Kids on the coast

 
When Shion begins to eat the red adzuki bean jelly at lunchtime, her friend tells her it’s disgusting. He says it’s “yuk”, leaving five-year-old Shion confused and uncomfortable. She talks to her teacher afterwards and that night she tells her mum, Mie Suzuki, all about the incident. “I got a little bit upset, and even when I think about it, it makes me really emotional inside,” Mie says.



Shion’s experience confirms what Mie has heard from local Japanese mums – their children feel embarrassed about traditional Japanese food. They hide it in their schoolbags and refuse to eat it in public.

Food is just one of many issues that Queenslanders from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds have to deal with on a daily basis. As well as the obvious differences, like language, food, race and religion, there are also subtle differences in attitudes, values and social etiquette that can be difficult for immigrants to deal with.

Mie Suzuki, who came to the Sunshine Coast from Japan in 2004 with her husband David, says it wasn’t easy adjusting to the Australian way of life, and she admits that there is some conflict between her beliefs and Australian customs. When Mie was younger, she wanted to become “Western style” but she now has two daughters – Shion, aged six and Mizuka, aged three, and she feels it’s important to keep her Japanese culture alive. “I am pure Japanese and my beliefs…are based on Japanese beliefs,” she says.

Many new immigrants struggle to adapt to the new culture when they first arrive in Australia. They may be separated from families and friends, have little personal support and they may find it hard to access support services and build up social networks. Nambour Community Centre multicultural worker Naomi Wiley says it is difficult for migrants to build social connections and young mothers may feel especially lonely, as they find it hard to get out and meet people. Naomi encourages people to access the Family Support Program, a Sunshine Coast home-visiting service set up to help vulnerable families.

Most community centres in South-East Queensland host regular coffee mornings and dinners as a way of meeting new people and connecting to the community, and through these first steps, isolation and loneliness can slowly dissipate. Mie now works proactively to bridge the cultural divide. She volunteers at her daughter’s school, teaching Year 1 students “very basic and easy Japanese language” mixed with “cultural play”. Traditional Japanese games, songs and folk stories are popular with the children, and Mie also teaches origami, the art of paper folding.

“It’s good for even young children to experience – it’s got a mathematical aspect to it, so it’s very good brain exercise,”she laughs.
The Japanese school system is quite different from the Australian system, and Mie’s daughters, Shion and Mizuka, travel to Japan for two months each year to attend a Japanese school. Mie wants to “build up the foundation” of Japanese culture, and she hopes to continue this until both the girls are in Year 6. Mie admits that the annual trip to Japan is hard for her daughters, because they are travelling between two cultures and they have to re-adjust to different environments and different people, but she feels that the experience makes them stronger.

Young people, such as Shion and Mizuka, from diverse ethnic backgrounds, often feel as though they are caught between two cultures with differing standards and values, and Sunshine Coast psychologist Ian Johnson says it is hard for children to adjust. They feel a sense of loyalty to their parents and to their family’s culture, but they also want to be accepted by their Australian peers. When children from culturally diverse backgrounds embrace Australian customs (the music, books, slang and clothing), Ian says they are trying to work out “if they have allegiances to their family and their original culture, or to their peers and their new country”.

Seeing their children engage in culturally inappropriate activities is challenging for parents, but Ian says they have to remember that their children are not necessarily abandoning their heritage. He advises parents to focus on the core family values and to have open communication and healthy relationships with their children.

“Children need to develop a sense of tolerance for their parents, as well as parents develop a sense of tolerance for their children,” he says. “Just because their parents are different to their friend’s parents, it doesn’t mean they are not as competent as parents.”
More than 200 diverse cultural groups call Queensland home. The Multicultural Affairs Queensland report in October 2009 reports one in six Queenslanders was born overseas, and overseas migration is the main contributor to Queensland’s population growth. Without immigration our economy would suffer.

Many skilled migrants come from India and travel to Australia to take up professional positions where there is a skills shortage. Sujini Damodaran, for instance, arrived in Australia 18 months ago with her baby, Nijhit Arun. She came to join her husband, Dr Arun Bojarajan, who works as a paediatrician at Nambour General Hospital. Sujini and her family hope to settle permanently in Australia, and they will apply for Australian citizenship when the required residency period has been served. “We like it here,” she says. “We are a bit comfortable now, we are almost settling.”

The family’s support network has grown slowly and Sujini says they now have many friends, including both Indian and Australian families. “We didn’t know anyone when we came here. It was only the job,” she explains. “My husband got a few friends in the hospital, and then me too, at the Nambour Community Centre, and slowly the network is growing.”

Sujini finds that Australian and Indian parenting practices are quite different in relation to feeding, potty training and the use of nappies. Most young Indian children are spoon-fed until they are about four years old which caused problems when Sujini’s son started attending an Australian child care centre. “When he is going to day care, he wants someone to spoon-feed him at the day care,” she says. “It was a bit hard for him to get used to the system here.”

Indian children don’t have any kind of potty training and they start using the toilet at four or five years old. There is also no culture of using nappies, and Sujini explains that toddlers and young children just wear underwear and “then they try to pass sometimes”.
These practices are typical for most Indians, where several generations live together and the older generation provides care and support for the children. “We have a joint family system of living, where the grandparents live with the family, and then they are happy to feed and look after the children,” Sujini says.

The Australian nuclear family unit is a structure that does not exist in Indian society. Sujini and her husband miss their parents and their extended families and she admits that she feels lonely sometimes. “But we have come here for my husband’s career, so we have to sacrifice something,” she says.

Community worker Naomi says it’s a problem “not having extended family around to offer child caresupport”. Many immigrant families are reluctant to leave their children in child care in Australia as it is unfamiliar, and some families, like Sujini’s, are accessing mainstream child care services for the first time.

The Inclusion Support Agency has been set up across regional Queensland to help families from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds adjust to child care centres. The agency works collaboratively with families and support networks to create an inclusive and comfortable environment for all children and their families.

Language is another integral aspect of cultural identity and Sujini feels it’s important for her son to learn the Tamil language spoken by his relatives in South India, so he can communicate with them on family visits. “We want our son to learn English as well as our mother tongue,” she says. “If he is not able to communicate then he has to be silent for the whole month if we are going to stay there.”

Nearly half of all Queensland’s migrants are from a country where English is not the main language. About 303,160 people or 7.8% of Queensland’s population speak a language other than English at home, and about 48,000 Queenslanders, or 1.2%, do not speak English at all or do not speak it well.
Regional Queensland doesn’t provide as wide a range of resources and facilities as Brisbane. Festivals and celebrations are an important part of Indian culture, and Sujini and her family often travel to Brisbane to attend the Hindu temple and meet up with other Indian families. “We are very happy for that,” she says.

While it’s vital for immigrants to keep their own cultural identity alive, psychologist Ian Johnson believes that immigrants also need to make an effort to “assimilate within the main society”, rather than just mixing with people from their own ethnic background. He encourages immigrants to join community organisations. “It’s important that they try and expand their horizons, just like us,” Ian says. “That way they actually enrich the organisation as well, because they have so much to offer.”

Like Mie, Sujini has been pro-active in her community involvement. She completed a work placement at the Nambour Community Centre and she is now volunteering there for two days a week in office administration. The work experience will help Sujini find future employment, as she now has Australian experience and referees.

The days of the White Australia policy are long-gone yet many of us find ourselves wishing immigrants would simply break off cultural ties and assimilate. Our evolving culture would be the poorer without their input, however. Imagine Australian cuisine without Pizza, pad Thai, dim sims or rice crackers! Community support and acceptance can make a world of difference, so this Australia Day, why not play host to a new Australian family or take a fresh sushi platter or a fragrant curry to share with friends? While you’re eating, remember the cultural origins of this delicious food and celebrate our diversity.

Multicultural Support Services

Sunshine Coast

Nambour Community Centre Inc. Phone: 5441 4724 or visit: www.mcw.ncc@flexinet.com.au
Maroochy Neighbourhood Centre Inc. Phone: 5443 6697 or visit: www.maroochync.scc-cooperative.org
Multilinc (Multicultural information)www.sunshinecoastcis.qld.gov.au/multilinc.html
Inclusion Support Agency Sunshine Coast (Child care support) Phone: 5478 9200
Sunshine Coast Migrant Education Unit. Phone: 5450 4111

Brisbane

Multicultural Development Association. Phone: 3337 5400 or visit: www.mdainc.org.au
Multilink Community Services Inc. Phone: 3808 4463 or visit: www.multilink.org.au

Can you pass the Australian Citizenship Practice Test?

1. What do we remember on Anzac Day?
a) The landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps at Gallipoli
b) The arrival of the first free settlers from Britain
c) The landing of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove

2. What are the colours of the Australian Aboriginal flag?
a) Blue, white and green
b) Black, red and yellow
c) Green, white and black

3. What official symbol of Australia identifies Commonwealth property?
a) Australia’s national flower
b) The national anthem
c) Commonwealth Coat of Arms

4. Which of these is an example of freedom of speech?
a) Newspapers can write about any topic
b) Men and women are treated equally in a court of law
c) Australians are free not to follow a religion

5. Which of these is an example of equality in Australia?
a) Everyone belongs to the same political party
b) Everyone follows the same religion
c) Men and women have the same rights

Correct answers: 1. a, 2. b, 3. c, 4. a, 5. c