Opinion: Suzy Wilson’s Indigenous Literacy Foundation is Proof of the Power of One

HERE are some heavy-duty Saturday morning thoughts about changing the world. (NB: May need coffee first.)

“There’s nothing to be gained from passive observance, the simple documenting of conditions,’’ writes Dave Eggers, author and philanthropist, “because, at its core, it sets a bad example. Every time something is observed and not fixed, or when one has a chance to give in some way and does not, there is a lie being told, the same lie we all know by heart but which needn’t be reiterated.’’

There is a lie being told. Eggers’ provocative observation in his first novel, You Shall Know Our Velocity, bounced to mind recently when sitting on a lovely deck at a lovely bookshop in a lovely Brisbane suburb talking with bookshop owner Suzy Wilson.

Now, Wilson, former teacher, education consultant and university lecturer, could have simply practised “passive observance” when several years ago she heard of the widespread, appallingly low literacy rates in some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. She could have sighed, shook her head and continued on with her lovely, lovely life. She didn’t.

“Maybe a raffle,’’ she thought, and started fundraising.

Wilson dived in, armed with what she has by the spadeful – a deep knowledge of books and quiet decency.

We don’t talk too much about quiet decency these days but, in this shouty world when you encounter it, boy, it’s obvious. That’s why booksellers and publishers – in what has been the toughest retail decade they ever faced – jumped on board and backed the push.

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That’s the power of one. Wilson ended up with a nationwide wildfire on her hands, with the support of big-name authors such as David Malouf, Andy Griffiths and Geraldine Brooks.

She organised the first Riverbend Readers’ Challenge in 2004 then established the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, which provides books and literacy resources to more than 200 remote indigenous communities.

She has become a catalyst for changing children’s lives through literature. In 2013, the foundation raised $740,000, translated dozens of early childhood books into the first languages of indigenous communities and supplied more than 100,000 books.

Earlier this year, the foundation won the prestigious International Education Initiatives Award, announced at the inaugural London Book Fair.

Now, let’s backtrack. Evolution never happens smoothly. It sometimes occurs in fits and starts. A big step forward came via – of all things – a little hand-held label-maker.

Indigenous community teachers wanted dual-language books, so the ILF team punched out translations for a children’s picture book in an indigenous language to match the English and stuck them on the page. As sophisticated as that.

This literacy push has evolved into publishing books such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar into indigenous languages. Elders translate books into their first language so children can read them side-by-side with the English texts, boosting English proficiency without throwing away their first-language skills.

Then, the next step. Children wrote their own stories, illustrated them and then became authors in two languages. Can you imagine the stir that caused?

“When we took those books to the community, elders cried. We all cried,’’ Wilson says.

I return home from our Riverbend meeting. My daughter is reading To Kill a Mockingbird for school, immersed in the book and a warm deep bath, a reading habit she may have learnt from me. “Holy Moley,” she says.

“You OK?” I yell.

“Shushhhh,’’ she says. “Can’t talk. Reading.’’

Harper Lee’s 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winner about civil rights and racism, has struck again. That’s why teachers love it. It is one of those books with that immense kick.

A world away in a dusty Warburton community, a four-year-old picks up Rod Campbell’s delightful Dear Zoo and reads it with his very young mother. They laugh as they turn the flaps, finding inappropriate pets – a snake, an elephant, and a giraffe – sent by a zoo to a small child. They are getting the joke, reading the words in their indigenous language and English.

A small scene, yeah? Yet with enormous consequences. You can’t have a To Kill a Mockingbird before you have a Dear Zoo. It’s the literacy pathway.

And, in this country, you can’t have employment and everything that goes with that, without the ability to read and write.

These indigenous kids are whip-smart. One of the first things Wilson noticed on visiting remote communities was how many little kids speak four or five languages – their mother’s, their father’s, Kriol and English.

That’s the reality for many indigenous children, so skilled and culturally enriched from an early age but only encountering English when they first go to school. (Imagine that in our middle-class, tutored, over-prepped world?) So, the ILF started The Book Buzz project, aimed at babies and preschoolers, a bridge to literacy.

Returning to Eggers’ line about the lie being told if you see something and do nothing, I wonder, what’s the lie in the instance of indigenous literacy if we sit on our hands? That it is unfixable? That this sophisticated prosperous country hasn’t the means or nous to solve it? That it is not worth it? Or worst still, that we couldn’t be bothered?

All awful, terrible lies. And beneath us. The ILF proves there are solutions – not one-size fits all, imposed-from-above interventions – that come in cahoots with elders, teachers and parents, and they take time to take root and grow.

Yes, solutions are sometimes complex but we should never be afraid of those complexities.

For Suzy Wilson, it has taken years of field trips – some seven hours by plane then eight hours by road to reach a remote community – to sit and quietly listen and learn what works.

The pay-off is worth it. Get it right and a child (and often the mother, too, and therefore all her subsequent children) learns to read. What an investment.

When this Bulimba bookseller has doubts or is tired or overwhelmed by the enormous task at hand out there, she pushes her feet down into ancient red soil, looks up at the vast night sky of Central Australia and tries to tap into a different kind of wisdom. We don’t have all the solutions, she says.

“We live in a country with the oldest continuing culture in human history,’’ Wilson says. “Anywhere. On the planet. The learning goes both ways.’’

The ILF’s major fundraisers are Great Book Swap and Indigenous Literacy Day on September 3.

Watch video here.

Click here for more information on the foundation.