Classes across the state

Communities & land: from 1983 on

In its early years, the Co-operative for Aborigines had concentrated on supporting a small number of community co-operatives in far north Queensland and in northern NSW. By the early 1980s, however, a broader approach was needed. The expansion of structures and funding relating to Aboriginal communities required rapid expansion of skills in communities across the state.

See Learning in Activism: Land and Heritage: Challenges for Land Councils

In the new circumstances of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act, 1983, Kevin Cook and Bob Bellear expanded the educational strategies across the state, to both rural and urban areas, by focussing training on the needs of Aboriginal people in the new Land Councils which covered the whole of New South Wales. Tranby staff often delivered teaching alongside experienced community members. Tranby graduates might become teachers or they might be participants in courses in their own communities as Land Council and community organisation members.

→ Outline of NSWALC history

Making the Act work

Although the Act had been passed, it was still hard to understand and required much training to be able to manage the new ‘Local Aboriginal Land Councils’ and to research to claim whatever vacant Crown Land remained in each area. As Judy Chester, an Aboriginal woman from Western Sydney, said in an interview: ‘They said, ‘Right, you’ve got land rights’, but they never trained anyone.’ (Making Change Happen, 2013, by Kevin Cook and Heather Goodall, p252, ANU Press).

And initially there was no funding for any training. This was where Tranby came in. Using its own meagre funds, Tranby employed a sympathetic activist lawyer, John Terry, who had earlier worked at Walgett and Wilcannia, to write a ‘Plain Language’ version of the Land Rights Act so Aboriginal people could understand it. Tranby organised for John to travel to many communities across NSW to hold workshops about what the Act actually meant.

The second thing Tranby could do – drawing on the courses it was already running in literacy and business training – was to support people as they tried to find where any vacant Crown Land might be in their area. The Land Department records are notoriously confusing. Blocks of land are recorded by Lot number and divisions like ‘Parish’ and ‘County’ which often make little sense to anyone who does not work in the Department records. So from 1985, Tranby offered both advice and research contacts to Land Councils all over the State to help them find their way through these difficult records as well as running formal classes where possible.

In one example, members of the Gandangara LALC in western Sydney, whose founding members had taken part in the NOW course in 1984, approached Tranby for assistance in 1985 as they tried to wade through the paperwork to make a claim and for contacts with people in the Lands Department to identify vacant Crown Land. They were also able to train informally with Tranby bookkeeper, Sidney Wells to learn rudimentary skills. (Making Change Happen, 2013, by Kevin Cook and Heather Goodall, pp252-3; 256-8, ANU Press).

Another problem facing Land Councils was the paperwork needed to account for funds. The State Government required what it called a ‘Uniform Accounting System’ to be used by all Land Councils to manage the funding they received through the Act. As Tranby knew well, most Aboriginal people had had little access to formal education and few sympathetic environments to allow them to develop their confidence in learning skills like the mathematics needed for bookkeeping. So Tranby, with organisational and funding support from the Regional Land Councils, brought Local Land Council members together for classes in the numeracy required for this accounting system. These classes were held in halls or clubs across the state, wherever each of the Regional Land Councils was able to bring people together for classes in comfortable settings, as well as to share meals and comfortable conversations to learn from each other’s experiences. Organising these classes in 1985 and 1986 led to the formation of the ADU.

Finally, in yet another type of training once the ADU was set up, Tranby organised general management training workshops for land councils in various places, including the South Coast at Bateman’s Bay in August 1987, when 28 people attended. Archivist Julia Mant’s catalogue (Pages 1 & 2. Not accessible to the public) of Tranby Archives holdings on Land Council training includes these early workshops from 1985 to 1988.

Land Council training program: 1988-1989

After the ADU was established (see Learning on the Job), the Land Councils called on State and Federal Government to fund a program of formal training through the ADU for bookeeping and organisational management skills. Tranby was called on to deliver the program, which was funded partially in 1988 but was only able to start fully in 1989. The funding bodies were the NSW Aboriginal Land Council (ALC), the NSW Office of Aboriginal Affairs (OAA), the Federal Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET), the NSW Department of Technical and Further Education (TAFE) and Tranby itself, which covered the cost of course development, co-ordination and deliver.

The Tranby program was structured to offer training to Aboriginal people working at each level of the Three Tier Structure – at the NSW Land Council level, the Regional Land Council level (with two-day workshops) and the Locals. Most teaching and learning attention was focussed on the Locals – with the ‘Back on our Feet’ (three-day workshop) and the ‘Up and Running’ (six-day workshop) programs but also a five-day workshop for LALC members where Administrators had been installed because of financial irregularities.

→ 1989 ADU Report on Land Council Training

For this funded Land Council training program, Tranby through the ADU organised coordinating trainers for each stage from the Tranby teaching staff and then, for each workshop, recruited a local coordinator from the region where the workshop was being held. These workshops were held in a number of towns in each one of the nine regions of the State as identified in the Land Rights Act. Each region had a Regional Land Council at that stage which organised for the Local Land Councils within it to send representatives to the Workshops.

The Tranby Archives hold records on all the workshops held under the training programs for Land Councils from 1985 onwards, including the funded Training Program – in the three stages laid out in the 1989 Report. (See Julia Mant’s catalogue Pages 1 & 2. Not accessible to the public.).

LINKS

→ Making Change Happen, 2013, by Kevin Cook and Heather Goodall, p252, ANU Press

→ Archivist Julia Mant’s catalogue of Tranby Archives holdings on Land Council training, including the early workshops from 1985 to 1988, prior to the funded workshops. Pages 1 & 2. Not accessible to the public.

→ 1989 ADU Report on Land Council Training