Blak History Month Poster

32/365 Blak History Month poster
Originally uploaded by leesawatego

Last week I ordered a poster created by Aboriginal artist Sam Cook from Redbubble.

Australian Blak History Month is a very grassroots celebration of history, people, events, stories from a Blak perspective. I have written about it elsewhere on this blog, and there is a link also to my Blak History Month website which has a range of free resources.

I highly recommend all schools purchase this poster. Not only does it look DEADLY, supports an Aboriginal artist, but it will resonate with your students and their families when they see it hanging in your school and classroom.

The poster I chose is print mounted on a matte board. I chose the white matte board. There are different options of purchasing with RedBubble including already framed prints.

You can see all Sam's artwork at www.redbubble.com/people/kissmyblakarts.

Leesa Watego

You're deadly, I'm deadly. We're all deadly.

I've written before about the 'You're deadly' poster I created a while back.

I have created another poster using Glogster. It's fairly simple as it's the first one I've ever created. I'm sure I'll get better as I do more.

February 2012 Update:

The Glogster link has failed. I'm reposting my original poster. You can download it from Flickr

Leesa Watego

Thinking the 26th of January

For many people the 26th of January is a day of celebration, while for others, it is a day of sorrow or mourning. We have created a series of lessons designed to assist teachers to create activities that are inclusive and respects the beliefs of their students. The document is created as a Google Doc and is accessible via this link.

You will need this Google Presentation - Stimulus Texts for the 26th of January. I will be adding to this presentation over time.




More posts on this topic:

•  Time to celebrate what's great?
• 26/01 What will you teach on Australia Day?
• Australia Day: Part 2

Any difficulties downloading, contact me: lwatego [ @ ] gmail.com

Deadly Ways - Democracy & Politics

Here is the first of the Deadly Ways presentations. It currently sits at 5 Deadly Ways to Explore Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives of democracy, politics and civics in your classroom, but will definitely grow in the coming months.

I did want to note that Annabel Crabb, political commentator and journalist, made an important point on the 1st day of the opening of the 43rd Parliament. On the Drum on the ABC, her and Chris Uhlman were discussing the recent changes to the opening procedures where from now on a Welcome to Country would happen and also changes to the Standing Orders which now instruct the speaker at the start of every sitting of Parliament an Acknowledgement of Traditional Owners must happen. Annabel Crabb while noting that this was a significant step forward, it was still a 'step' that was 'given' by the Parliament (and one that could be taken away).

Seeing the invisible frames

Today's lecture I'm delivering at QUT for EDB007 pre-service teachers is about being able to identify the 'invisible frames' that we live within. Like my lecture for Indigenous Art Protocols & Practices, the lecture will explore what we know and how we know it.

I'm inspired by the recent election to focus this year's lecture on democracy and how teachers can incorporate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives into their studies of democracy, civics and society and politics and the political system.

As a result I've developed the first of my Deadly Ways presentations that I will present in the second half of the lecture. These are a bit of a rip-off of Tom Barrett's 'Interesting Ways' presentations that are a fantastic resource for teachers all over the world. Of course I'm using 'deadly' ways. I've been thinking about creating a series for a few months now so thanks for Jean Phillips (EDB007 Convenor) for giving me the opportunity (and deadline) to get it done).

You can get a copy of the lecture notes for today's session, as well as a copy of the first of our Deadly Ways presentations.

** Please note: I use Google Docs for my presentations. You should be able to access it without a Google Account. But I highly recommend a Google account  (its free!) and Google Products (including Google Documents, Reader, Blogger, Picase and a whole suite of other products) for develop, collaborating and sharing.

Teaching digital learners

I really want to explore this more. I know I do a bit of this now, but I know that there is so much more out there. I love the work of Gadj & Jodi from Sharing Culture Online.

Learning from Yellow Rage

In two of three of my 1213QCA Indigenous Art, Protocols and Practices lecture last week I showed this video, and I wanted to provide all the students with an opportunity to engage with this powerful and confronting (and very effective) work again.

Warning: Course Language



bell hooks in her essay Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance argues

The commodification of Otherness has been so successful because it is offered as a new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of do-ing and feeling. Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture. Cultural taboos around sexuality and desire are transgressed and made explicit as the media bombards folks with a message of difference no longer based on the white suprema-cist assumption that "blondes have more fun." The "real fun" is to be had bybringing to the surface all those "nasty" unconscious fantasies and longings about contact with the Other embedded in the secret (not so secret) deep structure of white supremacy. 

In the video, Yellow Rage seek to challenge stereotypes and assumptions of "Asian" and "Asian-ness". To interrogate mainstream positions and assumptions the artists explore:

• mainstream assumptions (and entitlements) about language
• appropriation of Asian imagery ("fake Asian tattoo)
• assumptions about the cultural and sexual behaviour of Asian women
• the power of the knower to know about the Other, including the impact of on-going colonisation by the West
  
• the centring of the mainstream

 Some questions for discussion:

• What are the key themes the artists are exploring?
• What do you think of the way that they express their point? Does "confronting" work? How does it make you feel?

Research: Seeing, Knowing & Doing

Last week I explored the idea of research for students in 1213QCA Indigenous Art, Protocols and Practices at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. In the context of the student's work, I focused on the idea of research as not being about the stereotypical idea of research (thinking here - lab coats, clip boards, pen in pockets etc), but about how we, each of us, engaged in:

• seeing
• knowing 
• doing

Seeing: we explored how each of us "see" the world depending on our we see reality. The way we see reality is often programmed by our upbringing, and our culture. This video helps to illustrate this simple point:




Obviously "seeing" is much more complicated than in the video above, but it gives a bit of a starting point. In relation to looking at the visual arts, Vincent Lanier, an arts educator identified 9 filters through which we "see" art:


1) What other people say bout art and the particular work2) The setting of the art work
3) How we have learned to see
4) How muchw e know about the elements and principles of design
5) What we know about the particular symbols that are used
6) What the art work reminds us of
7) How much we know about the history of the work
8) How we judge the work
9) What relationship the work has to our life.

Knowing:When we explore the idea of knowing in relation to research, I asked the students to answer two questions:

1) What do you know about Aboriginal art? (just list them)
2) What are the sources of that knowledge (how do you know what you know, where did you get that information from).

Looking at knowledge and knowledge production, we identified that the majority of our knowledge about Aboriginal Art (for most of the students), was knowledge that was written down and passed on by non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people - teachers, curators, arts writers, art academics etc. This leads us to explore power - and the power of knowledge production.

Doing:
When we explore doing, we explore our role within the research process. I really love to think about critical theory as an approach to exploring this. I find it really empowering. What Critical theory does is:

• Challenges accepted norms and truths
• Challenges privilege and power
• Is explicitly about liberation & democratisation
• Acknowledges that there are no absolutes/truths

Has exploring seeing, knowing & doing helped to unpack the process of research? Can you think of additional filter's to the nine identified by Lanier?

How my able-ism stuffed me up: A reflection on my practice

For years now, when I lecture, I rarely stand still. I wander up and down the corridors of the lecture theatre. Sometimes I get students up to interact, I ask them questions. I have been known even to move them around physically to illustrate a point. I don’t use paper notes. I’ll have a few PowerPoint slides that prompt the thread of my session. I have a big voice and I don’t use a mic because everyone can hear me. Or so I thought. 

My "performance" was rudely interrupted on Wednesday when a minute into my lecture two students told me that they couldn’t hear me. They were hearing impaired. Completely thrown, I ended up having to stand behind the lectern, something I almost never ever do. The position of the lectern in the Central Theatre at South Bank campus of Griffith Uni, is in the corner of the theatre, and IN THE DARK!!! As it turned out, my brain froze, and if how I felt about my deliver is anything to go by, for the students surely the lecture was sub-standard.

So what happened? 

I realised afterward that it was my own able-ist assumptions that stuffed me up. Roving mics are available in that lecture theatre, but it never occurred to me to get one because this “problem” had never presented itself before. Actually, writing this, it occurs to me that it probably has, and I was just too self-absorbed and inside my own head to see it.

I’ve always been committed to providing lecture notes and follow-up on the web for my students. I’m aware that economic access issues can prevent students from getting campus. Family commitments can impact student’s study opportunities - a sick child at home can mean that you miss the lecture where “they talk about the assignment”. In the past I’ve tried to provide additional support to international students whose lack of prior knowledge and understanding of the Australian context alienates their learning opportunities. I’ve encouraged them to relate the Indigenous issues work we do in the course to their own country. I’ve provided additional learning opportunities to student’s whose cultural capital meant that their ability to engage with the academy is hindered. And it’s funny, sad and pathetic (on my part), that in a lecture about re-thinking how we see the world and challenging assumptions, I was unable to do that for student’s whose physical needs impacted on their access.

What a wake up call! Thanks to the students who stopped me on Wednesday. It peeved me at the time. And I was cranky that I’d got thrown. But you have now allowed me to see what I didn’t see before. I've never used the term ableism before, though I've heard it used by others. My personal interests have always been in issues of race and culture and occasionally gender and sexuality. But the lesson i've learned this week is that privelige and needs transcend categories. My promise is that  I’ll do everything I can to ensure that I work with the needs of ALL my students.

Note: I've created a new category here on The Critical Classroom called Curating Your Thinking. This idea came to me in a lecture this week. For me, its about not letting other discourses determine how I will think about something. Or, probably more importantly, its about having an awareness of how prevailing discourses are influential and are present when we think. Still playing with this idea.

Indigenous Science in P-3 Project with CSIRO

Earlier in the year I headed off to the launch of a partnership between the CSIRO, as part of their Indigenous Engagement Strategy and Education Queensland - P-3 Indigenous Science project. Teachers are trained to deliver Indigenous perspectives in their science curriculum for the early years. Here are my images from the evening. As part of the teacher's training, they went on an excursion to Tully to undertake Uncle Ernie Grant's training at Echo Creek.