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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-11-25 Daily Xml
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Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Education Committee

The Hon. T.T. NGO (14:39): My question is to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. Can the minister tell the council about the Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Education Committee book series that is currently being developed?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Deputy Premier, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector, Special Minister of State) (14:40): Palya parimpa tjilpi and uwa, Tungy. I will be most pleased to tell the chamber about the book series that is being developed. The Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Education Committee (PYEC) is an Anangu-run organisation that leads strategy for education in South Australian Anangu schools. PYEC provides leadership to ensure that young people receive quality education and support in order to be successful in both Anangu and Piranpa ways.

I will have more to say about it later in the week, but I was fortunate last night to attend the graduation ceremony of the Wiltja Boarding School where students go to Avenues College who come from Anangu schools all around South Australia and right across the lands: Indulkana, Mimili, Kaltjiti, Pukatja, Amata, Pipalyatjara down to Yalata, the West Coast, Koonibba, Oak Valley and schools from right around South Australia staying here in Adelaide. A couple of students particularly, Kyrissa Queama and Aaron McCormack, I met last night and was very pleased to do so. Later this week I will have more to say about some of the awards that they and other students won.

The PYEC delivers many vital programs through the Anangu Resource Development Unit in partnership with Anangu from the APY lands, Yalata lands and Maralinga Tjarutja lands. This new book series is the latest program the organisation is delivering to the community. So far, six of 18 titles have been released across a three-part series. Each of these resources covers three languages—Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Southern Pitjantjatjara—and has been designed for use in family centres, preschools and reception classes to promote the early literacy of these three languages in Anangu schools and to ensure a solid grounding for the bilingual education program.

I have had the pleasure of reading the first few of these books and I am very glad I have, because it has been 10 years since I formally did the Pitjantjatjara language school at UniSA and I don't spend as much time on the lands as I would like to, so these books are providing a great refresher. Importantly, these resources will be freely available across 10 schools and communities for all year levels—family centres to secondary—to align with all 12 topic areas of the new SA language and cultural curriculum for schools on the APY lands.

The South Australian government is proud to be supporting this initiative. I congratulate the fantastic work of PYEC and the Anangu Resource Development Unit in partnering with Anangu storytellers, authors, illustrators and editors to create these essential resources for use across learning areas.

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