On most sunny weekday mornings, it is usual to find Yalmambirra beside the granite boulders and grass trees at the front of CSU’s environmental science building at Thurgoona near the NSW Victorian border, drinking a cup of tea and reading an academic paper.

 

Yal, as he’s commonly known, is a Wiradjuri man and elder with a quiet, unhurried energy that invites you to slow down, put aside the cares of a busy day and reflect on the natural beauty around you.

 

Yal, 59, is happy to share how education has helped his life – especially if it will encourage other Indigenous people to give university a go, to understand that it is possible to do so without a formal education.

 

 

“I would like to see more Indigenous students at university but there are a number of reasons why that doesn’t happen - social, political and cultural,” says Yal, who grew up in Sydney’s western suburbs and left school aged 10 years.

 

“I was a bad bugger when I was young and got sent to a boy’s home for 11 months.”

 

Yal started work when he was 12, sweeping floors in the clay pipe factory his uncle managed and his father worked.

 

“I had no educational background. My education came from my workmates who were much older than me.”

 

For the next 30 years Yal moved from job to job in Sydney … concreting, bricklaying, labouring … .always involving physical work. He had 30 jobs and 65 different starts at jobs that didn’t work out.

 

 

Then in 1995 after 12 months of selling dried dog food, Yal’s life took a new direction when he joined his younger brother, Robert, in a consultancy managing Indigenous cultural resources. This involved giving cultural awareness lessons in schools, colleges and TAFEs and doing archaeological survey work.

 

The business disbanded when his brother, who had gone through the Koori Admissions Program at CSU, began studies for a Bachelor’s degree in Parks, Recreation and Heritage by distance education with the University.

 

“Robert dared me to go into the Koori program and made me promise that if I passed I would go onto to university and see it all the way through, from degree to PhD,” says Yal, who took up the dare and is doing just that. Yal was 44 when he took this academic path, doing the same degree as his brother, moving from Sydney and  to Albury to do the course full-time on campus.

 

 

While still a student, Yal won a contract position as a lecturer in Indigenous studies with the University’s Murray School of Education. In 2000, the Koori academic position at Thurgoona became vacant.

 

“I was pushed and prodded and cajoled into filling out my application, knowing full well I wasn’t going to get the job. Then they turned around and gave it to me!” says Yal who took up the new position before graduating.

 

Yalmambirra now lectures in principles of Indigenous Land Management, Indigenous Studies, History and Philosophy of Education, and Social Contexts: Education and Society. In 2002, he completed his Honors project on “Heritage Management in Wiradjuri Country: Indigenous Perceptions of Consultation”.  

 

In 2003 he began his PhD on “The Validity of Indigenous Cultures in Contemporary Australia: A Wiradjuri Case Study”, which he hopes to submit by the end of 2009. His supervisors are CSU academics Dr Rik Thwaites and Dr Jim Birckhead.

 

His current studies require him to investigate old diaries, notebooks and historical literature to look at how Indigenous people have been identified by non-Indigenous people.

 

“In order to understand where people are today you need to be able to understand where they were in the past,” says Yal. He has also conducted 41 interviews with Indigenous people throughout Wiradjuri country, which covers two thirds of NSW and parts of Victoria, asking about their cultural background and knowledge, and the importance of identification before the European ‘invasion’.

 

These interviews also touch on the different aspects of the impact of invasion, including the ‘stolen generations’, dispossession and relocation to missions and reserves; the impacts of government policies and Acts as they applied to Indigenous people in the past; and how contemporary policies and legislation define Indigenous people today.

 

“I found many Wiradjuri peoples had little knowledge of their cultural background simply because the old people who had the knowledge on specific things, especially gender issues, had passed away and that knowledge had not been passed down,” says Yal.

 

Despite the workload, Yal says he “absolutely loves research. It is one of the best things that has ever come my way, especially research about Indigenous peoples, specifically Wiradjuri. I am a Wiradjuri elder and I need to do research for the benefit of all Wiradjuri people, both now and into the future."

 

Yal’s name, given when he first moved to Albury by Wiradjuri elder, the late Pastor Cec Grant, means ‘speak, teach’. It is obvious Yal enjoys teaching. It’s not unusual to see him sitting with a group of students outside on the University’s Thurgoona site, or to see students sitting cross-legged outside his office.

 

 

Since 2000, Yal has completed a lot of tree planting on his property to enhance a 2ha wetland, is involved in the Mungabareena Reserve Reconciliation Project, and manages a traditional Wiradjuri campsite at Wonga Wetlands, near Albury.

 

“I think it is extremely important to have an Indigenous understanding of place in the whole scheme of things, including environmental issues,” says Yal.

 

“In the past the land has been raped and degraded. We are only now seeing the repercussions of that, and we are trying to address the impacts of what people have done to the land. I think that Indigenous understanding seems to be missing in many of our Honours and PhD projects. One day I would like to see a list of projects with Indigenous content that students can choose from.”

 

Yal, who admits he never had any ambition to go to university and become an academic, finds it incredible that he not only followed in his brother’s footsteps, but so have two of his four adult sons – one graduated from CSU a few years ago with the same degree as Yal and another has graduated from Southern Cross University with a degree in Indigenous Studies.

 

Yal is not so sure about being called ‘Dr Yalmambirra’, though he seems to be coming around to the idea.