Posted June 27, 2017 06:42:23

The 1955 Australian film Jedda told the story of a young Aboriginal girl separated from her family and raised by a white woman, taught European ways and forbidden to learn her own culture.

Now, the woman who played Jedda hopes to reverse that by teaching young locals about their own culture first and foremost, with plans to develop a new school in the remote Utopia region of the Northern Territory.

Rosalie Kunoth-Monks starred as Jedda, and has signed a memorandum of understanding on behalf of the Alukura Foundation with Sydney's Barker College to establish the Jedda Academy for the Education of Young Girls on the Utopia Homelands.

The region, about 260 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs, is one of the country's remotest.

In 2015, Ms Kunoth-Monks was NAIDOC's Person of the Year, as well as the NT's Australian of the Year, and is chairperson of the Alukura Foundation.

She said there was a need in Utopia to strengthen young people's learning by grounding them firmly in their own culture by local educators.

"We signed, we hope, the beginning of really growing two diverse cultures to come together in a way without destroying the other, or without being disengaged from the other," she said.

At the local school in the main Utopia homeland of Arlparra, 206 students are enrolled; Term one attendance was 53 per cent. The school also runs four other homeland learning centres in the region.

Nationally, the latest Closing the Gap report showed in very remote areas, Indigenous school attendance was 66.4 per cent, compared to 91.1 per cent of non-Indigenous students, something the new academy hopes to improve for its students.

Education of Indigenous children "has to get away from the assimilationist approach", Ms Kunoth-Monks said.

"We have a right to retain our identity. In that identity comes your stability, your belongingness and the capacity [for children] to comprehend in their earlier years."

Ms Kunoth-Monks said she felt the mainstream educational system had been pigeonholing Indigenous children and curtailing their abilities, resulting in their disengagement from classroom learning.

"There's many of my people in the Top End of Australia that are also querying that shoving down your throat of a foreign ideal and so forth, that is wrong," Ms Kunoth-Monks said.

"You've got to first of all get that child to accept itself and have confidence in that little body to say, 'This is who I am. Now I want to know further, I want to know what it is in that big wide world'."

Sydney's Barker College has already established an Aboriginal campus on the Central Coast of NSW, called Darkinjung Barker.

Principal Phillip Heath said funding for the Jedda Academy would not be drawn from Barker College tuition fees, but would be sourced privately to begin with, before approaching the Government.

About 30 children of varying ages will be educated at the Jedda Academy "with the intent that we celebrate traditional culture, traditional identity, traditional language, but we support the learning that goes on beyond that so they can contribute to the world that goes outside their community", Mr Heath said.

He said teaching children their own culture first would help boost academic outcomes.

"We've tried so hard for so long; generation after generation we've been discouraged by under-achievement of our First Nations children," he said.

"There's no reason why they shouldn't be doing well academically they're clever, they're committed."

In 2007, Mr Heath started the Gawura Indigenous School at St Andrew's Cathedral School in Sydney, which has a 95 per cent attendance rate, most of the school's NAPLAN results are above the national average, and some graduates are now attending university.

He said there needed to be a change in the cultural setting of schooling for Aboriginal students.

"Rather than school happening to you, it happens with you in a culturally informed and gentle way; particularly in this case, where we celebrate the role our young women play in building great culture and a strong community life," Mr Heath said.

"We know from all the evidence right across the world that our young girls, if well-educated, will bring fantastic results to the strength of the local community.

"We want to provide in that setting strong literacy, strong numeracy, high expectations, high attendance, all the things that we yearn to see in this country."

Ms Kunoth-Monks said only some young boys would be educated at the academy alongside girls, because according to local custom, girls and boys are educated separately as they grow into adulthood.

"We want to see the best for our girls here," she said.

"The girls play a large role in that nurturing part, in holding the country, in having that country pattern [painted] on your body and singing it and dancing it and making sure that goes on to the next millennium."

If the school is a success, a second school for local boys will be established, she said.

Mr Heath said establishing the academy was about taking a serious step towards closing the gap.

"If we're serious about reconciliation, we need to go further than just voicing it. We should go further than just acknowledging country or celebrating NAIDOC Week or Reconciliation Week," he said.

"From our point of view, we get access to one of the richest, deepest, oldest, most spiritual and most profound cultures on the planet.

"Who wouldn't want to educate their children in cities with access to that experience?"

If fundraising to establish the school is successful, it could be operational as soon as first term 2018, Mr Heath said.

Topics: education, access-to-education, schools, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, youth, indigenous-culture, alice-springs-0870, sydney-2000, darwin-0800

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Barker College agrees to launch Aboriginal academy for girls in Utopia homelands - ABC Online