[Music]
aboriginal people have been inventors
designers and engineers for thousands of
years people like david you - he's a
gentleman on our $50 note in his day he
was known as the Australian Leonardo da
Vinci who came up with 19 separate
inventions including a breakthrough tool
that revolutionized sheep shearing in
Australia there was Harold Thomas
designer of the Aboriginal flag and
going way way back for nian bar people
from Bree Warner who 40,000 years ago
engineered one of the oldest man-made
structures on earth the stone fish traps
Aboriginal people have had a very long
history of ingenuity and creativity but
sadly the contemporary story is not what
it should be when I started studying at
University seven years ago I was just
one of three Aboriginal people studying
information technology in 2017 I stand
as the first Aboriginal person to be
accepting to my University's IT honors
course this year there are only two
aboriginal students studying information
technology and roughly 330 aboriginal
people enrolled in IT courses across all
australian universities so on a country
of about 24 million people the odds of
running into an aboriginal IT student is
one in 73 thousand Wayne Denning creator
of stem I am has said that if you do not
have a reasonable degree of digital
literacy by the age of 20 you are a
distinct disadvantage regardless of
which path you want to take so if we're
really serious about closing the gap for
Australia's first people that I believe
that promoting and educating digital
literacy is one step towards overcoming
exclusion and disadvantage I've seen
this firsthand in August I traveled to
Nolan boy a remote Aboriginal community
in the Northern Territory I wanted to
get an idea of where the locals are at
with contemporary technology how much
they knew how much access they had what
I found was quite shocking
there were locals who still lacked a
basic understanding of the internet
things like 3d printing virtualization
blockchain were completely foreign to
them I may as well have spoke about
hieroglyphics
they were efforts made to address his
situation though there was a local art
gallery which had a dedicated room with
seven desktop PCs which is a big
improvement of the two pcs previously
the library's technician told me that
when there were only two pcs they'd be a
mad rush of students from the local
primary school every afternoon which
wasn't really fair because the fastest
to students would always get there first
he said students would wait for hours to
be rotated for those two pcs and the
seven they have now is still not enough
these students are not lacking in a
curiosity or an eagerness to learn what
they lack is sufficient resources
resources that most Australian school
kids would take for granted the gallery
is also battling to negotiate a better
internet deal because the current
monthly data limit is insufficient for
their needs and not only is there little
or no hardware there is not enough
tertiary qualified Aboriginal people to
be role models to teach their mob how to
make sense and get the most out of
technology and more fundamentally in an
age when most information is being
digitized Aboriginal people will be
hampered and their ability to record and
preserve their culture and open
themselves to intellectual property
risks without the proper education or
understanding now this situation is not
unique it's a null employ digital
disadvantages present in regional
communities throughout Australia and if
we do not address this digital divide
we will only further entrench
disadvantage and exclusion in our
communities
now I don't believe this is the future
for Aboriginal people I believe this can
change I believe that after thousands of
years of ingenuity courage resilience
the Aboriginal people are not only
capable of embracing a digital future
that we are capable of contributing
towards the ideas and technologies that
will shape that future not only do I
believe this
I have set out to prove it to see how
capable our upcoming students are I
designed a workshop it ran for just an
hour and it was divided into three parts
in the first part I showed the students
an example of an indigenous business
that produced bottled water we call
Jarry water I showed them how Aboriginal
people can be entrepreneurs and that by
setting up businesses they could support
their communities through job creation
and training in the second part I cover
design thinking 101 how through empathy
students could work towards defining a
problem to meet a need how they could
brainstorm potential solutions to meet
that need through to developing draft
prototypes to test for feedback and
improve their designs and in the third
part I broke them into groups of four or
five and I set them the challenge come
up with the next groundbreaking
indigenous product or business then you
had twenty minutes before they had to
present their ideas back to the group
and the presentations they gave were
just amazing let me share with you one
of the ideas that a group of four girls
and u10 came up with they called it
black - the future a state of the art
cultural center built in the shape of a
boomerang which had three main areas
upon entry visitors would be provided a
virtual headset and a center maps in the
first area people would see a digital
recreation of Australia before European
settlement how Aboriginal people lived
how we hunted how they worked the land
in the second area people would see a
representation of contemporary Australia
how original people live in today's
society and finally in the third area
people could see what Australia could
look like in the future a unified nation
in which Aboriginal people had a high
degree of digital literacy which allowed
them to work with all Australians to
transform communities into smart cities
and improve health outcomes for all
Australians so much that the students
said that the journey for the centre was
narrated by aunty who was the first
recorded Aboriginal person's lived to a
hundred and fifty years of age
remember this session was just 60
minutes they only had 20 minutes to come
up with that idea the girls knew their
idea would involve technology and while
they may not be across the intricacies
of that technology right now with a
clear vision in mind of what they wanted
to achieve
I could see they'll prepare to take a
deep dive into the nuts and bolts to
make their dream a reality my workshops
have taught me that students are not
inspired by what technology is they're
inspired by what it can do I'm sure
we've all experienced a situation where
somebody is completely losing us by
going to the mind you detail that's
something extremely technical or
abstract the sort of techie taki geek
like myself would love if someone talked
about the very specifications of a 3d
printer could be sleep-inducing without
first being excited about its potential
applications but if someone told you
that it could enable people in
developing countries access to
life-saving technology at a reasonable
price you might be just prepared to be
lectured on how the thing actually works
I remember talking to students about
drone technology I started by talking
about the various different components
and technical specifications well I
could see my audience's attention take
flight right out the window I'd
completely lost them on the technical
detail so for the next audience I
started with a couple of stories about
how farmers using drones to better
manage their properties or how
Aboriginal communities using drones to
serve a traditional lands and map sacred
sites now I had their full attention
they were open to understanding how
technology works because suddenly it was
meaningful to them I'll say it again
students are not inspired by what
technology is they're inspired by what
it can do show them how they can make a
significant impact on their families and
communities and you will give them the
motivation to make positive change what
if the next groundbreaking idea or
technologies in the mind of a young
Aboriginal student right now but their
idea will never surface because they
face some form of digital disadvantage
or exclusion
we have to make sure that we give our
young leaders of tomorrow every
opportunity for their ideas to be heard
every chance to make a positive impact
on their families their people and their
communities
souls Australians we have a choice we
can continue down the path of digital
divide disadvantage and exclusion which
will only leave our students discouraged
and disconnected or together we can work
towards removing these barriers we can
support our communities to prosper and
grow the choice is ours thank you
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