Galtha Rom and Learning on Country in East Arnhem Land

In November 2021, a convoy of nearly 40 four-wheel drive vehicles carrying 160 Aboriginal school students, families, community Elders and schoolteachers spent 4 days tracking an ancient songline of the Mäṉa (shark) across the remote far east of Arnhem Land.

The purpose of this journey was to train the youth in their cultural heritage. It incorporated traditional ecological knowledge presented through story, ceremony, dance and song. At the same time, they learned environmental science and land management as part of their formal schooling program. 

Funded by the Learning on Country (LoC) program, camps like this engage senior school students in the meaningful combination of curriculum and culture and support remote Aboriginal students to walk in two worlds. 

The songline event is known as a Galtha Rom – or Cultural Law in the regional language of Yolngu Matha.

It was a huge logistical exercise, relying on collaboration and sponsorship by organisations across the region, led by the Gapuwiyak LoC coordinator, Chris Spurr, working with Elders and the Gapuwiyak and the Laynhapuy Homelands schools.

Together they managed to map the route and the homelands Community Development Program team cleared the trails. Everyone was fed, watered and sheltered and somehow almost 40 vehicles were co-opted for the journey.

‘Learning on Country provides the space for young people to build knowledge for their future by providing a cultural context for their learning,’ Chris said.

‘It also enables the Elders to share all their ancient knowledge in a way where they can see this generation of children apply it in a modern context. This is enormously rewarding for everyone involved and provides meaning and purpose for youth’.

Over four days, the convoy moved slowly from the songline’s birthplace in the coastal homeland of Garrata in Buckingham Bay and travelled the course of the river where the Mäṉa swam. The story has not been told for a long time, but the cultural custodian who has been responsible for that songline knows it has now been passed on to the next generation.

The youth now have the knowledge to not only understand and care for their country in the old way but in a way that supports modern land management practices and potential businesses.

The LoC program will now be built into the Gapuwiyak School curriculum as a regular learning expedition.

It is evidence that the ‘two toolbox approach’, incorporating both Western and Indigenous knowledge systems, contributes to the development of the next generation of Aboriginal rangers and custodians of Country.

This is the next generation who will walk in two worlds protecting and sustaining their culture while being part of supporting the growth of business opportunities in cultural and natural resource management in remote Australia.