Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation


         

SPEECH BY

EVELYN SCOTT

CHAIRPERSON

COUNCIL FOR ABORIGINAL RECONCILIATION

AT THE OFFICIAL LAUNCH OF
"STARS– MAKING A DIFFERENCE"

VIDEO AND CURRICULUM NOTES
RIO TINTO CONFERENCE ROOM

MELBOURNE

TUESDAY 4 APRIL 2000

Thank you Special guests, ladies and gentlemen.

It’s good to be here to celebrate another positive step forward on the path to reconciliation between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the wider Australian community.

Before I say my few words, I’d like to thank the Wurundjeri people for their Welcome to Country this morning. I’m proud to be on the land of a people whose culture has and still does make a unique contribution to the life of the Melbourne region. I’d also like to thank VicSTARS for inviting us "oldies" from the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation to be part of this important occasion. This is an important occasion, because we’re here to launch a new resource that quite clearly has the potential to broaden the scope of the teaching and learning of Indigenous studies. I understand that Rio Tinto and its partners in this project intend to distribute the video and associated materials to every secondary school in the country. On behalf of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation I’d like to congratulate the company and its partners for extending the initiative to that complete length. It’s not a cheap exercise, and I suppose its difficult to predict exactly how many schools will make full use of the resource made available to them. On that score, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing a pre-production copy of the video, and I’m pretty confident that the product will be taken up enthusiastically by many, many schools around Australia.

Before we get to that though, Sir Gus and I would like to say something about where this initiative fits in to an exciting part of the reconciliation journey we’re all taking together.

You STARS and your peers have the immediate first-hand experience of how Australian history and current Indigenous issues are taught. I’ll be interested to hear your views on the subject a little later. I venture to say, however, that you people, the people going through our schools today, are probably better equipped to understand and deal with the issues involved in reconciliation than any previous generation of Australians. That’s because at long last, our schools have started to offer some insight into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and culture as part of this country’s shared history Finally, schools are teaching students about the history of this country which began over 50,000 years ago, long before British settlement.

Young people are learning about the Indigenous custodianship of this land, of the Indigenous experience – our culture, our heritage, as well as the shared experiences both tragic and triumphant, of the last two centuries. That’s a huge breakthrough. In time, this more balanced, more complete knowledge of our history will spread through Australian society. It will make Australians more aware of the full extent of their own cultural and human heritage. It will, therefore, make it much easier for Australians to reach a successful conclusion to their journey of reconciliation. Of course it might be hard to say, with any great certainty, how uniformly this reformation in the teaching of history is taking place on a school-by-school basis around the nation. But we do know that all the major school systems – public, Catholic and Independent – have committed themselves to the effort in a variety of national and State policies.

Those commitments themselves make a contribution to reconciliation, and I think we’re already seeing some positive outcomes as the commitments are translated into better practice in schools.

The emergence of the STARS network and the success of the first two National Youth Reconciliation Conventions are obvious examples of positive outcomes.

Recently the Council commissioned research to be undertaken to help us understand where the nation is at, in terms of reconciliation and to hear what people had to say about the Draft Document for Reconciliation. Some results emerged from this research that might be especially interesting to you today. The research data revealed a trend relating to people in the 18 to 24 years age group – that is, young people who’ve mostly left school in the last five or six years. Those young people were noticeably more positive about reconciliation and about issues such as the recognition of Indigenous rights and the special place of Indigenous peoples in the heritage of this country. For example, 57 per cent of the population as a whole favoured a formal document of reconciliation. The proportion who favour a document among 18 to 24 year-olds was 72 per cent. That’s a very big difference. And again, a disappointing 38 per cent of all people recognised the connection between current disadvantage and the way Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were mistreated in the past. In the 18 to 24 years group, that recognition factor was 51 per cent.

Obviously, there’s still plenty to be done, but I’m very encouraged by those research findings. I’m equally encouraged by the impressive commitment of the students, staff and schools who’ve made sure that the successes of the National Youth Reconciliation Conventions do not disappear into limbo.

The reason we’re here today is to celebrate one excellent achievement of your continuing commitment. And after a few words from Sir Gus, we’ll be delighted to launch the first official viewing of "STARS – Making a Difference."

Gus.

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