WORDS Liz Chomiak

Delsie Lillyst says schools are becoming much better at providing supportive environments for Indigenous students. 

When Delsie Lillyst began working for the Catholic Education Office fifteen years ago, she would ask students to list three positive things and three negative things they knew about Indigenous Australians. They struggled to come up positive ideas, but had plenty of negative ones.

Now, with the non-Aboriginal community learning more and more about Aboriginal heritage and culture and after the Kevin Rudd’s historic apology last year, she finds it hard to fit all their positive comments on a whiteboard and is thrilled to hear every negative idea backed up with a reason.

‘To me, that showed that it is working’, she says. ‘It’s slow, but it’s working.’

We are sitting in a small office borrowed from Delsie’s boss, full of boxes, books, calendars and a poster of an Aboriginal dot painting on the wall. As she is interrupted by a ringing phone on the desk, Delsie keeps talking, and then declares with a laugh that she isn’t going to answer it.

She is an inherently cheerful person, seeing the lighter side of everything from the long hours of hard work at the office, to her experience of television interviews and being nervous around cameras. She jokes about herself and the challenges she’s faced and speaks with pride about her work.

As an Indigenous Education Officer for the Catholic Education Office (CEO), Delsie works with Aboriginal students in Catholic schools, discussing their problems and experiences. She speaks to teachers who are reluctant in taking on Aboriginal students and perspectives, and encourages connections between teachers and parents, schools and local communities.

She says, ‘What we find is our schools are doing great educationally, but culturally, it’s lacking.’

The biggest challenge for Indigenous students is a lack of knowledge and understanding in the community. It is the fear of doing the wrong thing that stops schools from taking on Koori perspectives.

‘It’s all about teacher confidence’, Delsie says. ‘If you make a mistake, learn from the mistake and keep going.

‘There’s always the barrier, and the barrier is the word “Aboriginal”.’

Delsie became involved in education when she became her children’s school project, speaking to their class about her life and her Aboriginal heritage.

She was invited to speak at several professional development days at the Catholic Education Office and was then asked to join the Aboriginal program.

‘If a call came in, I could answer it’, Delsie says. ‘A non-Aboriginal person wouldn’t have the knowledge that I have, of the community and of all the Aboriginal families. You have a knowledge of their history and what they’ve been through so you can deal with their calls and concerns more effectively and more compassionately. In a cultural way instead of what we call a “mission” way.’

After two years, Delsie was asked to become an Education Officer, but she wasn’t sure if she could handle it. Now she jokes about how she made some crucial mistakes—like taking someone else’s cup in a school staffroom.

‘I go into a staffroom now and ask, “Which cup can I use?”’ she says.

Since then, her role has grown as the number of Aboriginal students in the Archdiocese of Melbourne has increased. When she began there were 81 students, now there are more than 250, as ‘families are seeing Catholic education as a viable option’, she says.

There are events to organise every year, such as the Indigenous Education Conference, parent forums and the Secondary Indigenous Students Day, which the CEO runs in collaboration with the Archdiocese and the Aboriginal Catholic Ministry. There are countless more activities run by schools and their local communities.

The CEO also puts together resources for students and schools which Delsie has worked on, such as the Dancing in the Dust DVD and the Yarra Healing website, which presents Indigenous stories and reflections.

The most important part of Delsie’s work is with children at the centre. ‘Whatever is impacting on the student, that’s what I work with. Whatever issues are happening in their lives, they become my issues.’

This is sometimes difficult, she says. ‘A lot of the children I’m dealing with are children from Stolen Generation families, and it’s hard for me because I’ve got to go in and be professional and detached about it. I think after all this time, I’ve created a wall around me which I can work with, but there are times when it does get to you.’

Last year Delsie was honoured for her substantial contribution to Aboriginal education with an Elders Award from the Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council, a Federal Government organisation (pictured). But it is the changes she sees in schools which make her role worthwhile.

‘I go to schools now and I see the [Aboriginal] flag flying,’ she says. ‘It might be a little thing but to many Aboriginal people, when they see that flag flying, they think, “these people are acknowledging us”. It’s a simple gesture but it means an awful lot.’

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