Waking up to Indigenous culture on national TV
By ABC Open Producer Anthony Scully for ABC Mother Tongue, 10 December 2014.
Children from the Milabah Centre based at Windale Public School were back in front of television cameras this week for the launch of Mugu Kids, a 20-part morning TV program which premiered this week on National Indigenous Television (NITV).
ABC Open was invited to the Hunter launch to see children perform songs in Awabakal language, to cover the story for listeners of ABC Local Radio, and research our own collaboration with the community for Mother Tongue in early 2015.
The innovative Mugu Kids (translation: cheeky kids) program highlights and showcases a number of Indigenous languages from around Australia, and is fronted by Indigenous actress, writer and director Jub Clerc, who was in the Hunter for the launch.
Ms Clerc, along with Jacqui Allen from the Newcastle-based Miromaa Aboriginal Language Centre, filmed a segment for the program this week, to be screened in a future episode.
“Last year we did some filming for the production, and today we’re here to watch our final cuts and to get some goodie bags for the kids,” Ms Allen said.
For the NITV cameras at this week’s launch children taught ‘Jub’ how to sing the childrens favourite Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes and Advance Australia Fair in Awabakal.
Ms Allen says ‘learning traditional language is an important key for Indigenous people in unlocking culture’.
“When we teach our kids culture in school it’s very important to learn the language of the land as well, so all of it comes together,” she said.
Roselea Newburn, facilitator at the Milabah ‘schools as community’ Centre, says the language program achieves one of the centre’s aims of running community capacity-building activities.
“My role is to bring in people to work with our kids and build our community,” Ms Newburn said, “and I think that this language program is really doing that.”
“It’s involving our parents, our kids, and our big kids are teaching our little kids, it’s been just amazing.”
“We’ve really only been doing the language program for just on 12 months so now for us to be on NITV is pretty cool.
“I think we’ve got a deadly mob here and I’m just filled with pride and I’ll probably start crying shortly, because I always do whenever I start talking about the kids here. I’m just so proud to be a part of it.”
Nothing quite like it
There’s never been anything quite like Mugu Kids for Indigenous children, according to Ms Newburn.
“(Growing up) we didn’t see (Aboriginal faces on the TV),” she said. “And for our kids to learn things in school and to be as involved in the Aboriginal community, that didn’t happen when my kids or myself were at school, so times are changing and changing in a really positive way.”
Ms Allen says the school curriculum has evolved in the way Australian history and culture is taught.
“When I was growing up we basically learnt about Captain Cook landing and that was basically it,” she said.
“We learnt what a didjeridu was and what a boomerang was and that was it, so I feel quite proud to go out and share my culture as well as the local language of this land with the kids of today.”
Jub Clerc hopes Mugu Kids will be an entertaining, fun and accessible way for children up to eight years old to embrace their Indigenous culture through language.
“Identifying as an Aboriginal person is easy, because that’s who you are, but there’s something about learning your language that’s incredible,” Ms Clerc said.
“It’s like an epiphany and you almost feel like the country can hear you talking to it again, because you’re talking in the language that it knows.
“You feel like you’re healing yourself and you’re healing country and if we can just keep on spreading that and getting everybody — Indigenous and non-Indigenous — to start speaking the language of these areas, it’s going to change everything. That’s what I hope.”
Watch Mugu Kids at 8am weekdays on NITV and SBS On Demand.
