Five years ago, I taught my first class at Nungalinya. As I stood looking at the seventeen serious but expectant faces in front of me, what I felt most was anxiety - and the anxiety was focused on the fear of committing a cultural faux pas.

Up until that point, I had only worked with Indigenous teenagers. Teenagers, I found, presented with you with a number of behavioural challenges, but they were also delightfully frank, often affectionate, and left you in no doubt as to where you stood. Would I get the same feedback from these adults?

I called to mind what I knew about Indigenous culture(s), or at least the broad-brush strokes. I knew, for example, that open or prolonged eye contact could be seen as rude. That direct questioning was used less often, and some things were not appropriate to ask about. That names were seen as very personal, and it was more polite to ask someone else for a person’s name, than approach the person themselves. I knew that some people used names rarely, preferring kinship terms instead. I understood that interaction between the sexes was more restrained than in ‘whitefella’ culture, and that some people might be in avoidance relationships (the so-called ‘poison cousin’), where they would not look at the other person openly, pass them objects, or say their name.

When I look back now, my memory is that rather than risk a cultural mistake – what if I asked a man to address his mother-in-law, or inadvertently inquired about a taboo topic? – I simply stood in front of the class and monologued content at them for four weeks. It can’t have been that bad. Nearly all the students returned at the end of the year to complete the course, apart from a young couple who’d just had a baby, and everyone appeared happy to see me. It took a long time to move out of that anxiety and into a place of feeling (more) at ease. I am still learning, but here are some reflections on how my understandings have changed.

Nungalinya is at once deeply Indigenous and also very okay. cross-cultural. Yes, in a more organic setting people might learn each other’s names gradually. In the time-bounded space of the classroom, it’s too easy for that not to happen. Now I am deliberate about making sure my whole class knows each other’s names Every morning, for the first week, we do our ‘name practise’, going around the room to recite each name, and then writing a few on our whiteboards. We count the syllables and sound out the letters. If someone needs to avoid a certain name, they will do that – perhaps by opting out, or maybe by telling me up front it’s a name they can’t say. Likewise, students will quietly organise themselves in the room to avoid proximity where necessary. I try to follow their lead; if dividing students into pairs, I don’t ask men and women to work together, unless they are a couple. If the pairs I have assigned re-organise themselves, I don’t press for a reason.

Some questions are okay. I have found that my students love to share about country, family and language. I still try to avoid blunt questions on personal matters. So rather than peppering someone with a string of introductory questions – Where are you from? Who’s in your family? What language do you speak? – I will suggest a framework and leave space. Maybe you could tell us about your community, or your family, or what your languages are. I have also become better at reading the non-verbal answers - the raised eyebrows to answer yes, the pursed lips to indicate direction – and respecting the cultural right to simply not answer questions at all.

Language is paramount

Before coming to Nungalinya, I taught ESL at the university up the road. My students were primarily from South-East Asia, literate in their own (robust) languages, and often had their sights set on further study in Australia. They paid a significant amount of money for lessons. Languages other than English were actively discouraged in the classroom and I never once, in two years, asked someone, “How do you say that in your language?”

I carefully taught grammatical forms and allowed the use of first languages only on rare occasions, as a last resort. Now,I am passionate about language. I feel immense joy at being able to build relationship with students with my few words: manymak, palya, patha, kamak (good/okay). I feel pride at knowing even the most basic words: ‘sister’ or ‘water’ or ‘finished’. I actively encourage language wherever possible, within the practical constraints of a multilingual classroom where I speak only English. We list the three promises to Abraham and painstakingly translate each one into language. Family: Warumamalya. Gurrudumirr. Warlajapatu. Waltjapiti. Numdke. Land: Angalya. Wäŋa. Walya. Nyuntumpa-ngurakutu. Kured. Blessing: Numengkirradinama. Dambulup. Pukulmankuku. Kamak.

Students make phone calls in class that seem to run along the lines of, ‘Uncle! What is the word for blessing? Okay, bye.’ Other classes are interrupted as I look up and notice a student heading out the door to track down another word. Once we have collated our words on the whiteboard, we practice them; I am now the learner, faltering in my pronunciation, and each student becomes the teacher in turn.

Relationship is everything

I have in my possession a slightly crumpled piece of yellow card. It is one of my most treasured belongings; to me after I spent some time teaching at Gäwa, a remote homeland school on the northern tip of Elcho Island. On it are written my Aboriginal names, my mälk (skin-name), clan and moiety. These terms fit me into the Yolŋu world. They give me a place and a way to relate to others. As students ask, ‘Who adopted you?’ and follow that answer with ‘I call you …’, it brings to light our own adoption into God’s family.

Not every student is Yolŋu, of course, but the priority of relationship continues. After I taught that first class, at the start of the year, I had another three or four cohorts come through, all new (to me) students each time. When my original class returned at the end of that year, something in me changed. For the first time, I was seeing and greeting familiar faces at our opening chapel. As we went around and shook hands, singing the traditional welcoming song, it was not to strangers. Now, after five years, I am still greeting new people in each teaching block, but also family and friends.

Education is both ways

When I read of the Israelite people travelling through desert country, camping at waterholes, setting up memorial stones and renaming places to remember stories, I think of how Indigenous people also travelled across country. How they also read and remember stories from the landscape, camp in family groups and tell their origin stories. Once, at chapel, my class acted out the story of Jesus’ baptism. We had talked about Jesus, John, the Holy Spirit, the Triune God. But when someone came forward to share, I realised that we had not talked about the River Jordan. This same river that the Israelites crossed, that Naaman had washed in - I had not considered the role of the river itself at all. Now I see landscape in the Bible everywhere. I see that longing for country, the importance of family and clan, the radical opening up of God’s family through adoption.

Of course, I have a teacher/trainer role. I speak the language of the dominant culture, into which the whole Bible has been translated multiple times. I want to bring that to my students. But I also have a lifetime of learning ahead of me, as my students graciously share with me.

What would I tell myself now, if I could offer advice before those first lessons? Perhaps not to worry so much. But I also think that much of this learning does come over time, from the repeated interactions and slow building of relationship across cultures. Our students likewise are often anxious, as they come to College for the first time. But they too are building relationship, with us whitefellas and with students from other communities. And they too have faces that light up as they greet old friends at chapel.