Vale Mr Yunupingu: Education leader and philosopher
Equal pay is not the only obstacle women face in the labour market.
Former Yothu Yindi frontman and Australian of the Year, Mr Yunupingu, died this week following a long battle with kidney disease.
Monash University Faculty of Education academics Dr Zane Ma Rhea, Mr Peter Anderson and Ms Bernadette Atkinson have written a tribute to honour Mr Yunupingu, outlining his vast achievements and heavy influence on inclusive education in Australia.
It is with profound regret and sadness that we heard of the passing of Mr Yunupingu this week. We pay tribute to his life and especially acknowledge his contribution to education in this country.
We offer our condolences to his family for their loss.
A man remembered for his powerful and transformative musicianship, his generous contribution to educational philosophy in Australia is less recognised. People might remember him as the principal of a beautiful school in Yirrkala but it was his vision for education for all Australians that was profound and too often marginalised as being about the education of Indigenous children only.
Certainly he had a clear view that Yolngu children could succeed in the Balanda world and, like Sarra, had high expectations of teachers and children in his school. He promoted bilingual, bicultural education and in doing so showed a way forward in a predominantly monolingually and monoculturally-focused mainstream education system in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
He and his brother, together with the Yolngu community of Yirrkala, promoted the possibility of something truly transformative in Australian education, something that has taken over 20 years to bear fruit. The educational philosophy of which he taught was about ganma.
During his studies for his western education qualification (BA in Education) in 1986, he began to develop his educational philosophy of ‘both ways’ education. With the Yirrkala community, he developed a Ganma Curriculum. We remember his Boyer Lecture (1993) where he explained to the world about how to find a balance between two distinct cultures. He looked to the place where these cultures came together at the school. He likened this to the lagoon where salty water of the sea meets fresh water of the river.
He was an educational leader at a time of great optimism about the possibility that Australia could develop an education system that was truly inclusive of the educational wisdom that Indigenous people around Australia wanted included, for their children and for all Australian children. It has been a long, hard struggle to turn something of a titanic to face a different direction. But changed it has.
The progress made in the last 20 years, since his first offerings of educational leadership and philosophy has now filtered into teacher education programs across the country. The Australian Curriculum now makes the inclusion of Indigenous perspectives a priority. Many teachers are using his ideas and his powerful songs in their classrooms. Teacher professional development programs draw on his work and the work of other Indigenous educational philosophers around the country. With the implementation of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers and the Standard for Principals, recognition of his contribution to education leadership and philosophy will grow.
His was a vision that showed how the cultural rights and education aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples could be achieved alongside reconciliation. His music reminded us that reconciliation without recognition of Indigenous rights would be an empty process. He warned Yolngu people not to be fooled into blindly accepting the ways of Balanda while forgetting their own lifeways. He invited Balanda to try to understand Yolngu education philosophy.
We will continue to honour his leadership, vision, and philosophy in our work of preparing teachers the Faculty of Education, Monash University, paying our deep respect to the possibilities that he knew were achievable, and thereby ensuring that his work and his vision do not simply disappear ‘like writing in the sand’.
Dr Zane Ma Rhea is the coordinator of Indigenous Education and Leadership in the Faculty of Education, Monash University.
Mr Peter Anderson is an early career research development fellow in the Faculty of Education, Monash University.
Ms Bernadette Atkinson is currently studying a Masters of Education at Monash University.