Comment by UNE Vice-Chancellor, Professor Brigid Heywood
'Are we doing enough?'
The question of how to better support Indigenous people thrown into disadvantage by colonisation has been with the University of New England (UNE) since its foundation. Reconciliation Week is an annual prompt to ask it afresh.
The answer is always, "Of course not – at least not yet."
This is partly because the challenges are many-faceted and complex, but also because the question is forever expanding. Understanding of the immense, intergenerational damage caused by dispossessing Indigenous people of Country, culture and identity is deepening, while at the same time, more Aboriginal people are awakening to their own agency and finding new ways to use it.
UNE is constantly evolving its support for Aboriginal people seeking access to higher education. As the poet said, the path is made by walking, and UNE is committed to staying on the path it set out upon six decades ago.
Shortly after UNE became an entity in 1954, a group of women associated with the University reached out to Armidale’s women Elders to see whether the newly lit “light on the hill” could touch Aboriginal people too.
After a period of understandable distrust, the invitation was cautiously accepted. The region’s Elders recognised that education can be a passport to independence and the ability to put individual capacities to work in the service of communities.
UNE has from the outset committed to supporting everyone who shows the capacity and determination to study, regardless of their situation in life or their geographical location.
The Aborigines Education Foundation was established in 1965. UNE’s Oorala Aboriginal Centre was opened in 1986, dedicated to supporting the unique requirements of Aboriginal people seeking to undertake higher education.
Last year, UNE had 1011 students, most of whom have been supported through alternative pathways into university study. UNE’s first Pro Vice-Chancellor - Indigenous, Professor Joe Fraser, himself an Aboriginal man, is working to have Indigenous cultural concepts better woven into the patterns of formal education.
Another Aboriginal staff member, Anaiwan man Steve Ahoy, is a UNE Cultural Advisor supporting work on the built environment at UNE Armidale. A bridge between local cultural knowledge and the University, Steve has documented substantial evidence of Aboriginal occupation and cultural activity on the lands that the University now occupies. His work brings an apparently distant past into the University’s immediate present.
Just as colonisation’s damage ripples down generations, so can the enriching influence of education.
In 2020, Reconciliation Australia endorsed UNE’s inaugural ‘Reflect’ Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP). It took nearly two years of collaborative work to develop the RAP, but with the plan embedded, results were swift to follow.
These include dozens of formal and informal partnerships aimed at enhancing educational opportunities and outcomes for Indigenous Australians; staff training to deepen understanding of Aboriginal peoples, and their cultures and histories; and an institutional focus on procuring goods and services from Aboriginal-run businesses.
Is it enough? “Enough” would mean that we would no longer need to consider reconciliation, and that possibility lies over our current horizons.
But by helping Indigenous students to view university study as a gateway to a promising future, and then helping them through the challenging reality of attaining that education – and then valued, employment – UNE is helping hundreds of individuals to find and live their destiny.
