that munanga linguist

Old Kevin Rogers at Ngukurr is lovely, clever, skinny old man. (Not OLD-old, but old enough for me to call him in 'old man' in that Aboriginal term-of-respect type way). If a Munanga visited Ngukurr today, they might easily overlook him and probably never realise that he is a university graduate and former principal of Ngukurr School. An article of his, 'Blekbala Kaltja at Ngukurr Community School', was published in 1991 in a volume called "Aboriginal Pedagogy: Aboriginal teachers speak out". It contains this great quote: Some Munanga working in Aboriginal Education have a one-sided view of curriculum. They feel that Munanga knowledge taught and structured in a Munanga way is more important than Blekbala knowledge. They undervalue Blekbala knowledge and when training Blekbala teachers they try to force them to have a Munanga pedagogy. They understand very little about Blekbala Kaltja and their attitudes of superiority make them oppressors of our culture ...

Last week, an NT-wide review into Indigenous Education took a big step forward when a draft report was released. Accompanying its release were a few media stories relaying that its author, Bruce Wilson, was recommending shutting down secondary schools in remote communities and sending everyone to boarding school. My reaction was 'what?!' and 'who is this Bruce Wilson?'. A bio of Bruce Wilson on a Victorian education website, it turns out, has this remarkable line written about him: He often uses humour in his presentations to disguise the fact that he hasn't done any research. I'll write more on Mr. Wilson in Part 2. In this post, I'd like to discuss a few aspects of the draft review. When I actually started to read to the report rather than react to newspaper headlines, I remained distinctly unimpressed. If I was marking it as a university assignment, it might just pass. Maybe. Key references have been overlooked, vague conclusions drawn without stro...