Bowen speaks to future with forgotten language of past

LILLIAN Bowen is worried that Guugu Yimidhirr, the language of 13 Cape York clans, is dying out. Children are not fluent in the language. “Their parents aren’t using it in the proper context. They can barely speak it fluently themselves. There are very few old people living who can speak fluent Guugu Yimidhirr,” she says.

Bowen works tirelessly to revive the ancient tongue. She teaches it to primary school students at Hope Vale school, near Cooktown.

“We don’t want our language to die like in some other places. It’s our forefathers from way back who brought it to us. We need to explain to the children that we need to keep it alive.”

Bowen’s lessons form part of a primary school education package designed by the Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy and Education Queensland to close the gap between indigenous and other students.

CYAAA, a not-for-profit organisation led by Noel Pearson, aims to give a “best-of-both-worlds” education to Aboriginal students.

Bowen and her colleagues have made the finals of the community services category of The Australian Innovation Challenge awards with the culture program.

The awards, which offer $70,000 in prizemoney, are run by The Australian in association with Shell, and with the support of the federal body Innovation Australia. A panel of eminent Australians is judging the awards in seven professional categories and one Backyard Innovation section open to the public.

The wider CYAAA education program has been introduced into three Cape York schools. Already, there are encouraging signs on attendance and performance, the CYAAA says. The school day is extended, and students are taught in a structured program including numeracy, English literacy, art, instrumental music and sport.

The package’s culture element is designed to give students an understanding of their history, identity, tradition and environment. The culture program, mapped to the national curriculum, has more than 10 local tutors, who teach alongside non-indigenous teachers. The CYAAA hopes its model will be taken up by other schools.

Among other finalists is a team that conducted the most comprehensive scientific analysis yet of climate change in the Pacific. Its report, Climate Change in the Pacific: Scientific Assessment and New Research, is a synthesis of the best scientific information available, and is helping to guide the island states in long-term planning.

More than 100 experts, including Scott Power of the Bureau of Meteorology and Kevin Hennessy of the CSIRO, compiled the report with input from 14 Pacific island nations, as well as East Timor, Geoscience Australia and academics.

A hub for Aboriginal businesses will soon form in a fitted-out shipping container in Darwin under a program to create jobs for indigenous people. Darwin accountant Clinton Hoffman is the driving force of the program, the Walkabout Your Business Pop-up Village. He aims to remove a big barrier to indigenous entrepreneurship in the Northern Territory: high business infrastructure costs. He wants to erect the low-cost, portable pop-up villages in remote Aboriginal communities needing goods and services normally provided by the private sector. He is seeking corporate backers to pay for the containers.

Also in contention for the prize are Lisa and Tony Clark, who invented an emergency bed for the homeless. The Backpack Bed looks like a backpack but rolls out into a warm, waterproof, fire-retardant bed, says Lisa Clark.

It is distributed to the homeless in Australia, the US, Britain, New Zealand and Germany through more than 300 welfare agencies that have joined forces with a charity, Swags for Homeless, founded by Tony Clark.

Carolyn Curtis and her team at the Australian Centre for Social Innovation have made the finals with a program in Adelaide whereby families who have been through tough times help other families. The Family by Family program has reached more than 300 families since it started two years ago and the centre reports promising results.

It will be expanded in South Australia and extended to western Sydney next year.

Winners of the seven professional categories will receive $5000 and enter the final. The overall winner will receive an additional $25,000. The Backyard Innovation winner will receive $10,000.