ten canoes - a story about life ... and death

"One hundred and fifty spears, ten canoes, three wives... trouble"










I just watched ten canoes. A very powerful movie. It is about a story. Well 2 stories - it is a story within a story.

The story of the ancients told to a young man.
A story of how to live, how to behave.
It delves into what it is that makes up the people.
It is a story of the people.
It was simple yet complex.

It tells of the connection to the land, and in someways of the circle of life (and death) eg from the little fish in the waterhole, to a person, to return to the waterhole.

Of one with the land, of the law of the land.
The story was both parable and history.

It was captivating and begs to be taken further.

a story to teach ... to learn about a nearly forgotten culture ... to continue to understand the link to the land

...and the filming was truly amazing...

A film worth watching: Ten Canoes *****

ACEP - 4 More on Stories

Today I had an interesting discussion about what is a story. So just what is a story. most dictionaries have a similar definition which is along the lines of:

A narrative or story in its broadest sense is anything told or recounted; more narrowly, something told
or recounted in the form of a causally-linked set of events; account; tale,: the telling of a happening or connected series of happenings, whether true or fictitious. http://www.stevedenning.com/What_story.html

other definitions can be found at answers.com, or google's definitions.

From thse we see that the story is just a collection of events. My Oxford dictionary has 3 meanings; two of the relate to the telling if events or factual information.
However, many people have this veiw that a story is the telling of a fictional account, like a novel or fib (as in a child telling stories)
This had led to a down-grading of the word story.
Most cultures use story telling to convey their history, their law, the social mores, etc, to the next generation. Generally these are not stories of fiction.
Interpretive guides and teachers also make extensive use of stories. They use them to tell the history of locations, about events about how to do things using examples.
So, in our society there are those who suggest that the term "story" should not be used but rather terms such as histories, lore, mores.
Personally, I think that these terms miss the point.

The term story also conveys a sense of how it is told.
A history can be a string of items , like dates; whereas a historical story is something people are more likely to want to hear, than a string of dates.

So, in using the term story I want it to convey the full sense of the word: the way it is told, the factual content, a way in which information can be conveyed such that the listener may have a comprehension of what is being told and hopefully remember it sometime in the future. It is a means to get an audience to get a sense of feeling about what is being told.

As I said before remove the story: remove the life.
Life would be pretty ordinary without the stories.

acep - 3 About Stereotypes

One of the topics of discussion on day 1 was something like: "think about what you think an Aboriginal whould look like". Then the group was asked to tell the rest what they thought.
Most people had in their mind something like the "typically scrawny or athletic, dark skinned, curly-haired native in loin cloth" as so often shown in early colonial art works. These are the images, often taught at school in social studies up to the mid 1970's, that have shaped for many what an Aboriginal should look like.
How far off the mark is this?
OK, so the there may be a couple like this, but the person can be as different our 2 facilitators. There is no one size fits all desciption. I had trouble with the question, as I have worked with, taught and known Aboriginal people from all over Australia. I could not come up with single image. But then I have had the opportunity to work in much of this country with many different people.

Consider the differences between Lionel Rose (boxer) and Evonne Cawley (tennis player) as an example. I only know the former from images in the newspapers, etc, but I know Evonne Cawley, not just through the media, but from personally meeting her in 1976. One just an image, the other, a larger than life person. Sitting, writing this I recall the tragic comment often used by commentators about her when she was struggling in a match: "could she hold it together or would she go walkabout?" 30 years on, I find it such a horrible thing to say, displaying an ignorance we need to educate people away from.
Many people I know have not left the "safety" of their own environment, so have not been exposed to the diversity of people I have seen around Australia.
Their view of the Aboriginal is that displayed by their teachers, and by the media in its various forms.

Today, I stumbled across this article in the Sydney Morning Herald. "It was about the World Press Photo of the year, by Spencer Platt, of Getty Images, which has become 'controversial' since it was announced. The problem, it seems, is that the image is not what everyone wants it to be ..." The article "its_all_in_your_mind" is worth a read. But after you get to the page, look at the image. What is it about? Consider this before you read the article .

It seems stereotyping is alive and well

Book of the day: Blood on the Wattle: Massacres and Maltreatment of Aboriginal Australians Since 1788, 3rd Edition; Bruce Elder; isbn: 174110008-9

Thought for today: stereotypes have no place in dealing with people and cultures

ACEP - 2 Stories are about life

The other day Annette (another teacher doing the course) and I had lunch to discuss some of the ideas that had been put forward last week. We looked at the stories in the work book: A Gammon Dreaming Story, The Whale Song and Jinni.
It is good when you can sit and talk to some one about common ideas.
The main theme is the connectedness of the people to the land and how stories are used to pass on things to the next generation - some times without the young person realising it till later. Remove the story - remove the very essence of the culture.
Anyway, yesterday Michael Nelson posted a thing about a great paper about story centred curriculum by Roger Schank. (read about the dragonslayer course). It is about using stories to deliver courses that relate to the outcomes that students require. Great that people are thinking about this as being educationally sound - a few thousand years after other cultures started the same.


Book of the day: Blue Mountains Dreaming: The Aboriginal Heritage Edited by Eugene Stockton

Aboriginal Cultural Education Program - day 1

Last Thursday I attended day one of this program that is running in the college.
it is about understanding aboriginal culture, and as a consequence some understanding of their link to the land, each other and the relationships and spirituality that goes to to the make up these people and their country.
from the first it was interesting just how some people saw (or more probably did not see) the importance of The Dreaming stories. Some were very aggressive about showing a distinct lack of understanding and at times an unwillingness to accept was the 2 facilitators were trying to put across. So, as in many things I have attended, it really warmed to being an interesting time watching the reactions to people who appeared not to have been involved with the deeper side of aboriginal culture, and its importance to the very essence of who they are (past, present and future).

To the content: we spent much of the time considering the importance of The Dreaming to the people. Its centrality, and interconnectedness between the people, the land, the law and the lore.
This importance starts to give rise to thoughts about how learning is undertaken and a way of life maintained. Not surprisingly the learning is through stories, public and private. Stories that pass on things like who am i?; why am I here? to how did every thing begin? how do we live in this land and the relationship between all things.

Thought for the day on this: there is a need for a respect for the culture, to acknowledge the importance of The Dreaming. From here the relationship exists.


Book of the day: "Prehistory of Australia" by John Mulvaney and Johan Kumminga; isbn 9781864489507









A web site to consider: Lore of the Land

A thank you to our facilitators: Cheryl and Maxine