Alexandria Park Community School has brought back to life the Aboriginal tradition of making bark canoes – with award-winning results.

The last of the stringy bark canoes, known as a “nowey”, was believed to have been made a century ago by the Eora people of the Sydney region, according to NSW Maritime which bestowed a prestigious award on the inner- Sydney school.

The school’s principal, Anne-Marie Vine, said the 2007 project “started off small” as a model-making activity but developed into the construction of a full-sized canoe when the local Aboriginal men’s group got involved. The canoe was made as part of the Sydney region Bemel- Gardoo project.

Year 7 and 8 boys were selected to work on the canoe (only men make canoes under Aboriginal law), while female students researched and photographically documented the project.

Local elders and Aboriginal staff members were consulted and the school liaised with the National Parks and Wildlife Service to access the canoe bark, which was soaked in a billabong made from a wading pool and smoked in a smoke pit.

“Many of the students involved in the project were on the riskier side, in terms of leaving school. The project reconnected them with their learning and improved their selfconfidence,” Mrs Vine said.

“It really validated the knowledge that was sitting there in the community and in our Aboriginal staff.”

The icing on the cake was the school winning the indigenous prize at the 2008 Sydney Harbour Week awards. The canoe project will feature in an exhibition in June at The Rocks Discovery Museum.

The Bemel-Gardoo project, which began in 2006, was inspired by the Aboriginal and indigenous content statements in NSW 7-10 syllabus documents. Project coordinators Liz Sinnott and Michael Genner said that Bemel-Gardoo (which means “where the salt water meets the land” in the Dharawal language), has a central theme of “multiple ways of knowing”.

Bemel-Gardoo aims to build purposeful links with Aboriginal communities in order to view Aboriginal syllabus content from Aboriginal perspectives.

Aboriginal education assistants collaborate with teachers and community members to create programs focusing on students demonstrating an understanding of Aboriginal content.

Mr Genner said the Bemel- Gardoo project had beneficial outcomes for the nine schools involved, including greater student engagement with Aboriginal knowledge, building collaborative links with Aboriginal communities and “a greater understanding of, and respect for, Aboriginal knowledge, people and communities”.

Nine new schools joined the Bemel-Gardoo project this year supported by Aboriginal education consultant Carol Green, Aboriginal community liaison officers Fay Carroll and Raymond Ingrey and Lyn Riley-Mundine from the University of Sydney.