Remote Aboriginal Communities

Hi out there young Aboriginal persons.

I've been to almost every remote community in WA as part of my work with the Education Department of WA.  I was always overawed by the remoteness.  I was always worried about what the young would do once they had completed schooling.  I could understand why the pull of the land was a great pressure to stay in country.

Having now retired and been able to reflect on my experiences I say to you young guys and girls out there, go to school regularly and learn all that you can.  Even go away to secondary school if the opportunity is there.  Don't be worried that you will lose your ties with country.  You will never do that wherever you are.  Return to your community from time to time to refresh the cultural links that make you who you are and to be with family.  Be proud of your culture.

If you can learn to walk in the wider cultures outside your own community as well as retaining your links with your community it could be good for you.  It is a difficult thing to ask of anyone but I have a sense that if you can do this you can bring back to your community skills and knowledge that will help.  Especially you can make sure that the elders can feel proud and not disillusioned with the discrimination and cultural disruption that they have experienced in the past. They can leave this Earth with a sense of pride that they have got through all the bad times.

Your strength can bring a way of peaceful and fruitful living for your community members even though you go back out to the wider communities in which you may now live and work.

Teach the wider communities what it is to be one with country.  So many Australians do not take the time nor do they have the opportunity to understand this. Preserve your language so that you are bilingual for in this language resides the heart of your culture, your stories, your history passed on by word of mouth.

Teach disaffected Aboriginal youth who you come across that life wasn't meant to be short, brutish and ugly.  Committing crimes and constantly breaking the law is no way to live.  Drugs are no help in living a happy fulfilled life.  Lift your peers up to be one again with their lands, to be proud to be one of the First Peoples of Australia and to know that all true non-indigenous Australians respect you as their brothers and sisters.



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