The Action Learning for Indigenous Education Students (ALIES) project was established at Central Queensland University (CQU) in 1998. Its original membership consisted of a group of eight first year Indigenous (Murri) students, who were enrolled in the Bachelor of Education degree programme; an Indigenous, Sociology Honours student; the Faculty of Education and Creative Arts' Associate Dean Administration and sub-Dean of Students; and, a member of Nulloo Yumbah's support staff

Although the retention rate of Aboriginal students has improved over the past fifteen years, it is still significantly less than that for all other students. In fact, very few Aboriginal students are completing twelve full years of schooling. The situation is worse in country schools than in large metropolitan areas. Despite the fact that some Aboriginal students do stay at school and succeed, very little work has been done to identify what factors have helped those Aboriginal students who have done so. In addition, there is relatively little knowledge about how the various school, home, ability and personal factors are interrelated.

All of us are well aware of the problems faced by Indigenous students at the secondary school level. The intention of this article is to share a success story being experienced at Bundaberg North State High School in Queensland. How many of us can relate to the following anecdote?

The Golden Hill Steiner School in Denmark, West Australia, is a small “alternative” school and part of the world wide Steiner/Waldorf school movement. In 1998 this young school had 56 students from kindergarten to class 6. Because of the small numbers, primary classes are combined (for 1998 this was a class 1/2, class 3/4 and class 5/6).

The Australian legal system is based on the principle of equality before the law for all its citizens. The government of Australia also passed the international Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act in 1986, although these rights are not accessible to all Australians in the legal system (Bird 1995:3). The Australian legal system has failed to grant equality for all its people. The Aboriginal community is severely disadvantaged within the legal system because the Australian criminal justice system has “institutionalised discrimination” against Aboriginal people through communication barriers (Goldflam 1995: 29).