Moodle, as we all know, was born in Western Australia, a land of the Aboriginal people, including the Ngarinyin and Wunumbul of Mowanjum near Derby.
A friend of mine who worked there in the 70s, Robert Shropshire, just passed away and I wanted to share a story of those people, and connect it to our work as educators and travelers in the dreamtime.
Education, especially formal education, is a form of power that cultures can use to help people grow or to control and limit them. Despite good intentions, educational workers, government colonizers and religion missionaries broke the spirit of the smaller, less institutionalized cultures across Australia (and similarly in Asia, North America and elsewhere). From what I heard from Robert, the recovery of the spirit of the Mowanjum people came initially through art, and by elders telling stories of the dreamtime to the younger ones.
From this grew Wandjina art, one of the first art forms established in the Kimberley. David Mowaljarlie, a Ngarinyin man, encouraged many people to paint and set up a sales point in the Mowanjum Art Store in the 1970s.
Donny Woolagoodja's original design of the Wandjina Spirit Namaralie was recreated as a 35 metre high sculpture for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony.
In memory of Robert, let us use Moodle to carry the dreamtime stories, that is, the stories of all our learners as they learn about the mystery of life that is greater than our own personal dreams.