So when we have the new children come up into Bush Kinder, we will have that welcoming and that smoking ceremony and activities where Rick will come out and talk about artefacts, all our spears and boomerangs and the animals and it's also teaching the kids what our culture had back in the day, you know, how we hunted and how we lived. And I don't know, like children, all include each other and all work together and they cooperate. And I just absolutely love learning about everything out there.
That's always been my vision is for children to get the best start in the early years to hopefully set them up to succeed. Now every child has the opportunity to attend a kinder, and we know the importance of early childhood education.
I think with our children, we find that a lot of them have social emotional development needs and being out on country. You know, they learn to look after each other and work together. The development just goes so quickly and their language develops a lot quicker.
Kids are gaining, you know, cultural knowledge, but they can also go home and teach parents and say, “well, this is what Uncle Narjiic taught us.” A lot of mainstream kinder centres should implement stuff like this for the children and it's not just for Aboriginal children, it's about, you know, connecting children to the country and giving them that knowledge and how it was for Aboriginal people and how we lived. And it's just as much a part of anyone's learning that's been born here on country, you know.
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