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Listed under:  Society  >  Culture  >  Regional culture  >  Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
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Budj Bim: an Aboriginal cultural heritage landscape

This resource showcases how the Gunditjmara people shaped the landscape for long-term well-being. In this activity students will investigate the cultural connections of the Budj Bim people to country, their development and use of environmental management strategies over thousands of years, and the modern context of collaborative ...

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Fire in ceremony

Many aspects of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditional ceremonies are an important part of expressing cultural beliefs. Students will explore the use of fire and plants in smoking ceremonies, and how traditions combine ritual with skill and knowledge of traditional medicine to promote connections to community ...

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Stellar navigation and mathematics

Before GPS, there were many ways to navigate, including using the stars. In this resource, students and teachers will learn about celestial positions, the azimuth and altitude to shape their understanding of traditional navigational techniques.

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Representations in film and text

In this activity, students will read Kim Mahood's article Country needs people, analyse the opening quotation and a painting, and explore the diverse representations of traditional ecological knowledge, culminating in a written reflection on how these elements shape their understanding of Martu burning practices.

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Stellar scintillation

This resource explores a concept belonging to the Meriam (Mer) people of the Torres Strait who have long understood the importance of stellar scintillation to their lives. and the ways it can prove useful in understanding our environment. This activity involves watching a video of an elder playing a Meriam star song and ...

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Living off our waters

Teachers can enrich their curriculum by teaching students about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sustainable resource management, highlighting the profound link between Indigenous cultures and the environment. Different land areas need to be managed differently, in this resource students will investigate a range of ...

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Geometry of water sources and landforms

Indigenous cultures have always been deeply aware of the location of water and its significance. In this resource students will apply geometric, trigonometric, and algebraic techniques to analyse idealised water body shapes and associated landforms. They will calculate surface areas, volumes, angles, and heights of these ...

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Interdependence in the environment

This resource provides students with the opportunity to develop science understanding of the interdependencies of ecosystems, abiotic factors, matter and energy flow through the context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander use of fire to manage country. In this activity students will create an interdependency diagram ...

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Work sample Year 10 History: Building Modern Australia (Perspectives on an event)

This work sample demonstrates evidence of student learning in relation to aspects of the achievement standards for Year 10 History. The primary purpose for the work sample is to demonstrate the standard, so the focus is on what is evident in the sample not how it was created. The sample is an authentic representation of ...

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Digital technology and managing Indigenous astronomical knowledge

Digital technology provides a range of different ways to communicate cultural knowledge and practices, explore a range of digital tools that bring the stars closer to the world of your students. In these classroom activities students will use digital programs like Stellarium to investigate Indigenous astronomical knowledge ...

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Mathematics, moon phases, and tides

Through this activity, students will learn the relationship between lunar phases and tides, graphically plotting the tidal range versus Moon phase over an annual cycle for a selected Australian port, as well as determining the mean tidal range for each lunar phase. Students will then focus on determining the relationship ...

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Understanding and respecting cultural narratives

Teachers guide students to explore cultural narratives through a film that highlights the rich traditions, morals, and storytelling techniques of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People.

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Working in the community

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rangers have an important role in environmental management today. In some regions, women and men perform different roles in traditional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture. Students will watch and read the resources to learn about ranger programs about the role that women ...

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The Swamp

This resource features the Yolngu-made film The Swamp. Students are provided with the opportunity to watch it and engage in a discussion exploring its genre, deviations from traditional documentary format, its impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander storytelling, challenges faced by the Yolngu people, and the film's ...

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Fire and land management: past and present

The focus of this resource is on understanding the seasons and the way that fire shapes the lives of human and animal inhabitants of Australia. By examining the role of fire, seasonal calendars and food webs students will understand the environment all around them. Students will use two case studies in Western Australia, ...

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Interpretations of Dreaming stories in text

Students learn about the Rainbow Serpent and begin to compare different representations. By creating their own character portraits they also begin to see how they can create their own representation of different well-known stories.

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Billabongs

Understanding life cycles and the seasons allowed Indigenous Australians to survive. In this resource students will learn about life cycles involved with billabong species alongside seasonal calendars to understand the way their natural world works. In this activity students will work in groups to research an organism, ...

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Indigenous Astronomy and the Solar System

In this classroom activity, students will come to understand some of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander names of the planets, their movement across the sky, and the concepts of ecliptic, zodiac, and retrograde motion. They will focus on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander observations of these things and discuss ...

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Water games and sports

Teachers can incorporate this content into their physical education or health education curriculum to introduce students to the rich tradition of water games played by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

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Contemporary fire management

In this resource, students learn about ways that groups are combining traditional indigenous knowledge of fire management with satellite imagery, fuel load mapping, and aerial incendiary technology. Students will investigate the interaction between traditional knowledge of fire management and new technologies. Using case ...