Mothers as First Teachers: Exploring the Features of Motherchild Interactions That Support Young Aboriginal Children’s Multilingual Learning at Playgroup

For many Indigenous children living in remote communities, the prerequisites to achieving strong language and learning outcomes include the maintenance of their first languages and progress in learning English as an additional language. This paper reports on data from a Linkage study conducted with families at two Families as First Teachers (FaFT) playgroups in two remote Northern Territory communities. The data highlight the ways parents and carers encouraged very young children to engage in home languages as a foundation on which to develop skills in English during play and book reading activities. Transcripts of mother-child book reading and play sessions and reflections of FaFT Family Liaison Officers are examined to explore the language interactions and the strategies used by mothers to support children’s multilingual learning. The data highlight the importance of early childhood teaching and learning that honours children’s linguistic and cultural resources and prioritises families’ aspirations for children’s multilingual language learning

The Politics of ontology and ontological politics

There is a politics to what ontologies are recognized as existing; what pasts, presents and futures are made real; what configurations of place, time and being are validated; and what ethics underpin the reality of our connections with and as the world. And there is a powerful violence associated with their dismissal. In responding to Simon and Randalls' discussion of the ontological politics of resilience, we consider ontological politics in an Indigenous context. We do this as an Indigenous–non-Indigenous, human–more-than-human collective, from, and as, Bawaka, an Indigenous Australian homeland in northern Australia. We offer an ontography of Bawaka and, in so doing, attend to the layers of lirrwi (charcoal) in the sand to recognize what lirrwi can tell us about being, and politics, in a Country that has always co-become with Yolŋu people.5 page(s

“Pride and Honour”: Indigenous Dance in New South Wales Schools

In this chapter, I discuss the positioning of Indigenous dance performance in Australian school education where European knowledges and beliefs dominate educational policies and practices. The discussion about the role and the integration of indigenous dance within curriculum takes place in the context of research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in schools in a regional area of the state of New South Wales. More than two centuries after colonisation, dispossession and attempted deculturation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, the positive value of cultural learning and practices in education is acknowledged in policy and included in curricula as a means of engaging Indigenous students with dominant education. However, while schools welcome and acknowledge the significance of Indigenous students’ participation in dance performance, this activity and related acquisition of skills and knowledges by dancing students are not accredited academically