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rather than becoming a liberating experience. It stressed the
necessity of devising ways to support student self-esteem and
confidence and of providing students with opportunities to broaden
and enrich their lives through acquaintanceship with another
culture.
Thus the Commission firmly set Aboriginal education into
the context of a multicultural Australia. It encouraged strategies
4
that would help Aborigines "preserve their identity with dignity
and status" (6.12) and achieve a measure of self-determination
in the field of education.
In the same report the Commission advocated a structural
change in the case of Aborigines, in which the latter would be
granted a measure of self-determination. It recommended that
the disbursing of funds for Aboriginal education be transferred
to the Commonwealth Minister of Education and decisions for the
disbursement of funds be made in consultation with the National
Aboriginal Education Committee,
Such a recommendation would, if implemented, provide for
a power base that is real, in that it would be supported by a
measure of economic autonomy.
In Schools’ Commission policy there was a major shift in
the location of Aborigines in society. The responsibility for
Aborigines was not seen as belonging to the Department of Aboriginal
Affairs, where every other body had located it.
For the Schools Commission, Aborigines were Aborigines,
but they were also Australian and not to be excluded from the
frame of reference of Australian society.
The education of Aborigineswas to fall within the same orbit
as that of other Australians, that is,within the portfolio of
the Commonwealth Minister for Education,