Embedding Indigenous Perspectives into Teaching & Learning

The Primary English Teaching Association Australia (PETAA) has developed an Australian Curriculum based unit of work using Nanberry: Black Brother White as the central resource. 

 This unit targets Middle to Upper Primary. 

🪧Literature (and literacy) 

🪧Literature (and literacy) 

🪧Language 

Exploring the context of literature 

• Find out more about Indigenous Australia and various Aboriginal cultures using the Australian Museum website. ACELT1608 

• Use information on Terra Nullius to build students’ understandings of Aboriginal history and the Sydney Cove area before and during white settlement. Research first contact in your own area, using local indigenous elders and libraries as starting points. ACELT1608 

• If you are able to carry out an excursion in Sydney, follow the Museum of Sydney’s Barani Barrabugu Yesterday Tomorrow walking tour. Alternatively download the walking guide (.pdf 3 MB), use Google Earth to locate (and zoom to ground level) some of the tour sites, and then carry out further research online. ACELT1806 

• Research more about the First Fleet using the websites Australian History and First Fleet. Create a classroom display wall with images, information and student-created diary entries in role as seamen, soldiers and convicts from the ships. ACELT1608 

Examining literature  

• Each chapter of Nanberry focuses on one particular character and their experiences and is written in the third person. Try re-writing a short section of two different ‘voiced’ chapters in the first person and discuss how this changes both your perception of the character and the text as a whole. ACELT1610. 

• Find examples of setting descriptions of Sydney Cove and then draw an image of the land and settlement as described by each person. Compare and contrast students’ images and discuss how these different descriptions enable us to better understand the complexities of colonisation. ACELT1622 

Examining literature 

• Read information texts from the school library or online about the British colonisation of Australia. Compare and contrast this text type with Nanberry by using a PMI chart to analyse how each enables you to explore the following ideas: facts about colonisation, learning about the first settlers, and the history of Sydney and Aboriginal people at the time of settlement. ACELT1616 

Responding to literature  

• Why do you think the author wrote Nanberry when so many information books about colonial Australia already exist? ACELT1803 

• As a reader we learn about the internal conflicts of each character through their thoughts, actions and words. Choose one character and use hot seating at various points in the text to explore their conflicts. How does understanding a character’s internal conflicts help us to understand the external conflicts addressed in the wider themes of the text? ACELT1621 

Creating literature  

• Read examples of early Sydney newspapers in Trove (for example 16th August 1828). Imagine you are a reporter in the early days of the colony and write an article describing Mr White’s adoption of Nanberry and the locals’ reactions to it. ACELT1625 

• Write a letter from Andrew back to Nanberry about his first year in England or at boarding school. Include references to his environment and his feelings about this new country. ACELT1798 

• Create a website or webpage (using a free design tool such as Weebly for Education) about one of the characters in the book by combining information in the text with your own research. ACELY1725 

• Research and then dress up as a character from the text and be interviewed about your life. ACELT1618 

LANGUAGE 

Examining text structure and cohesion (including punctuation)  

• Why do you think the author chose to write the book from so many different perspectives? How does this structure innovate on the traditional narrative structure and why is it successful? ACELA1518 

• The o’possum works as an extended metaphor throughout the book for Nanberry’s situation as a ‘pet’ straddling two cultures. Discuss how this metaphor works and provide examples from the text. ACELA1531 

Examining grammar and vocabulary 

• The author uses noun, verb groups and personification, which relate to each character’s world to build descriptions of the settings (for example, Nanberry: ‘The harbour was emu-berry blue, the ripples playing with the sun’). Find further examples for each character and analyse the language and devices the author uses to build descriptions. ACELA1523 

• Examine the sentence structure of Surgeon Whites passages compared to Nanberry’s. How does the author use sentence structure to build the ‘voice’ of each character. Hint: examine embedded and subordinate clauses and use of dashes and commas. ACELA1522 

Additional resources: Relate this unit to the cross-curriculum priority Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. Find activities to address Indigenous issues for Upper Primary in Global Words. 

From <https://petaa.edu.au/w/Teaching_Resources/CBCA2012/Nanberry.aspx?hkey=33a2ef88-cb62-4592-94f5-237db4c71977>  

Research conducted by the Australian Council for Educational Research suggests providing children with opportunities to watch how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families relate to each other, and to non-Indigenous people enables children to see, reflect on, and interact with cultures other than their own. 

As it is not always practical for educators to provide such opportunities face-to-face, digital technologies present alternatives.

Research on educational television suggests that, when coupled with expert educators, video can be beneficial to a child’s development.  It facilitates the understanding of different contexts, developing emerging language and literacy skills while supporting social and emotional development. Little J & Big Cuz is an animated series that follows the everyday lives of two Aboriginal school children as they explore themes of Indigenous identity, connection to country, traditional knowledge, and cultural practices 

|  A number of episodes have been revoiced in Indigenous languages and they are available to stream free online. A collection of accompanying online resources includes an ebook,  games for children, as well as suggestions for play-based learning that values the interconnected and fundamental role of communication and language (including early literacy and numeracy), and social and emotional development.