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Subject: WE and aborigines in Australia
Peter Zegers wrote: I rejoined this list yesterday and I saw there is a debate about Anthroposophy and apartheid.Did Dan or someone else send you my posting commenting on Staudenmaier and/or ask you to, or did you rejoin now by chance ;-)) ? I have been looking into the claims of both Peter Normann Waage and also the Swedish anthroposophist Göran Fant (who replied to Peter Staudenmaier´s article "Anthroposophy and Ecofascism" in "Folkvett" 2/2001).As can be seen at http://hem.passagen.se/thebee/.../waagenglish1.html and http://home.no.net/tastraum/pnw/pnweng1.html your description of what Peter Normann Waage writes is incorrect. Waage does not write that 'many aborigines are going to waldorf schools in Australia', as you loosely and untruthfully reformulate it. What he writes is: *According to Staudenmaier, Steiner and his followers hold the opinion that the Aborigines would best serve humanity by dying out. In the real world of the anthroposophical movement, these people have influenced several Waldorf schools in Australia with their culture and their myths.10 In one such school, the majority of teachers and students are Aborigines.11* Reference 10 refers to an article in the Waldorf magazine Erziehungskunst (The Art of Education) no. 2/1996, Stuttgart 1996. Reference 11 says: *According to a telephone conversation 8.4 2000 with "Rudolf Steiner Training Seminar" in Melbourne, this is located in Alice Springs, Northern Territory.* In contrast to what you write, Waage both gives the sources for what he writes and probably describes the situation in general correctly for what he refers to (aborigines 'have influenced several Waldorf schools in Australia with their culture and their myths') based on the article in Erziehungskunst (2/1996) that he gives as source, and tells what another source that seems reasonable ("Rudolf Steiner Training Seminar" in Melbourne) says about the situation at one school in Alice Springs. The information from the second source however is not fully correct. Like you, I've contacted the Bob Hale, that you contacted 1 October last year. Few days ago he told me that there's a group in Alice Springs working with the government to try to set up a Steiner school in an Aboriginal community. He also told that there is a Waldorf kindergarten at Mooroopna in northern Victoria that has many aboriginal children attending. Like Charlie, I've also contacted the school s/he(?) refers
to, but does not mention by name; The Alice Springs Steiner School, that
registered as a primary school only 4 years ago (Alice Springs is situated
close to the geographical centre, at the heart of Australia
The person answering tells the school has no teachers but 3 students (of the 80 at the school) of Australian Aboriginal descent. So far, in 2000 the school only had a class 1, a class 2, and a class 3/4. Aborigines today only constitute c. 2 % of the population of Australia; (http://www.infoplease.com/spot/aboriginal1.html) but Alice Springs, as the page above mentions, services a large number of Aboriginal communities in the vast surrounding area (http://www.dfat.gov.au/aboriginal facts/indigenous population.html) and as the WS:s grow, it probably could be expected that they incorporate teachers and pupils of Aboriginal origin in some proportion to their number in the community. The College of Teachers at the school has some plans to annexe a class from an Aboriginal school in Alice Springs. The plan at some stage of becoming reality got some magazine coverage recently, and the person answering suspects that may be the source of what the person at the Rudolf Steiner Training Seminar in Melbourne (on the coast c. 2000 km down to the South East, on the coast) referred to, possibly giving Waage the impression of it already being a reality. At present there seem to be some 60 waldorf schools in
Australia
As some side notes, I found a page http://www.museums.org.za/sang/exhib/isintu/cic.htm
telling of a Doreen Mellor, who was a co-founder of one of the Waldorf
schools in Australia.
[snip]
Also, Burnum Burnum (Harry Penrith, 1936-1997), rugby player (New South Wales), writer and Aboriginal activist (http://www.geocities.com/.../8192/burnum.html A good general link page on Aborigines of Australia seems to be http://www.studyweb.com/links/1772.html Sune Nordwall
http://hem.passagen.se/thebee/indexeng.htm
http://hem.passagen.se/thebee/comments
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