Knowing+Me,+knowing+you.

Knowing me, knowing you is an important unit of work. Important for these reasons:
 * Australia today, and our place in it, cannot be fully understood without an understanding of the history of this country prior to European settlement
 * Indigenous cultures, such as the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander cultures, represent a way of life and living with the environment that has been forgotten and in some cases, scorned by European and other industrial societies
 * Indigenous cultures are a living connection to the history of our human species
 * Aboriginal culture is unique in that it is considered to be the oldest, continuous culture on the planet
 * Australia is one of the oldest land masses on the planet and archeologists have found evidence of Aboriginal culture tracing back from between 40,000 to 60,000 years
 * European settlement occurred "officially" in 1788 - less than 250 years ago
 * Great injustice has been dealt to indigenous cultures all around the world, at the hands of industrialised societies, and Australia is no exception
 * Kevin Rudd's "Sorry" speech was a moment of lasting historical importance for all of today's Australians and by the end of this unit you will know why

This unit of work will also be delivered in a different way, with more choice available and more independence allowed.

Consider the map of Australia below. (It's large, so swipe to the right to move to the part of the map you can't see to begin with.) If you look down the bottom at the Melbourne area, you'll see the clan name of the Aboriginal people who are the traditional "owners" of this area. The person coming to speak to us in week 5, Murrundindi, is the clan elder of that group of people. He will show you the pictures of his family, his grandfathers and elders, one of whom is the Wurundjeri clan member who met the first white man in this region. It's about 5 generations back in his family. That's how recent settlement has been in the history of this ancient land. By comparison, Aboriginal culture has been here for about 1,000 generations. To put that into perspective: before Europe was Europe, before Stonehenge, before the ancient cave paintings in France, before the pyramids, before the bible stories (even the old ones), before the last Ice Age covered the Northern Hemisphere in a sheet of ice 10,000 years ago, before villagers decided to farm and herd animals, before everything our culture thinks is old...the Aboriginals were here. Something to think about.