Each year at Austins Ferry we dedicate two weeks of our learning to develop a deeper understanding of Aboriginal cultural awareness.  We are extremely lucky to have the ASK workers with us during this time.

On Monday we were excited to welcome our Aboriginal Educators from the ASK (Aboriginal Sharers of Knowledge) team to our school.  Kylie, Nindarra and Mandy worked with Year 5/6 and explored the Gumnuts to Buttons activity.

Following this session the ASK Educators worked with Grade 3/4 students learning about how Aboriginal storytelling has helped pass on culture, values and practice to help develop our cultural understandings.

The day finished with Year 2/3 where students were very excited to learn more around the development and history of tool making in the Aboriginal communities.

The gum nuts to buttons session is about trying to teach us kids about the Aboriginals in a sort of different way instead of sitting through a boring clip or documentary. They are teaching us about when the Europeans came to Tasmania and how they lived from there and what happened.  The gumnuts represented the Aboriginals, the buttons represented the Europeans, the flags represented where Aboriginals were allowed to go after the attack of the Europeans and the boats represented the boats that the Europeans travelled on to get to Tasmania.

By Emmi Stokman

Gumnuts to buttons was about the way the Aboriginals lived before the Europeans came and destroyed their way of life.  Three things that I found interesting were that they thought white people were spirits because of their pale skin.  Another thing was that the Aboriginals called the guns sticks because they didn’t have weapons like that.  The last thing is that the Europeans did horrible tests on Aboriginal people by taking their hair and skin for testing.

By Diego Luttrell