn’t return; I wanted to ask her if she could speak about her life, her education, her experiences, her totem, and her connection to Country.  She could be a source of inspiration for my students.  I know that I can not be. I know that my own charmed life and rich experiences are deeply rooted in privilege and the luck of being born to whom I was born to.

The greatest shock for me was that this book was written over 54 years ago. We knew things. We had evidence. We had recommendations. Yet little has been applied.

Fifty-four years ago, Tatz wrote:

“……..When we begin to take real and respectful account of the Aboriginal sub-culture, when we concede they are entitled to stake out a particular identification in the community, and when we devise education programmes in consultation with them, perhaps education will begin to pay off for both white and Aboriginal societies.” 

54 years ago.

There is still so much more to take in from this book. Having only just begun work in an Aboriginal community as a teacher, I see so much of what was happening 54+ years ago still playing out today. I may only be taking baby steps, but I have picked up where others left off and followed what was in place - did what the others do. I realise I need to do something different in the coming year.

To embrace a pedagogy of hope:

to find Indigenous success stories;

to nudge literacy and numeracy using age-appropriate, culturally relevant materials beyond current levels;

to go to the library and seek out those resources;to reach out to success stories in other communities;

and to try to organise a class Zoom to meet people to inspire and challenge them—because you can’t be what you can’t see;

to find ways to build resilience.

To be there and build trust in the community. And this takes time.

Hulsbergen, R. (1971). The Aborigine today (B. Leach, Ed.). Hamlyn.

Lester, J., & Munns, G. (2011). Closing the gap. In Teaching Aboriginal studies (2nd ed., p. 28). Routledge.

Craven, R. (2011). Together we can’t lose. In Teaching Aboriginal studies (2nd ed., p. 15). Routledge.