Top ten Indigenous resources for business studies

There has been a lot of emphasis over the last decade on the creation of vocational and educational opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and rightly so. Emphasis on inspiring and increasing access to career opportunities definitely plays a part in redressing inequity. Programmes to date have tended to focus on increasimg Indigenous students participation in apprenticeships & trades, ín sport, in education, health, the arts and law.

One area that is not discussed at great length as an option for Indigenous students is business and commerce. This may be as as a result of few visible Indigenous role models in the business arena. Lucky for young people today however, there are quite a few business role models out there.

Here are our top ten (so far) -

1) Aboriginal Business Magazine is published by Willmett Group in Brisbane. Coming out each month, it is a very reasonably price, well designed publication featuring a range of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in business.

2) Indigenous Business Council of Australia (IBCA) is a national body seeking to represent the interests of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities in business.

3) Mandurah Hunter Indigenous Chamber was the first Australian Indigenous chamber of commerce. It supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander business people in the Hunter region.

5) South East Queensland Indigenous Chamber of Commerce was established five years ago to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander business people in South East Queensland.

6) Victorian Indigenous Business Directory by the Koori Business Network is a directory of over 100 businesses and organisations in Victoria.

7) Yulkuum Jerrang, Victorian Indigenous Economic Development Conference is a major annual conference held in Melbourne each year for the past three years. Speakers and participants from all around Australia attend.

8) Kinaway Victorian Aboriginal Chamber of Commerce is an active chamber of commerce based in Victoria.

9) Aboriginal Enterprises in Mining, Exploration and Energy Ltd (AEMEE) is a not-for-profit organisations created to support Indigenous businesses in mining and allied industries.

10) Inguides is an independent classifieds and directory created by Cairns based media company Blackvine Media for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses, organisations and events.

I look forward to writing a second top ten list of business resources and organisations over the next month.

Leesa Watego

Some Aboriginal People Are More Aboriginal Than Others

Last September (2011) I attended the annual Oodgeroo Noonuccal public lecture at QUT by scholar Professor Aileen Moreton-Robinson. Her lecture was titled Race Matters: Representations of Aboriginality in the Media. In it she explored the racialised history of private media in Australia, particularly it's coverage of Aboriginal Peoples and 'issues'. It was a very timely lecture given the judgement of the Pat Eatcock v Andrew Bolt case due at the time.

Last night fellow edu-tweet Luke Pearson sent out the a link to a shortened version of that paper given at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney (October) for the panel session: Some Aboriginal People Are More Aboriginal Than Others. The description for this session:

White Australia has always had a view on what makes a 'real' Aboriginal person. Andrew Bolt is the merely the latest in a long line of commentators who have put forward their views about 'black' and 'white' Aboriginals. Spread across a continent after 200 years of colonisation, Aboriginal people are diverse in a way that is at odds with media stereotypes of 'traditional' Aboriginal people living in troubled remote communities. At a crucial time for recognition and reconciliation, does 'white' or 'black' matter? Who speaks for Aboriginal people and defines who they are? 

Also on the panel was Associate Professor Bronwyn Fredericks who powerfully explored the politics of naming and identity.

When watching the lectures, take time to consider your (Indigenous or non-Indigenous) understanding of identity within Australia. Consider the ways in which you and those around you use language to define others according to criteria you decide. What is the impact of that on other people and the way they're represented?

Image below from someone on Twitter late 2011 during the post-Bolt flurry. You need to watch the video to understand the relevance of the slide below.

Leesa Watego

Participation of Indigenous People in the 2012 Queensland Election

Last year I created a post about how to explore Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander perspectives of democracy, politics and civics in your classroom. Like other Australians, one of the ways that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can contribute to Australian democracy is by being active voters. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can also participate by standing for election.

Queensland does not have a great history of electing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples with only Mr Eric Deeral representing the seat of Cook in 1974 - 1977 for the National Party.

The business of politics is not easy, but the participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in all levels of government - local, state and federal, and across all the divides - left, centre and right - is something we should be aiming for in order to improve the representation of Indigenous voices and ideas.

This year's election sees three Indigenous candidates competing for the seat of Inala in Brisbane's south-west, on behalf of The Greens, the LNP and the Australia Party. Michael Quall, the Greens candidate for Inala pointed out yesterday -

Putting aside our individual politics for a moment, it's worth pausing to acknowledge how significant it is to have three Indigenous candidates running in the Inala electorate - win, lose or draw, this is a positive development for the community in this region.

I personally would like to wish all the candidates a great few weeks of campaigning.

Cheers, Leesa

The presentation below is a compilation of candidates standing for the 2012 Queensland election. They're listed in alphabetical order.


So far I only have three candidates, if you know of others please let me know. Is the information correct? Am I missing something? Please email me: lwatego [@] gmail.com



More information:

• History of Indigenous Vote by the Australian Electoral Commission
• Electoral Milestones / Timetable for Indigenous Australians by the Australian Electoral Commission
• List of Indigenous Australians in politics and public service (Wikipedia)
• The right to vote is not enjoyed equally by all Australians (February 2010) HREOC

Leesa Watego

A quick craft activity idea

One of the downfalls of using Blogger is that there is no space to upload files and documents. I have to upload them somewhere else and then link them here. When The Critical Classroom is a bit bigger, we'll move over to a self-hosted site with loads of space. But til then, we'll have to stick to linking.

I've uploaded the craft activity we gave to visitors to our QEDREX earlier this month. You can download the file from either the SlideShare or Google Docs.

Teacher Activity: Create a jigsaw

View more documents from Leesa Watego

More to come soon ....

Leesa Watego

Keeping track of The Critical Classroom

Just a quick update: 

I've just recently created a Facebook Page for The Critical Classroom. I'm finding it's an easy way to share the incidental articles and links that I come across during an ordinary day.

I'm very conscious though that not everyone is a fan of Facebook, so I've created a The Critical Classroom tag on my Delicious account where I'll post the same links (along with my editorial in the comment section).

The Delicious account won't have everything though - links to internal FB pages will probably not work. But if you're not into Facebook, yet don't want to miss out on additional ideas and resources, bookmark or subscribe to this link - http://www.delicious.com/lwatego/thecriticalclassroom

If you have any other suggestions, please let me know.

Thanks, Leesa

Update: Delicious.com have recently updated (it was a service originally owned by Yahoo but was sold). The Delicious folks have created a new feature called Stacks. I've created a The Critical Classroom Stack for readers. 

World Indigenous People's Conference on Education 2011

Performers at the start of the opening ceremony

I had the great privilege of attending the 2011 World Indigenous People’s Conference on Education last month. Held in Cusco Peru, I quickly learnt the highs and sometimes lows of attending an international conference in a non-English speaking country at high altitude. I’m not complaining though, since its conception twenty four years ago, this was the first time the World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education (WIPCE) was held in Latin America.

One of the Elders calls everyone together

Along with many great presentations on Indigenous education, the conference saw Guaranies, Aymaras, Mayas, Mapuches and Quechuas communities attending for the first time since it was last held in Latin America. One fantastic initiative of this year’s conference was the allocation of forty-five percent of our registration fee going directly to a local Quechua community.

The overall theme of WIPCE 14 was Living Our Indigenous Roots. There were a variety of presentations to choose from for each day - Day 1 - Indigenous Education for Future Generation,  Day 2 - Living Indigenous Language, and Day 3 - Indigenous Wisdom for Common Welfare


I particularly enjoyed the presentation by Wilbert G. Rozas who talked about his experience of the struggles to getting Indigenous languages recognised as a valued body of knowledge to succeed in mainstream society, and including having recognised bilingual education in Peru. There were approximately 60 pilot schools at the start of their initiative, with only 2 currently in operation. He argued that there is an assumption that if students do not learn Spanish (Peru’s official language) that they won’t succeed in ‘civilised’ society.


I also learned about fracking during a presentation by Mike Bruised Head (Chief Bird – Ninaa Piiksii) from Standoff in Alberta Canada. His presentation was on Environmental Education: A means of survival for Indigenous People. He also talking about hydrolic fracking, and it's impact on Indigenous communities. You can read more about this topic here. 

Overall it was an excellent experience in a very different community. I hope to write up more about the speakers over the next few weeks. I also look forward to attending the next conference in Hawaii in 2014.

You can read other educator's blogs about WIPCE 2011 here:

•  Tamara Bell 

• Alternative Maori Media 

2011 NAIDOC Poster is available to order

The 2011 NAIDOC Poster is available from www.naidoc.org.au.

The poster was created by Matthew Humphries and is titled Road to Change.

Description of work: A First Australian family link hands as they step out on the road to change – proud of who they are, encouraged by what has already been achieved and united in their goal to be changemakers for a bright new future.

You can order copies of the poster from the National NAIDOC organisation at http://www.naidoc.org.au/naidoc-poster/order/

You can see the 2010 NAIDOC poster here.

Want to celebrate for more than a week? Why not celebrate for a whole month!

Blak History Month is a grassroots movement that is celebrating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, people and communities for the whole month of July. You can order a Blak History Month poster created by Sam Cook from Kiss My Blak Arts from the online store, RedBubble, and you can download free resources from my Blak History Month for Teachers website.


Leesa Watego

Gathering information and curating the past - some ideas and challenges

Historically, many east-coast Australian communities have paid little attention to the cultural history of their places. Most communities proudly display plaques to their war dead, the young men and women from families that marched and died on battle grounds in Europe, the Pacific, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Occasionally there are plaques to explorer and settler families, but quite often these are held in the naming of places, streets, parks, mountains, and hills.

Generally there is little recognition of the people who walked and lived the land we now know of as Australia, since time immemorial.

Gathering and then curating this knowledge and information to suit classroom purposes is our modern day challenge. Quite often information is held within individual families, but mostly it's in the archives, in old newspapers, explorer/settler diaries and/or historical books that are out of print. Some of this information is on the web, but most is on shelves.

The community I live in, Everton Park in the north-west suburbs of Brisbane, is one such place. Over the past few years I have slowly cobbled together some information in my spare time.

My first effort at compiling information in a way that was presentable was using Google Maps. I was inspired by Stilgherrian's 50-50 project.  Using a word list from Tom Petrie's Reminiscences of early Queensland, I used place markers to mark the Aboriginal names of places throughout Brisbane. My next effort was in creating a Picasa/Google album of Aboriginal Place Names. Unfortunately, life has got in the way of my extra-curricula activity and I've not progressed as far as I'd like - still so many places still to add.

This is one of the on-going barriers to the challenge of curating information for a specific purpose - time, energy and focus. The other key challenge comes in making sure that any texts (in the form of maps, albums, podcasts or books) is done in a way that is appropriate to the memory of Aboriginal peoples of the past as well as respectful of Peoples that live in communities today.


A recent query from a teacher at the local primary school has prompted me to compile what I have so far here in a  a public Google document . I suspect that much of this information would work well and be useable in a blog format - perhaps I'll leave that one for an empty weekend.

What tools have you used to gather and present information about your community? What are some of the barriers or challenges you have faced?

Cheers, Leesa

Update - I'm not certain if the Map link is working. I'm going to try to embed the map below to see if this works.


View Aboriginal Place Names of Brisbane in a larger map

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