Jeremy’s Little Corner Of The Web…

I had the most amazing afternoon. One of those mind-blowing, surreal situations, that give you an entirely new perspective on society.

But first, a bit of background. I recently joined AIESEC Sydney, which, to put it simply, is a student leadership organisation (the largest of its kind). I'm helping organise an event for the "Koori Kitchen" project, which one of our members is running to give indigenous Australian kids from the Redfern area experience in cooking and education about nutrition and food. I'm interviewing some indigenous people from schools and Universities in Sydney to prepare for this event.

Today, I interviewed a woman from UTS about indigenous cultural issues, and how we can make the most of this project and provide the biggest impact to the kids. I expected the interview to last 30 minutes, an hour at most. Instead, we spoke for close to 2 hours about issues ranging from teaching styles, food habits, the Stolen Generation, to prevalent problems in the education system and racism and discrimination that pervades our society even today.

I and my colleague walked away from the interview dumb-struck. How is it that we weren't aware of these issues? Is the rest of Australian society in the same situation? I found discussing it so incredibly interesting, and so incredibly complex, and clearly there are a plethora of issues that do not get the focus deserved.

I also believe that this was the very first time I have sat down and had a conversation with an indigenous Australian in my (almost) 22 years. That is frightening.

Some interesting points from the interview:

• At one stage, there were over 700 different languages spoken by the different indigenous Australian peoples. A comparison was made in the difference between German and Chinese today.
• A survey performed in the Hunter Valley in the 1990s found that 82% of the indigenous Australian children there had hearing problems. This affects their ability to learn in a classroom setting greatly.
• Body language plays a large role in communication in indigenous culture. The woman I interviewed told a story of how her elders would often communicate without words, using body language and facial expressions.
• Australia ranks highly worldwide in the quality of its education (top 5, I believe), but the quality of education of indigenous Australian people is the lowest.

I'm still feeling buzzed from the interview. I have another two to do, and can't wait to learn more and pass it onto others!