With the current ABC series ‘The First Inventors’ showing at the moment, I thought it would be interesting to reflect on the Indigenous science that the 29 Induction 56 students encountered.Early on in the Induction experience, the students trialled a memory technique that has been used by our First Australians to accurately pass cultural information from generations to generation orally for millennia. By using story and repetition, the students quickly learn by heart all 35 names of our group.
Later, on the way to the Old Yarranggi (Leopold Downs) Homestead, we stop to all stroke a special ‘grasshopper rock’. This is explained as a way to encourage a good crop of grasshoppers in the season ahead so that the country can provide fat bush turkey and goanna – an exemplar of a profound understanding of the food chain and web of life, if ever there was one.
A school visit by some past Yiramalay students, Karl Binbusu and Lionel Marr, in their role as Bunuba Rangers was a great opportunity for students to familiarise themselves with a local career opportunity. While onsite, the rangers carried out a controlled burn of the long grass around the school oval. This fire farming technique is now recognised as best management practice among our National Parks services.
Selina Middleton and Marilyn Oscar, the Traditional Owners who helped Induction 56, gave us a lessons about the Indigenous skin group system and it’s ‘right-way’ and ‘wrong-way’ marriage lines. It spoke of a deep understanding of the need for genetic diversity to ensure robust offspring.
And finally, in the last week, students were introduced to the seasonal calendars of the language groups in this area. Their basis in observation of floral and faunal markers rather than simply calendar dates is so obviously more accurate.This is just another example of how much the experience opens the eyes of our Induction students to new ways of thinking.
Words by Kym Adams (Induction 56 Leader)