Straight after lunch today one of my year 4 students came and showed me a bag of dust. Yes, that's right: a bag of dust. She proceeded to tell me that she, and a group of her friends, had found some stones and ground them up. I must have raised my eyebrows pretty quickly because she immediately launched into an explanation that they'd been thinking about how the Kaurna people used ground stones as paint and were trying to do the same thing. They had ground up some stones and had plans to mix it with water to make a paint. Oh. My. Goodness. She took something we learnt about last term and made it her own. In her own time! I'm so proud of her! I expect she'll read this too so... Yay for you!
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| This is the static version of the interactive version available here on the ABC website. Check it out... It's great! The Kaurna lands are coloured yellow and can be found just to the east of the funny foot shaped peninsula on the southern central coast. Or around Adelaide if you happen to know where that is! |
For the non-Adelaide readers: the Kaurna people are the traditional inhabitants and custodians of the land on which our school rests. The Kaurna people's history is long and fascinating. The arrival of European settlers signalled the near genocide of the Kaurna people; within decades the Kaurna language was extinct and the culture smothered. It is through amazing cultural strength and effort that the 'sleeping' language is being awoken and Kaurna culture is again being celebrated. Including Kaurna history in our (local) curriculum, and teaching from an Indigenous perspective is, in my opinion, incredibly important.
(The Kaurna lands are coloured yellow and can be found just to the east of the funny foot shaped peninsula on the southern central coast. Or around Adelaide if you happen to know where that is! )
OK, I'll hop off my soapbox now. And back on my proud teacher box. I can't tell you how proud I am of these girls. This is why I teach. Thank you.
What better place to start learning about culture than in our ow backyard. I struggled to say the word Kaurna when I first arrived here from Toowoomba Queensland - but now I hear it so often, in common situations, that I am as familiar with it as the Fleurieu Peninsular and the Wyalla. The South Aussies are a great bunch of people, regardless of their cultural background and I am proud to call myself a South Aussie -Adelaidian.
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