Don talks about culture and western learning (2:04)

How important is it for a trainer to draw on your Indigenous knowledge, your Aboriginal knowledge, in a course?  Because a lot of the training courses are about teaching you Balanda way, how important is it, the skills and knowledge that you come from, Bininj way? 

That’s good question, but it’s a very complicated.  My – my understanding, it’s very complicated.  Just like I said, in between.  It’s white and black.  Our culture is very important, and your culture is very important as well.  This is your culture, you have to fully – get fully trained, fully trained, to younger people, and see – say let’s put it this way, our culture have to look future ahead of them to – through white people, and they do.  Just like I said earlier, “Oh, what I want to do?  Oh, well it’s up to you, you want to do – do a motor mechanics, or you want to go – okay, you want to be a carpenter, you want to be a plumber, or you want to be a – a what do you – a electrician?”  And say, “Oh, okay, well I’ll pick one of them”.  Say, “I want to do a – do a plumbing”, okay.  The bloke you work with, the white bloke you work with, him, the plumber, he will watch you, he will watch you all the time when you work long, long and he will ask you, “You want to do a course for a month or two?”  And he said, “Yeah”.  “Right, the first thing you have to go through first, if you are – if you’re good at reading, or writing, it’s kind of literacy and numeracy.  It’s how you go through”.