Inge Kral

Learning spaces : youth, literacy and new media in remote Indigenous Australia

This book showcases a range of ‘out-of-school’ youth learning contexts in remote Australia, to analyse the factors that enable positive learning and to provide some working principles for facilitating and supporting effective youth learning in the remote Indigenous context. The Lifespan Learning and Literacy for Young Adults in Remote Indigenous Communities (2007–2010), later known as the ‘Youth Learning Project’, was jointly funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC), The Australian National University (ANU) and The Fred Hollows Foundation (FHF). This participatory research project explored, documented and showcased the many ways in which Indigenous youth—aged between 16 and 25—are extending their learning, expanding their oral and written language skills, and embracing digital culture in community-based domains outside of institutional learning environments. Jerry Schwab was the project’s Chief Investigator and Inge Kral was an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow. Professor Emerita Shirley Brice Heath from Stanford University in the United States was an important collaborator and advisor to the project. Though focused broadly across a range of communities and organisations, an important feature of the project was the close collaboration that evolved between the researchers and around fifteen young people and organisation facilitators from key research sites in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. This book presents outcomes of the project, which asked three key questions: how can early school leavers and disaffected young adults in remote communities be reengaged with learning; how can literacy be acquired, maintained and transmitted outside school settings; and how can learning and literacy be fostered across the lifespan?

Beyond School: Digital Cultural Practice as a Catalyst for Language and Literacy

While enormous research effort has gone into the study of indigenous children in school, in part because research in institutional settings is easier, research in ‘out-of-school’ settings or among youth who have left school is relatively rare. Set against a social literacies backdrop, this chapter fills an existing gap in the language and literacy debate by providing a much needed theoretically grounded contribution to questions associated with indigenous education and language in Australia and Malaysia. We show how through participation in a meaningful community-based digital media project, indigenous youth are transformed into confident individuals who are in control of their own learning and literacy practices. Highlighted here is the manner in which indigenous youth are using digital resources to mediate language and culture maintenance.

From the Local to the Global

The discourse associated with adult literacy provision in remote Aboriginal Australia is now intertwined with the notion of training for employment outcomes. The all too common provision of ad hoc, short-term vocational training courses coupled with a ‘bolted-on’ (Bradley, Parker, Perisce, & Thatcher, 2000) approach to literacy reflects the shifting policy environment that typically underpins funding in the remote sector.

Tekná – a vanishing oral tradition among the Kayan people of Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo

ABSTRACT The documentation of the oral traditions of non-literate indigenous communities is a vital aspect of the preservation and survival of indigenous knowledge, culture and tradition. In this article, we discuss tekná, an oral tradition of the Kayan people in Sarawak. Here we trace not only the historical background of tekná, but also explore its current status and practices among the Kayan. We present an example of tekná sung by a Kayan elder. This forms the basis for a discussion about how the tekná is performed, sung, and narrated, as well as the possible meanings and interpretations that can be gleaned from this tekná. Finally, we suggest approaches to documenting oral traditions like tekná that show promise for the preservation of this fragile oral tradition for future generations of Kayan.

Yipirinya School: That Generation, This Generation

It is January 2014, I encounter a 34-year-old Luritja woman in Central Australia and she recognises me. A flood of memories wash over me as I recall this young woman as a 7-year-old child at Yipirinya School where I worked as a teacher and teacher linguist from 1987-1991. Pivoting off this experience, in this chapter I trace the stories of some of the Yipirinya school children whose idealistic parents and grandparents devoted themselves to ensuring that their youngsters would have access to bilingual education in order to maintain language and culture. I situate this account within the policy era of self-determination that gave rise to this community-controlled bilingual education initiative and then trace the impact of changing policy environments over the decades. By analysing the life course trajectories of some of the first generation of Yipirinya school children I focus on the formative experiences as well as the socio-political factors that have enabled individuals to shape life directions. I conclude by arguing that for some it has been a complex of factors including language and culture maintenance and seeing their elders in leadership positions have enabled some in this group to develop the resilience and strength of identity to establish satisfying life course directions, while for others the barriers of poverty and marginalisation have proved insurmountable.