Buku Manapan - Big Ideas

3 year cycle program for teaching the Indigenous Languages and Culture Curriculum.

About Buku Manapan

The ILC Curriculum at Shepherdson College is planned around 12 topics. Delivered over 3 years, each term has a specific topic with resources to support the delivery of ILC Curriculum across the school. Each topics allow students to explore concepts deeply and comprehensively at a number of developmental stages. The 3 year plan ensures content is not repeated and that the LPC can identify and create culturally relevant supporting material.

Shepherdson College students explore 12 topics that weave together culturally relevant concepts and curriculum specific ideas to deliver key learning outcomes.  

Books & Wordlists

Every term the LPC team identifies and creates books and associated resources to support both in class learning and teachers awareness and familiarity with the topic.
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Cultural Resources & Posters

Available to download or printed (upon request) teachers can select from posters, charts and activities to support cultural concepts in the classroom.

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2023 Topics

TERM 1
TERM 2
TERM 3
TERM 4
Baman'puy Girri' Mala ga 
Buku-Djuḻkmaranhamirr
Old Tools & Trade
Concepts: Yolŋu to Yolŋu Trade, Trade with the Macassans, creation and use of traditional tools 

ILC Curriculum Key Ideas:
CL: Students identify how people live on country now and in the past.
NE: Understand traditional technologies and how they were and are used.

Borum Mala
Fruits
Concepts: seasons, passages of time, reading signs for hunting, habitats, healthy body

ILC Curriculum Key Ideas:
NE: How to ‘read the land’ to find and prepare traditional bush foods.
P&K: Growing up healthy, happy & strong.
NE: Identifying and preparing
traditional bush medicines.
Manikaygu Dhukarr
Songline Tracks
Concepts: mapping, art, connections, stories

ILC Curriculum Key Ideas:
NE: Knowing and understanding the importance and ways of caring for country
CL: Students know their own and other people’s relationships to Country.
CL: Students identify their Dreaming stories, songs and dances.

Wata ga Maŋan
Wind & Clouds
Concepts: Seasons, reading the sky, passages of time

ILC Curriculum Key Ideas:
NE: Cycles and passages of time: seasons, day/night, moon and stars, tides.
NE: ‘Reading the land’ to find water

Curriculum Outcomes 
across the year


CL: Students identify how people live on country now and in the past (Learning from traditional ways of living)
NE: 'Reading the land' to find water
NE: Knowing and understanding the importance and ways of caring for country