Dhäŋgal from Birritjimi delivered the final teaching session for Semester 2 to the class in Darwin. It was fabulous, Dhäŋgal first introduced her brother, internationally acknowledged yidaki (didgeridoo) authority Djalu (www.djalu.com) who played his Gälpu Djuŋarriny or ‘West Wind’ yidaki tune for the class as an introduction to the lesson. Dhäŋgal then told the class about the different types and clan affiliations with each type of yidaki. She explained the origins of the yidaki and her (Gälpu) clan and other clan ancestral connections with Dhuwa yidaki. She explained how the sound from her Gälpu yidaki carried hundreds of kilometres westward to Goulburn Island. Mid session music from the local ice-cream van caught everyone’s attention. After detailing the history, Dhäŋgal explained yidaki playing techniques while her gamiyarr (grandson) demonstrated several Dhuwa and Yirritja tunes. This 36 minute session flowed smoothly with one drop out early in the session, it seems that the latest version of Skype has improved stability.

While teaching for the year was ending in Darwin, Yolŋu studies classes were just beginning at Tokyo University for Foreign Studies (TUFS). Using Skype the CDU Yolŋu Studies lecturer, Yiŋiya opened the first class and delivered his lesson before handing over to Kiyoshi Haida the onsite lecturer. (Kiyoshi himself used to be a Yolŋu Studies student in Australia, and is now lecturing at TUFS.) Unlike classes at Australian universities, the first two teaching sessions are for prospective students to sample the subject. To every one’s pleasure, the number of students increased for the second class. Waymamba and Dhäŋgal have also delivered teaching sessions. Although we are waiting for the Semester to conclude before asking for formal feedback on the classes, there has been a flow of emails from Kiyoshi reporting high levels of student enthusiasm for the lesson content, the authority and authenticity of the lecturer to deliver each session and method of delivery. The students say they like ‘the liveness and immediate and real time interaction with the Yolŋu lecturer. Skype has worked well with all classes, and since screen sharing became available with the latest version of Skype we are no longer using Team Viewer. The Skype screen sharing function is quick and has been used by effectively Yiŋiya to share important images with the TUFS class.

The Yolŋu Studies Reference Book and Study Notes have been translated and are soon to be printed in Japanese.

The has been a tentative enquiry about delivering Yolŋu studies classes to Germany. Further discussion will be held around the middle of this year when staff from Germany plan to visit Darwin and east Arnhemland.

Well, we’ve finished the first semester, had fun at the seminar, had a break and things are back up and running again.  Yiŋiya and John have set up an arrangement with Tokyo University for Foreign Studies to teach Yolŋu languages and culture starting next week.  Dhäŋgal we hope will teach this coming Tuesday.  We are trying to set up a session with  Multhara whom some of us met at Garrthalala, so she can teach from her homeland centre.  In the mean time, we are preparing papers from the seminar for people who couldn’t be there.  As we receive them, we’ll post them up on the website in the Seminar section if we can get permission from the authors.

Thanks to one and all in the  project for their hospitality during our recent visit.  In this, I want to reflect a little on space and place and what I’ve been thinking about same after the trip.   Leigh and I have just moved into a new home in Pittsburgh - once the center of the steel industry in America, then a failed city and now a ‘rising’ one.  It’s a city unlike many others in the States - people tend to come and stay for generations; we’ve even met some people who have never been to Pittsburgh from 50 miles away. This in opposition to California, where most  When we get out in ‘nature’ we are reminded constantly of the lines that ran through the country - disused railway lines turned into bike and pedestrian paths.  All of the  vegetation is ’second growth’, but there is 2% of the original landcover left (how they come up with that figure is a whole other story in the far north east of the State.  Pittsburgh itself has been radically reconstructed in the past 20 years, but people refer to it by its old, demolished landmarks; the ghost of cities past is ever present.  The great fortunes that made the city (Carnegie and Mellon - robber barons turned into great benefactors) are also ever present - names on buildings, on people (I am a ‘Mellon Professor’).  As I continue to live here I’m much looking forward to becoming sensitive to all the different stories the landscape weaves - all I know right now is that it’s a very tangled skein.

geof

Dhanggal,Yingiya and John at Garma

I have been watching some of the recent trials here on this TFC website, at a time when I have also been exploring sites like Flickr.  There are some astounding contrasts.  For me the biggest contrast is the way the TFC site makes only minimal attempts at hiding the traces of the work involved in doing Teaching From Country.  We get to see and hear and wait out with those involved, the times when things don’t work as well as when they do.  When screens shake or go blank it isn’t edited out.  It is most unusual screen play in a world hell bent on representing itself in controlled ways.  Take for instance the way people represent themselves on sites like Flickr and Facebook, with their ever more extreme (and yes, creative) avatars and names and use of language.  Mind you, given that the content of posts often seems banal in the extreme (15 versions of ‘great photo’ one after the other) it requires manipulation of the other variables to make a difference: the groovey spelling and punctuation (’Rly nice!!!!!!!!!!!!!;)), the ever more idiosyncratic self portraits; the ever more controlled and transformed representations and metaphors.  By contrast the effort not to censor the image of what TFC entails is thought provoking.  I know that some of the people involved have already spelled out the thinking behind this deliberate leaving of trails, in the article, Designing Digital Knowledge Management Tools with Aboriginal Australians (Verran et al, 2007) and that it is to do with staying located.  But what else can we say about it?  Anthea

I have updated the trials section of the website with trials that were conducted during May. In trial 22 Yingiya talks to Keith’s class about land, fire and waterholes. In trial 23 there is a display of screencasts and images from Badypady, where Yingiya’s turtle hunting ancestors lived. In trial 24 John and Yiŋiya took some people from Gapuwiyak to Dhämiyaka to tell the story about the milminydjarrk waterholes created by the Djaŋkawu sisters. Included is a sped up screencast of John’s computer screen showing all the action trying to get the technology to work. Trial 25 is a screencast of Yingiya testing the satellite setup from Gapuwiyak. In trial 26 John introduces Yiŋiya’s son Dhunumbu who introduced himself to the class.

Well the semester is finished, and so have the trials. Over the next couple of weeks Trevor will put up records of all the remaining trials. These include the expedition to Yiŋiya’s ancestral land at Badaypaday and Dhamiyaka, where he taught a couple of classes, including one for Keith Warner’s class in Santa Clara California. Dhamiyaka has a sacred waterhole call Milminydjarrk, created by the Djakawu sisters, and one of the Yolŋu students in the class is named Milminydjarrk from that well. On the last class for the semester, Dhäŋgal told the story of the other pair of Dhuwa creator sisters the Wagilak. She spoke from Wallaby Beach, with Yiŋiya pointing to the various sites on the map. Finally Yiŋiya used a powerpoint presentation to tell a story of ‘foreign connections and where we’re heading today’ which we will also put up on the website. Tomorrow we will have a meeting about the Intellectual property issues which have emerged during the project, getting ready to make a report at the seminar in July.

Some of the Yolŋu teachers have recently taken the step of sitting on the beach and talking about the land (trial 16), or walking around their community carrying their laptop (trial 17), or just sitting outside the house with the family and neighbours crowding around (trial 18). Yiŋiya and Gotha have both mentioned significant places they would like to show the students, but there is no internet connectivity there. So we have found a mobile satellite terminal which will work from anywhere in the world. John and Yiŋiya are intending to go out to Yiŋiya’s ancestral land next week, and use the satellite from significant places. Michael will stay back and man the classroom. Yiŋiya and John may even try to transmit a short session to Keith’s Faith, Ethics & the Biodiversity Crisis class in California next Tuesday.

Just a quick mention of a video conference tool we tried a few weeks ago, TokBox (Trevor, Keith, John and Michael). There are so many tools clamoring for attention to solve communications. While it did work and had some features for showing powerpoints and filckr photos, it seems to have fallen in the shadow of Skype (again)

Dear Friends, I am thinking of the remarks, especially I think from Gotha but also others, about the need to teach with/from/within the land. I wonder how this might be true for me, too.  I have moved from the place I was born (very far from where I now live), where my father’s people have lived for perhaps 250 years. My mother descends from jews who travelled from Russia to Berlin; some left and settled in America, some died in the Holocause. I love the place I live now for its beauty, and Geof and I share the land with a dear friend.  I often think of my birth home, but rarely go there.  When I am here, surrounded by books and pictures and reminders of long friendship, I feel that my body is bigger, and that I speak different.  More like a large boat, still travelling, but with welcome entanglements.  When I speak from a strange classroom, or hotel room, I feel more like a small boat that has no anchors or ties except my own memories.  But then, when we speak together of where we live, on this Internet.   I know that there are profound differences in how we connect to our lands, but also feel that we make a third land between us, a place where we are both strangers but where we may comfort each other and travel together for a while.  It’s not the same as sharing our own places, I do understand how teaching from a small and strange place is so hard.  But it makes me less lonely when we are both in this third space.  Do you know what I mean?  Thank you.  Leigh