Joel talks about support & inclusive curricula (2:59)

I know myself and I know a lot of Indigenous friends of mine are not one of the ones to put their hands up and say, “I need a hand”.  Males, if it’s a female teacher, it’s hard for – hard for them, you know?  If it was a male teacher, they’d be, “Uncle, uncle, eh, you know, can you show me this?”  And sometimes it’s – there’s those barriers as well.  And especially if it’s – if you’re a male and it’s a female teacher that you know has no idea about anything Indigenous or – or whatever.  And it – it does make it, that barrier; it does keep that barrier there.  This – this second high school I went to in WA just didn’t feel like it had that barrier.  There was no, you know, Indigenous classes or anything like that.  If we had Indigenous classes we did it all together.  We went to Aboriginal communities together, not just -

So the white students and the – the Indigenous and non-Indigenous all together. 

Non-Indigenous as well, yeah, yeah.  And that – that gave us pride as, you know, as well, to – and, because there’s – there’s so many, you know, there’s Burke and Wills, they’ve got a grave, this tree, and they made history, they’re two white fellows.  But it’s often forgot about my – my people are the ones that helped them, you know?  It’s – there’s so many great white stories out there with some great Indigenous people behind them as well, you know?  And so it was good because this – this community we went to was, I can’t remember the name of the explorer, the West Australian explorer back in the day.  He come here and the Indigenous people had helped him and shown him a lot, and he took a lot of that away with him and – and wrote books about it and stuff.  And I don’t think the white kids got full understanding until they went there and seen it.  And I don’t think we got a full understanding of – of other things until – do you know what I mean?

I do. 

So it’s – it’s – it needs to happen earlier, that cross-integration of cultural identities and, you know, of learning.  Like we learn about Japanese culture, we learn about Egyptian culture, we learn about Chinese culture and all these things but, you know, well what about our cultures that are on our doorstep?  I think they need to be addressed before we start trying to teach these kids international boundaries.  There’s so much more here, on our doorstep, first that would help their – their growth in life.  You know, I’m not just talking about Indigenous kids; I’m talking about, you know, non-Indigenous kids as well.