Futures Lost in Translation

HAWTHORN had what was meant to be an end-of-season happy story about recruit Amos Frank, an exciting forward from Central Australia.

As The Australian reported: “Some Hawks took it upon themselves to learn a few words of their new teammate’s native tongue.

“It started with the Pitjantjatjara for ‘run’ and ‘kick’ to help Frank – who had little English when he arrived at Waverley Park as a rookie.”

Lovely, but spot the shocking detail.

It’s what Patricia Edgar also ran into as a producer of the admired film Yolngu Boy when casting Arnhem Land schoolboys for the three main roles.

“Finding three young boys who could speak English was extremely difficult,” she said.

“The lack of English skills relates to the system of bilingual education that applies to children in the Northern Territory.”

That young men can grow up in this country without learning even basic English is a scandal.

What hope would there be for Frank had he wanted to be an engineer, soldier, teacher, miner or doctor?

What hope is there for so many other young Aborigines out bush who lack his football gifts? For them, no English means no future.

Yet again here comes a fashionable educational “reform” to make this disaster worse.

Both sides of politics – tragically – are backing a new report by federal Parliament’s standing committee on indigenous affairs demanding more action to protect indigenous languages.

In particular, the committee wants bilingual education for Aboriginal children, in the teary-eyed hope that somehow finding competent teachers who can teach, say, maths in Pitjantjatjara or Pintupi will help children learn better English, too.

Just how such unusually qualified and effective teachers could be found, no one really knows. Whether this will produce children who are better at English – the one language they need to save themselves from life on welfare – is pure guesswork. And against common sense.

What makes this push for bilingual teaching an even greater sin is that some of those demanding it treat Aboriginal children as exhibits in a cultural museum.

Hear it from the committee’s deputy chairwoman, Liberal MP Sharman Stone: “When they are able to speak and preserve and indeed restore their indigenous languages there’s enormous advantage in their sense of wellbeing, their sense of self-esteem, their cultural retention, their unique and amazing Australian Aboriginal culture.”

Or hear it from the report itself: “It is … important for all Australians to recognise the several hundred unique indigenous languages that were spoken for tens of thousands of years in Australia. The understanding and recognition of indigenous languages will assist in the process of reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.”

Or as Patrick Dodson, member of the government-funded reconciliation group You Me Unity, put it: “The full recognition of Aboriginal people includes the languages, which are the basis of how we understand the world and interpret life.”

Dodson said that, of course, in the excellent English he was taught at the Catholic Monivae College in Hamilton, an English that has allowed him to hold a plum university job.

But let’s see how all that mystic theory about reconciliation worked out for Amos Frank.

Proper reconciliation – whatever that word means – is limited by Frank’s inability to speak Dodson’s English.

As a Herald Sun profile earlier this year explained, little English means little real interaction, with Frank excused from team meetings.

Hawthorn’s welfare and development manager, Jason Burt, explained: “He doesn’t necessarily sit in meetings, because to be honest it’s a waste of time.”

Is this the future we should build? A nation of tribes, sharing territory, but not even language? Barely able to communicate over cultural chasms?

We’ve seen on the streets of Sydney a week ago where such tribalism leads.

Let’s not make it worse for Aboriginal children.