Education Down South

The Tiwi Education Project started when a parent asked us to help with the education of his grand children. He wanted them to learn alongside non-aboriginal kids, he wanted them to be away from the relatives who live in long grass 'humbugging' every day, and he wanted them to be in a Real School where all the subjects are taught, and where you could go on to University

Several of our team had taught the first batch of Tiwi to come south to Monivae College in Hamilton Vic for Education 40 years ago, and felt that a sustained effort might bring results.

These students were Bush Aborigines, who spoke English as a Second Language, they knew little of European Australian society. Some of those first students showed real ability, and later proved it being Chairman of the Tiwi Lands Council, and initiating good community policy. But the program was only maintained for a year or two.

The StVdeP Conference listened and decided to give this project ten years of effort, reasoning that we needed to go on trying beyond the stumbles and problems and persevere until the capable rose to the top.

The StVdeP is the organ to help because they have guys on hand for the pick-ups from Toowoomba, they have contacts and apparatus for fund raising and they can give full tax deductibility for donors. Also because Frederic Ozanam believed that what was required was persistent patient care, not the one-off effort, or budgetary allocation.

We chose Downlands College in Toowoomba because the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC) established the first Tiwi Island mission in 1911 and because Downlands was commenced in 1935 by MSC as a means of recruiting young men into the priesthood, who could later run the aboriginal missions MSC have all over the Top End of Australia.

Downlands was a good choice because they persevered when the problems came. They had the wisdom not the act but to wait and see and understand first - a prerequisite when dealing with people of another culture.

We realized that it was unfair to only offer this opporotunity to Tiwi people, when other tribal groups deserved the same opportunity. But we figured that a concerted effort in one community would bring success, so that others could do something similar with other groups.

We have had about twenty kids throught he program since we started in 2006. We needed to get it right with one tribal group: *who should come, *how does the community pick the students, *how does the school adapt...

We have had many who did not carry on, but every kid who has been at Downlands has benefited. Now we ask for no less than a two years commitment, we need kids who will go all the way to Tertiary Education, we need educated Tiwi who can hold their own when policy decisions are being made.

I was with a Federal Cambinet minister when Tiwi came back from an ATSIC meeting. I grabbed the bundle of files, and asked the Minister how he would cope with this information.

He said; "I never look at anything unless it is in the Cabinet Submission Form - this stuff is a snow job, bureaucracy setting out to confuse, Yes Minister fashion!"

We expect our first kid to get through Year 12 in 2011 and we expect others to follow in her wake.

If we can get a steady stream trained professionally, then Tiwi can have a real impact on decisions that effect them.

At present they feel like a Tourist Attraction without opportunity for improvement and they know that all over the world attraction to Alcohol/Drug/Trouble comes with being by passed, irrelevant and quaint.