MANY years ago, a young nun became frustrated when two children refused to stand together during a school concert rehearsal. She thought their defiance was tomfoolery.
She couldn’t have been more wrong.
“A Tiwi woman took me aside and explained that the children had been promised to each other. According to culture, to tradition, they had to stay apart until they were old enough to marry,” recalled retired teacher and
member of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart congregation, Sister Anne Gardiner.
Sr Anne had arrived on Bathurst Island, the second largest of the nine islands making up the Tiwi group, a few years earlier, aged just 22.
Growing up in the NSW rural town of Gundagai, she’d had had very little prior contact with Indigenous Australians.
“I thought I was there to teach, to preach, and I didn’t listen,” the 85-year-old told The Senior during a candid interview days after being named 2017 Senior Australian of the Year.
“That day I started to listen and learn.”
The importance of listening is a lesson Sr Anne hopes to impart on policymakers.
“Paternalism is not the answer,” she said.
“Policymakers still make that mistake. They don’t consult First Australians before making policies that affect their living.
“Policies need to recognise and appropriately include First People’s language and cultures, particularly in areas of leadership, education and employment.
“Sadly some of the cultural understandings and their incorporation into policies which enable communities such as the Tiwi to maintain and develop their cultural strength while simultaneously engaging with the wider world are not in place in Australia today.
“My hope is that this will be redressed in my lifetime.”
Later this month, Sr Anne will hand over custodianship of Patakajiyali museum, the culmination of more than 40 years’ collecting and learning that began when she recognised her students’ need to know their past.
The museum’s seven galleries record the Tiwi people’s spirituality and sporting heritage, particularly in Australian Rules football, and record culture and language. A devotion room honours the role of mission work since 1911.
Since her retirement in 1997 as principal of the local primary school, Sr Anne has run an op shop and coffee shop to support her much-loved community and its museum.
She has also established many community groups, from a mothers’ club to Little Athletics.
Now is the time, she says, for the Tiwi community to run the museum, visited by children from surrounding islands as well growing numbers of intrepid visitors.
“It has been my joy to witness and experience Tiwi people
manage organisations, conduct schools and health clinics, train others in a range of areas and administer businesses,” Sr Anne said.
“They have done this by being confident in who they are as their language and culture remain strong.
“They have done it, too, while having to confront substance abuse, suicide, domestic violence and other signs of a community in stress.
“The Tiwi Islands are not as isolated as when I arrived. Facebook, mobile phones, TV – they bring western ways that may not always be beneficial.
“There is strength in knowing your past.”
