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TALKIN' UP AND SPEAKIN OUT'
Aboriginal and Multicultural Voices in Early Childhood

Miriam Giugni and Kerry Mundine

Miriam Giugni has an Associate Diploma in Social Science (Child Studies) TAFE, Bachelor of Education Early Childhood (Honours) University of Western Sydney. She recently completed her PhD at the Centre for Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood, University of Melbourne. She is currently teaching at SDN Children's Centre Redfern as well as working as an Early Childhood Research and Learning Adviser (across all SDN Children's Education and Care Centres). Miriam is beginning to publish her research and teaching narratives internationally. She is passionate about social justice and equity and believes that teaching is an important form of activism. Miriam is an active member of the Social Justice in Early Childhood group and the inner West Critical Curriculum Community in Sydney..

Kerry Mundine has a Bachelor of Teaching in Early Childhood Education from Macquarie University. She has years experience, working mainly in Indigenous early childhood centres. These include Murawina Multipurpose Aboriginal Children's Service, Redfern, Wunanbiri Preschool, Alexandria, Rockdale Long Day Early Childhood Children's Centre and Wellington Community Children's Centre. She is currently employed as a teacher at Hurstville City Council Children's Services Department. Equity has been an important focus in her work with children, especially as an Indigenous woman. Kerry is reflective on her practices to seek the untouchable, invisible inequities in early childhood and change them. She works towards improving injustices of minority groups in multicultural Australia.

This is an extract from the introduction

‘ Australia has always been a multicultural continent. At least 350 nations of Indigenous Australians have lived here ‘since the beginning.’
(Townsend Cross, 2004, p 4)

Aboriginal (Indigenous) and multicultural issues are the most significant part of everyday early childhood curriculum in Australia. When early childhood curriculum is inclusive, focused on diversity and difference, and politically engaged then social justice is possible. This book is the result of many experiences and conversations between the early childhood educators who have inscribed its pages with their yarns, stories and narratives of working for social justice. The writers in this book follow in the footsteps of a number of early childhood activists who have enabled an ongoing conversation about social justice in everyday early childhood education.

This book is written by a diverse range of people and so it is written for a diverse audience. Each story in this book is written by an early childhood educator or early childhood activist. The early childhood educators and activists share their yarns, stories and narratives as examples of everyday practice where they have struggled and at times succeeded in acting differently to tackle issues of social justice.

In the foot steps of early childhood activists
For many years, early childhood educators across the globe have been engaging ideas of diversity and difference, social justice and equity in early childhood curriculum. For this reason, we are indebted to the ground breaking work of women such as Derman Sparks (1989) in the United States, and Creaser and Dau (1995), and Dau (2001) in Australia, and many others internationally who have put and kept social justice on the agenda. Because of their actions and writings we have been able to keep up the good fight to seek ways to deal with discrimination and promote social justice in our early childhood work.

While the anti-bias curriculum and approaches have led the way, other research has emerged in Australia that takes our anti-bias work and commitment to social justice in another direction. Robinson and Jones Díaz (2000; 2006), and MacNaughton (2005), have expanded our anti bias thinking and offered critical and poststructural theoretical options for thinking differently about our work for social justice by highlighting the effects of using critical and poststructural theories in daily practice.

MacNaughton (2005) asks us to consider the rationales we have sitting behind our practices in order to think through: who is privileged and who is silenced, what are the politics embedded in what we do in our work with children and families and how do the big picture ideas directly affect our daily practice with children. Similarly, Robinson and Jones Díaz (2000; 2006) stress the importance of knowing that politics and power can influence and shape our everyday work in early childhood. By being engaged with the politics of doing, social justice work in early childhood education is one of many ways to think through living differently in ways that benefit children, families and early childhood communities.

To think differently, Robinson and Jones Díaz (2000; 2006), MacNaughton (2005) and a range of other international authors including Grieshaber and Cannella (2001), draw on feminist poststructural, critical, whiteness, queer and a range of other theories. These theories offer new ways of thinking and practising that other familiar early childhood theories may not. For example, theories of child development offer particular kinds of knowledge about ‘the child’, but may not focus explicitly on exposing the politics and power relations that critical and poststructural theories might.

This book shares the yarns stories and narratives of how early childhood educators and activists have been inspired by the literature that we draw attention to here. The yarns, stories and narratives demonstrate change processes and first time forays into new kinds of thinking about working in early childhood with these ideas. The stories in this book are not necessarily academic engagement with critical, poststructural and other theories listed above, but instead a response to how early childhood educators used the work of researchers such as Robinson and Jones Díaz (2000; 2006), Grieshaber and Cannella (2001) and MacNaughton (2005) who have ‘translated’ the usefulness of such theories into practice. We hope that the ways in which people have used these ‘translations’ to inform their practice might inspire you to see this book as a beginning, and then search beyond it for engagement with critical, poststructural, whiteness, queer and feminist theories that could help you think differently in order to teach for social justice.

In terms of Aboriginal thinking and theories, there is a significant paucity in early childhood professional literature. So, the Aboriginal authors in this book break new ground by sharing stories and experiences that in turn create examples of the specificity of each approach in each community. In doing this we acknowledge the work of Aboriginal early childhood educators and scholars who have led the way for us in our practice and influence our work: Karin Martin, Sue Atkinson Lopez, Marcel Townsend Cross, Judy Atkinson, Bevan Cassidy and Veronica Johns.

The writers in this book represent a range of untrained, two-year TAFE trained and university qualified, new graduates, and highly experienced early childhood educators. Many of the writers are bilingual and bi-cultural, multilingual and multicultural yet writing in English which may be a second or third language. Owing to this diverse range of languages and literacies, the yarns, stories and narratives reflect the various kinds of ‘English’ that people speak and write.

One feature of this book is the practical exploration of ways to shift our thinking about ‘inclusion’ from white western ways (always at the centre), to more diverse and democratic forms of ‘inclusion’. Often we talk about ‘including all cultures’ which begs the question—include them into what? Instead we are trying to offer yarns, stories and narratives that trouble this idea. One example is that for the purposes of this book, we centre Aboriginality. We use the term ‘non-Aboriginal’ instead of ‘mainstream’. We preface early childhood educators with ‘non-Aboriginal’ (culturally and linguistically diverse educators included) to place Aboriginalities centre stage. One significant point to remember is that Aboriginal peoples are a diverse group. There are many terms that the authors in this book use to refer to themselves such as Koori, Murri, Aboriginal; in other places for the purposes of this book we use the term ‘Aboriginal’—a white colonial term, but a political term that each of the Aboriginal writers in this book have used. There may be disagreement about the use of the term ‘Aboriginal’ (for those of us who are Aboriginal and those who are not) and we encourage readers to have conversations about why. Because this book has been written in a certain time and place we acknowledge that the term Aboriginal will be more or less problematic depending on the reader, time passing and the context in which the stories are being read.

Introduction
Talkin’ Up and Speakin’ Out — Miriam Giugni and Kerry Mundine

Constellation 1
Indigenous/whiteness
1. Flower Girl — Kerry Mundine
2. Whiteness — Miriam Giugni, Kathryn Bown, Sophie Martin and Maria Pappas
3. Non Indigenous Parents — Amanda Marr
4. Anatomy of Guitar
5. Walking in Black and White — Adam Duncan

Constellation 2
Gender/sexuality
1. Boys can’t — Tracey Freeburn
2. Too innocent — Vicki Harding
3. Cartooning Curriculum — Su Sher
4. Mummies are beautiful — Prue, Lou and Darcy

Constellation 3
Ethnicity/language
1. The hidden politics of harmony celebrations:
Where has all the racism gone? — Christina Ho
2. Complexities of Speaking Greek — Voula Kastoumis
3. Plastic food — Rebecca Whit
4. Urban bush tucker — Tracey Linn Bostock

Constellation 4
Ability
1. Quote — Wendy Lawson
2. Let the other be the other — Jill McLachlan
3. Disability or Diverse Abilities? — Loraine Madden
4. Ready for Care? — Mariam Christodoulos
5. What’s so special? — Barbel Winter
6. He is our beautiful son — Alicia, Cheikh and Kura
7. Shut up and Kisses — Sharon Jerome King

Constellation 5
Refugees
1. Inclusions and exclusions: Coming to Australia — Amrit Versha and Dominic Fitzsimmons
2. Contrasting childhoods: Rethinking the image of the child —
Trish Highfield and Alicia Flack
3. Refugees on Gamilaraay land — Louise Cave

Constellation 6
Spirituality/Religion 1. Tend — Leonie McNamara
2. Diwali —Savithri Madakasira
3. Stepping stones — Tracey Linn Bostock
4. But you don’t look like a Jew — Sylvia Turner
5. What is the real name for a Muslim? — Sene Gide
6. My journey in Faith — Izelda Sore

Gardens
TPCC
Wilkins
Drawings — Su Sher

Poem
Finding my way — Leonie McNamara
Closing Chapter
Talkin’ Up and Speakin’ out: Activism and politics in early childhood education for equity and social justice — Miriam Giugni.

Pre-orders for this wonderful forthcoming book are now being taken. Please Click here to place an order.

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