Year 9 English Engagement with Indigenous Culture

As a part of the School’s wider goal to integrate a more authentic engagement with Indigenous culture, Year 9 has been studying the YA novel Nona & Me, by Sydney author Clare Atkins. 

This novel is a part of a Unit of Work called, Home is Where the Heart is… and forms a cornerstone of the English Department goal for 2022 of constructing learning experiences for our students which foster a genuine engagement with Indigenous culture. The novel is studied in comparison with some great indigenous poets such as Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Jack Davis and Ellen Van Neerven.

We were lucky enough to invite Clare Atkins to come and speak with the students. Clare spoke for over an hour and detailed aspects of her life and creative process to the students who were fascinated by how her creative process worked. Students loved being able to access the creator of a text they were currently studying and being able to directly ask questions.

In true MLC School style, what started with a few questions soon became a nuanced and pertinent discussion of issues such as ‘casual racism’ and how an author’s personal experience can come to shape their philosophy and artistic expression.

Clare is not an Aboriginal or Torres-Strait Islander person herself, being Vietnamese-Australian, but had spent many years living in Arnhem Land and the Northern Territory and been adopted by a Yolngu family. She spoke at length about how she hired cultural consultants to help her construct those aspects of the text that directly pertained to the Yolngu people in a respectful way. At MLC School, we are conscious that we need to get authentic voices to represent real experiences. Clare was able to address this aspiration in a very refined and compassionate way with the students. Hopefully, as we continue to develop this course, we will be able to access Indigenous voices more directly.

– Dave O’Donohue
Year 9 English Teacher

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