28-05-2025
Push for school curriculum changes to improve First Nations history literacy
When Jegan Sivanesan's nieces began asking him about First Nation's history, he didn't know how to respond.
"They would have NAIDOC week [at school], they'd have questions, not really being able to answer a lot of questions was confronting," he said.
The first-generation immigrant from Sri Lanka grew up in the northern Victorian town of Mooroopna, but said his schooling barely scratched the surface of Australia's pre-colonial history.
"What we did learn was about the First Fleet and a bit about the Stolen Generations but nothing that really went in depth, which was challenging," Mr Sivanesan said.
Bombarded with questions from his son as well as his nieces, Mr Sivanesan decided to fill his gap in historical knowledge through further reading and attending the Yoorrook Justice Commission's public hearings.
"It was an opportunity to talk about things that I've felt for a while, to be able to bring up that our education system needs to be really reformed so that our next generations can learn about these things," he said.
Mr Sivanesan is not alone in his experience, with others raising the issue in submissions made to the Yoorrook Justice Commission.
Yoorrook is the first Australian truth-telling process of its kind, led and designed by First Peoples, with the powers of a royal commission.
The inquiry is piecing together Victoria's true history, by listening to the experiences of First Peoples through an inquiry focusing on injustices within health, education, country, criminal justice and child protection.
Multiple witnesses have told Yoorrook that settlements were illegally established outside of the boundary set by the Crown, in areas across Victoria in the 1830s, including the Henty brothers' settlement of the area now known as Portland.
It also heard from researchers involved in mapping the 49 known massacres in Victoria in which 1,045 Aboriginal people were killed.
A report is due to be handed down in June and is expected to include recommendations to modify the school curriculum to include the inquiry's findings.
Mr Sivenasan was one of dozens of Victorians who made a submission to the inquiry.
As was Our Lady of Sion Sister Denise Cusack, who said she learnt almost nothing about First Nations history during her schooling, only becoming aware of it as an adult.
"We would have known growing up that the Aboriginal people were here in this country but nowhere near the awareness of their sovereignty, what happened to them, what happened to the country," she said.
"I realised much, much later on that there was a tangible grief in the country, that people carried, they weren't setting out to put all this on us.
"But there's something in the country, I think, that carries that grief."
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan was the first Australian leader of a state or territory government to appear before an Indigenous-led truth telling inquiry last month.
Ms Allan said she was distressed and ashamed to learn of the brutality involved in massacres of Aboriginal people on Dja Dja Wurrung country, where she lives in Central Victoria.
She said her government was committed to ensuring Yoorrook's findings on Victoria's full history was better taught at schools.
"Growing up and living as I have all my life, in Central Victoria, on Dja Dja Wurrung country, I did not know about the massacres that occurred so close to home," Ms Allan said.
"That was the area that was particularly concerning to me that I hadn't learnt of that, the depth and the extent of the brutality that went on as part of that.
"What I see as the legacy of this part [Yoorrook] of the process is to be the writing of the fundamental truth of the history of our state, for that truth to be told in classrooms across the state."
Yoorrook Chair Aunty Eleanor Bourke said in a speech at the Melbourne Press Club earlier this month that Yoorrook was expected to make more than 100 recommendations based on the evidence coming before the Commission.
"These recommendations include significant reforms to broken systems, and a range of practical solutions to problems the government can implement now," she said.
"Yoorrook also wants to see improvements to education, such as the way history and other subjects are taught in school.
"This includes better teaching methods for First People's students and for all children to be educated as to the true history of the settlement of Victoria and its impacts on First Peoples."
Professor Bourke said learning about the past from First Peoples' perspective would allow students to better understand how the past connects with the present.
She said the history taught in schools was different to the history experienced by First Peoples and that the people behind the massacres and the removal of children from their families were remembered as founding fathers, pioneers and heroes.
"They were cogs in the colonial machine, which was charging full steam ahead, leaving a wake of death and human devastation behind," Professor Bourke said.
"Yoorrook's goal has never been to encourage shame or guilt. Instead, listen and learn, open your heart and your mind to our story.
Last week, the Yoorrook Justice Commission began its Walk for Truth, inviting the public to join them throughout the journey from Portland on Gunditjmara country, where colonisation began, to Parliament House in Melbourne.
The walk will mark the commission's report being handed down to Parliament.
Victorian Year 10 student and Yorta Yorta Bundjalung Wiradjuri woman Gymea said throughout her 11 years of schooling, there were only two pages within a textbook that addressed Indigenous culture, condensing information about Captain Cook, protests, NAIDOC week and Australia Day into just a few classes.
Gymea even approached her school's Vice Principal, who spoke with the Head of Humanities, who then contacted the publisher of the history textbook about the lack of First Nations history content.
"I don't think that Aboriginal history is taught enough at school because there are so many other things to our history like we have different clans, different tribes, different languages … and people don't know that," she said.
Gymea said she learnt about Aboriginal history through her family and many of her peers asked her directly about her culture.
"There is more to what happened in our history, I feel like people are living too much in the past," she said.
"They're living too much in the protesting of what happened to Indigenous people instead of embracing our culture more and putting it out there more."
Deakin University NIKERI Institute lecturer and Dja Dja Wurrung man Aleryk Fricker said the Victorian school curriculum and the teaching of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history was inadequate.
He said the commission's report would likely highlight the deficiencies present within curriculums across the country for decades.
"It's often quite bitsy, it's inconsistent, and there's no real scope of sequence of engagement," Dr Fricker said.
"One of the ways that we can address this is to support teachers to be able to deliver quality content better.
"This involves professional learning and involves the provision of quality resources."
For the curriculum to change Dr Fricker said recommendations would need to be passed through to the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority which will liaise with the Department of Education before it's reviewed by the national curriculum body, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority.
He said the challenge in modifying the curriculum was that the content could not be standardised as First Nations history differed across Victoria.
Dr Fricker said reform was needed across early childhood, primary and secondary education.
"We need to recognise that Indigenous content goes across every single discipline area. Literacy was not invented when the Europeans arrived, nor was mathematics, nor was science, nor was geography.
"These are all discipline areas that have had Indigenous knowledge as a part of them for millennia and these need to be featured centrally in all of these different discipline areas."
