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Strangers in their own land - an extract

By Helen Hughes - posted Friday, 7 March 2008


The girls choose some spotted material to make simple tops because I promised Charlotte's mother I would teach the girls to sew. The girls do not know how to use a tape measure. We put measurements and fractions on the school agenda. The sewing project arose out of the Wangupeni women's expressed desire to earn more money than they can from the attractive, but low-paying, jewellery they make from shells for distant tourist shops. Sewing clothes and silk-screening fabrics have been proposed. Without workshop space that will keep out dust in the dry season and damp in the wet, without dressmaking and commercial art skills, without basic literacy and numeracy, I think this is day-dreaming. Yet Wangupeni is so well situated that with mainstream economic development it could become one of the prosperous seaside communities of the Australian coastline.

We turn to painting boxes and discs for Christmas and other thankyou presents for the Rotary families taking Charlotte and Margaret to galleries, museums and sailing and who will be their hosts on Christmas Day and for New Year's Eve. Although the girls have not had art classes and appear to have almost no experience with brushes and paints beyond kindergarten-level colouring in their workbooks, they take to this like ducks to water.

They produce a range of colourful sets of coasters and knickknack boxes, some with geometric designs and some with traditional trees and animals. I am particularly taken with a bush turkey with a wicked look in its eye. After several evenings work, all these are lacquered and wrapped ready for the festive season.

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We make the family Christmas cake. The girls cannot read the recipe but I go through it carefully, hoping they can see that once they can read they can cook anything they like. They are not convinced. I can see the girls thinking: why is this crazy woman going to all this unnecessary work when she can buy a perfectly good Christmas cake in the shop?

The girls miss their families and friends. It is evident that Charlotte and Margaret have been well brought up in loving families. They like to have fun, they can be boisterous, often laugh raucously, and they are warm and responsive. Swimming proves to be a favourite pastime. The girls tell us that strict dress codes are observed. Teenage girls do not walk around in bathing costumes. Social relations between boys and girls, men and women, are regulated. There is no violence. Language and traditions are treasured and taught to youngsters. Wangupeni artists have developed a style that is featured in the Quai Branly Museumin Paris. The community has been mined by anthropologists, linguists, film-makers and others dependent on Indigenous culture for their livelihood.

Charlotte's mobile phone does not work. Josephine digs out the packaging in which the phone came, reads the warranty instruction, looks up the nearest Telstra phone outlet and checks its location on the Internet, and the three young women troop off to the railway station to get the phone fixed. For Charlotte and Margaret, almost the same age, the obstacles to having the phone fixed would be insuperable. They would have to throw the phone away and buy a new one.

Ten weeks of tuition have enabled them to advance two years, though they are still in the early years of primary literacy. We think they have made even better progress in arithmetic. Charlotte and Margaret cannot be asked to sit in a mainstream class of 6-7 year-olds in a real primary school. Equally, they cannot be set up to fail by being placed in the high school Year 11 and 12 classes of their ages. TAFE introductory, catch-up Year 10 classes for youngsters who have dropped out of high school would be too difficult for them until they develop their learning skills and improve their English. Paradoxically, the best way for them to catch up is likely to be to sit with immigrants or foreign students coming to Australia to learn English. The girls are not alone. There are at least 20 teenagers in their situation in their community alone.

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First published in The Australian on February 27, 2008. The names of the girls and their community have been changed to protect their identities. This is an edited extract of Strangers in their own country by Centre for Independent Studies senior fellow Helen Hughes, to be published in March 3 edition of Quadrant.



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Professor Helen Hughes AO is a senior fellow of the Centre for Independent Studies.

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