Founded in 872, Oxford is the oldest English-speaking University in the world, and educational institutions around the globe now replicate a multitude of its respectable history of more than 1,000 years of established traditions. Just last month, Oxford welcomed its first Australian aboriginal students — a practice that many hope will someday become the norm for all institutions of higher learning. However, despite the progress made, the figures remain daunting at only 3 percent of Australian aboriginal students completing a university degree, and it seems that socio-educational integration continues to be a difficult issue.
History teaches us that integration is the key to post-colonization survival. Educational integration in particular is of utmost importance to the cultural and economic well-being of all Australians, yet some aboriginal parents worry that Western education also represents a threat.
The reasons for this are many.
“I wanted to go to school,” says Bonny Tucker, a Punjima woman in Western Australia, “but my parents told me, ‘No they might take you away for good.’” Her parents’ fear stemmed from “The Stolen Generation,” a period between 1869 and the 1970s, when federal and state agencies, in conjunction with church missions forcibly removed aboriginal children removed from their families.
There is debate as to whether this practice constitutes attempted genocide as many people believe and that the intent behind these federally condoned acts was to wipe Australia clean of its aboriginal population. While apologies have since been made, and the federal government has made efforts to offer equal rights to aboriginals, it is no surprise that parents such as those of Tucker’s may be wary of sending children off to Western schools.
The legislation surrounding issues of aboriginal education also received negative responses, and efforts for finding a mutually beneficial balance between two very different cultures is challenging at best. For instance, in 2004, Prime Minister John Howard initiated, “Shared Responsibility Agreements” to aboriginal communities. These agreements were contracts that offered aboriginal communities substantial financial benefits in return for their commitment to send aboriginal children to school. This represented a shift from the self-determination of aboriginal communities to one of mutual obligation, and Larissa Behrendt, a professor of law and indigenous studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, criticized it as “paternalistic,” and “dictatorial.”
According to Dr Lester-Irabinna Rigney, Associate Professor of Education at Flinders University in Victoria, the presence of aboriginal teachers in schools was a mere 0.7 percent in 2004. This, coupled with the fact that nonindigenous teachers are often unfamiliar of aboriginal customs, and 80 percent of young non-indigenous Australians say they feel that they know very little about aboriginal culture is certainly enough to make the learning experience a difficult one for aboriginal students. Even respectful behavior among aboriginal students has been the cause of misunderstanding. In their culture for example, it is rude to look someone in the eye. On the other hand, mainstream Western culture dictates that one ought to make eye contact with the person to whom one is speaking.
Economic factors also magnify the challenges of young aboriginals. The United Nations rated the life quality of Aboriginal people as the second worst in the world, and those in rural communities especially lack the funding resources.
For instance, 64 percent of the remotely located communities do not have access to a library.
While the aboriginal population in total represents less than 3 percent of the total Australian population, remote areas provide libraries that lack what is necessary, which is often due to the large aboriginal representation.
In the Northern Territory for instance, 40 percent of school-aged children are aboriginal, and more than 70 percent of students in Year 3, 5, and 7 cannot read or write to standard.
In sum, aboriginal Australians face an education system that caters to a culture wholly different from their own, they face fears that stem from significant, and recent Federal discrimination, and cope with significant poverty. However, thanks to the efforts of the aboriginal students themselves, and new federal policies, the improvements are now rapidly increasing the acceptance of aboriginals on an international platform.
In February 2010, then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd opened the National Centre for Indigenous Excellence (NCIE) in Sydney. The center’s aim is to develop and foster talent in aboriginal students via four development pathways: Sport, Learning and Innovation, Culture and Arts, and Health and Well-being.
Most of the staff members come from the indigenous communities, and they expect to welcome up to 5,000 indigenous students from around Australia on an annual basis.
While the number of university-educated Aboriginals is still low, the figures are increasing rapidly and show no sign of slowing down. The total number of Aboriginal University graduates increased from 3,000 in 2002 to 20,000 in 2006.
Such figures also imply that aboriginal students will be more likely to influence the educational system. Aboriginal Oxford scholar, Christian Thompson, will certainly be doing his part, as he told ABC reporter Rachel Brown, “I see the art world and museum culture as a site for the archival of culture, and I think that my traditional intellectual knowledge is the contribution — I’m making Bidgera culture, my traditional culture, and global culture.”
Aboriginal people have walked the Australian soil for somewhere between 40,000 and 175,000 years, and it’s time we all embrace the rich culture that they have to offer by making every effort to be open minded and welcoming to aboriginal students.