During the 1970s and 1980s, numerous Aboriginal-controlled schools were established across Australia. These schools, which taught in both English and Indigenous languages, emerged in response to government-mandated mainstream education that often failed to meet the needs of Indigenous children.
Among these institutions was the Yipirinya School in Mparntwe (Alice Springs). Like the other Aboriginal-controlled schools of this era, Yipirinya played a key role in transforming Indigenous education in Australia.
Now, an upcoming book by UTS Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Archie Thomas and former Yipirinya educators Dr Helen McCann and Peg Havnen is set to bring the School's history to a wider audience.
Called Yipirinya: the true school of Mparntwe, the book is based on an enormous amount of archival material collected by the school’s founders, and on a draft history of the school developed by Dr McCann and Ms Havnen in the 1990s. These have now been reimagined by Dr Thomas as an oral and photographic history that paints a vibrant picture of Yipirinya’s hard-fought past and how it continues to shape the education landscape today.
Supported by funding from a UTS Social Impact Grant, Dr Thomas and his co-authors travelled to Mparntwe to meet with former teachers, descendants of the school’s founders, and numerous Mparntwe families to document the remarkable story of the Yipirinya School’s founding and development of multilingual Indigenous curriculum.
Indigenous intellectual and cultural property for the stories and images have been collected using an Indigenous engagement method called True Tracks, which was established by Dr Terri Janke, a lawyer and Wuthathi, Yadhaigana and Meriam woman.
True Tracks sets out a process for respecting Indigenous intellectual and cultural property rights, which refer to Indigenous knowledges or Indigenous cultural or intellectual practices, as well as to respectful protocols around sharing images, names and information. – Dr Thomas.
‘It’s essential to making sure there’s full, informed and continuous consent about what’s going to be included in the book, how people are going to be represented, and what sort of images are going to be used.’
A tumultuous history
Yipirinya was set up in 1978 to cater to the multiple language groups – Central Arrernte, Western Aranda, Luritja, Pitjantjatjara and Warlpiri – that are all a part of the diverse Indigenous communities of the Mparntwe town camps.
As an independent school, it aimed to operate beyond the reach of the Department of Education. This was a fraught proposition for the Northern Territory Government of the day, which was responsible for granting the registration to establish Yipirinya.
For a lot of reasons, that proposal and the idea that the school be controlled by Indigenous people was threatening and complicated for the Northern Territory education department. – Dr Thomas.
‘Yipirinya’s first application for registration was rejected, but nevertheless, they decided to start the school anyway.’
What followed was a six-year battle with the Department of Education, culminating in the school threatening to take the department to the Northern Territory Supreme Court to challenge the repeated rejection of their registration. In the meantime, the school ran on a shoestring budget that was cobbled together from donations.
Yipirinya’s legal case was driven by support from Indigenous health and legal services and local land councils – ‘quite a powerful block of people’ who came together at a time when few Indigenous-led cases made their way into the courts, Dr Thomas says.
They pressured the Federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs, which was then part of the Fraser Government, to intervene. But it wasn’t until the Hawke Government came into power in the early 1980s that registration was granted and federal funding was provided, and Yipirinya could fully take its place as a pioneer of Indigenous-controlled schooling.
Laying the foundations of contemporary Indigenous education
The Yipirinya School is still a fixture of the Northern Territory education landscape today, but its remarkable story remains unknown to the broader Australian public. With the publication of his book, Dr Thomas hopes not only to honour the stories, voices and legacies of Yipirinya’s founders but also to shed light on this vital period of Australia’s history.
In fact, he says, the introduction of Indigenous education – such as the ‘Indigenisation’ of curriculum and the teaching of Indigenous languages – into mainstream schools today is part of the untold legacy of schools like Yipirinya.
‘Those Elders who fought and had a voice for this school – they were very wise, and very smart. They had their knowledge, and they spoke up for their children – to pass on that generation after generation,’ says Brenda Inkamala, a Western Arrernte teacher at the Yipirinya School who shared her story with Dr Thomas.
The Yipirinya story also flies in the face of current policy discourse about Indigenous education, which often focuses on lack of attendance or lack of engagement among Indigenous students.
‘There’s sometimes a false sense or assumption that either Indigenous children don’t want to go to school or Indigenous families are not interested in schooling,’ Dr Thomas says.
‘Histories like this one show us that that’s certainly not the case. Yipirinya’s founding is significant to the wider public understanding of Indigenous education and the involvement of parents in education.’
The problem
There is a lack of awareness surrounding the untold story of the Aboriginal-controlled Yipirinya School in Alice Springs. The school’s founding is significant to the wider public understanding of Indigenous education and the involvement of Indigenous parents in education.
The response
By bringing this story to the public stage, the founders are given due recognition and their contribution to Indigenising curriculum and to Australian history can be more widely understood. By working with former Yipirinya teachers and educators Helen McCann and Peg Havnen, and descendants of the founders of the school to develop this history into a publication, this will influence public debate and policymaking.
What helped accomplish this?
The grant funded a visit to Alice Springs to work with descendants and consult with the Yipirinya School and other organisations, and digitisation of the archive. The funding was essential to allowing the time needed to make sure the researchers could sit down properly with families and spend time tracking people down. This meant the research was done in ways that are culturally appropriate rather than feeling rushed by lack of resources.
What has changed as a result?
The project team worked closely to develop the vision of the book with the families. The project helped to instill a sense of pride in the community history and a sense of excitement is palpable about the book’s potential. The Alice Springs families will also benefit from the book’s publication.
