This is a report of the inaugural Education International (EI) Indigenous Educators' Seminar and the World Indigenous Peoples Conference: Education 2008 held in Melbourne during December 2008. Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander representatives selected by their respective Branch or Associated Body attended these important international events on Indigenous education.

The Australian affiliates of Education International (EI), the Australian Education Union, the Independent Education Union and the National Tertiary Education Union hosted the EI Indigenous Educators Seminar “Quality Education and Social Justice” at Conferences on Clarendon, FEU Building, South Bank on 6th December 2008.

The following day AEU representatives attended the 2008 World Indigenous Peoples Conference: Education (WIPCE) is during the week of 7th – 11th December 2008. WIPCE is a triennial conference of international significance that attracts peoples from around the globe to celebrate and share diverse cultures, traditions and knowledge with a focus on world Indigenous education. WIPCE 2008 explored some of the questions raised by living within competing knowledge systems and looking beyond the horizon where complementary knowledge can be used to shape their futures

EI Indigenous Educators' Seminar.

The Education International (EI) 5th World Congress in Berlin saw deliberations on the establishment of an Indigenous Education Steering Committee in recognition of the significance and importance of providing quality education to Indigenous Peoples worldwide. Furthermore, informal discussions were held on the possibility of EI hosting an EI Indigenous Educators Seminar preceding the 2008 World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education (WIPCE) in Melbourne, Australia.

This gathering of more than 100 participants representing 25 trade union organisations from many countries including members of the national ATSIEC (General and TAFE Divisions) convened to examine the role of education unions in addressing Indigenous education. The gathering also emphasises the key role of education unions working positively with Indigenous Peoples. Issues of language, education and the preservation of culture are of paramount importance. So too are related issues of colonisation and assimilation, truth and reconciliation. The Seminar allowed for the diverse perspectives of all participants and for serious and thoughtful contributions.

The EI Seminar provided an opportunity to look more closely at how education in today's world economy may be a major factor in the continuing process of assimilation, colonisation, cultural and linguistic genocide of indigenous peoples. It also provided the opportunity to examine the role of education unions in addressing these issues in the education contexts, and to share models of unions working positively with indigenous peoples. A key principle of the EI Indigenous Educators' Seminar was the acknowledgement of the role that teachers, education workers and their organisations have in ensuring the promotion and preservation of cultural identity of Indigenous peoples and in providing quality education experiences and outcomes.

This very successful initiative resulted in inputs and recommendations on future work for Education International to move forward its agenda on Indigenous matters, including the role of unions in achieving quality education for all children and social justice for all people, in particular in informing the work of the Ad Hoc Committee and planned Indigenous Education Symposium scheduled for mid-2009 that is extremely valuable. The Steering Committee is currently developing a draft Communiqué which will be made available to all participants and forwarded to the EI Office in Brussels for their next meeting in March 2009.

World Indigenous Peoples' Conference: Education (WIPCE) 2008.

The World Indigenous Peoples Conference: Education (WIPCE) is a triennial conference of international significance that attracts peoples from around the globe to celebrate and share diverse cultures, traditions and knowledge with a focus on world Indigenous education. The purpose of WIPCE is to provide a forum to come together, share and learn and promote best practice in Indigenous education policies, programs and practice. The 2008 WIPCE, hosted by the Victorian Aboriginal Education Association Inc was held in on the traditional lands of the Kulin Nation, Melbourne from Sunday 7th – Thursday 11th December 2008 at the Rod Laver Arena and attracted over 4000 participants from at least 18 countries.

A triennial International conference, WIPCE 2008 focused on Indigenous Education in the 21st Century: Respecting Tradition, Shaping the Future, with each working day governed by a specific theme. WIPCE provided an opportunity to showcase efforts to provide educational experiences suitable to individual and unique communities and was a time to celebrate Indigenous peoples' strengths and capacity to uphold traditions and knowledge systems. It was also a chance to consider how Indigenous people, would like to see education shaped into the future to meet their respective needs.

The fundamental need to preserve Indigenous languages became an overriding theme at the conference. Bruce Pascoe of the Federation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Languages was the first Key Note speaker to address Monday's theme of Respecting Tradition, stated emphatically that bilingual education is successful for Indigenous children in bridging the gap.

Speaking to Tuesday's theme of Living with Competing Knowledge Systems Dr Chris Sarra of the Indigenous Education Leadership Institute, Australia outlined a 'stronger, smarter' approach to education of our children. “If we want children to be hungry to learn, we have to be hungry to teach.” “Embracing a positive sense of cultural identity as part of excellence, and not instead of it (is vital),” he said.

The Australian Government representatives were The Honourable Maxine McKew, Parliamentary Secretary for Early Childhood Education and Child Care, who presented during the conference and Jenny Macklin, Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs, spoke at the Closing Concert.

The last working day was governed by the theme Beyond the Horizon, which Key Note speaker Dr Marie Battiste interpreted as pointing to “and beyond the strengths and limitations of our embodied perception, a place of promise, fascination, hope, and desire.” In 1984 Dr Battiste became the first First Nations woman in Canada to receive a doctorate, she shared her own peoples' journey from resilience to acknowledge and honour the renaissance of Indigenous peoples. “This emergent story,” she said “is about a small but growing number of Indigenous peoples, a critical mass of Indigenous learners who have survived an assimilationist and disempowering agenda in education with determination, their own critical edge, and desire to move the imposed boundaries of Eurocentric education to begin to walk their own path toward empowering and liberating themselves, and their nations as a whole.”

WIPCE impacts positively on the educational outcomes and lives of Indigenous people across the planet. Formal education provides Indigenous with a broad set of options to shape their own futures and with tools to tell their own stories to the wider community; our challenge is to balance the learnings from formal systems within Indigenous traditions.

The Quechua people of Cusco, Peru will host WIPC:E 2011.

Wayne Costelloe
Federal Aboriginal Education Officer.