ARDS CEO Biography
Richard Trudgen is the hands on Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of ARDS. Not only is he the CEO raising monies and running the organisation, he also presents on Yolngu Radio, trains others and does “community education”. He has over thirty five years experience in capacity building, through community development and community education: much of this work has focussed on the Yolngu (Aboriginal) people of north-east Arnhem Land.
Richard has dedicated much of his adult life to understanding the world through the eyes of the Yolngu people not as a science in itself but so he could work more effectively for the people. To do this Richard has spent many long hours; living and working with the people, talking with clan elders, learning Yolngu languages and their culture way of life. In this process he discovered two major things. One, that the people were severally mystified about the modern world that now controls many aspects of their life; creating a debilitating “culture of silence”. Two, he found that Yolngu people had a whole class of traditional academic language called Gurrangay Matha, which was fast disappearing.
The discovery of Gurrangay Matha allowed him to learn key cultural concepts, generative words and phrases, which he could use to initiate “discovery education” sessions; where the people experience, through dialogue, that they can know and understanding how the contemporary world works; allowing them to participate and claim their rights as citizens.
In 1992 Yolngu elders asked Richard to rebuild a team of dominant culture personnel who could learn the people’s language, and work as capacity builders using the “discovery education” methodology, Richard and Yolngu elders had refined. The approach enables the teaching of; AIDS, STI’s, chronic disease and substance abuse down to a biomedical level: legal, economic, commerce and governance issues , which has lead to the development of cottage industry, small and larger businesses.
In 1994, Richard was also asked by clan elders to deliver cultural awareness workshops to provide mainstream Australia with an understanding of Yolngu culture and knowledge. These workshops have developed into the very successful seminars he still delivers.
In 1998 Richard and his team looked for a way to shift the “discovery education” from a face to face model, working with individuals and small groups, to a regional model where education could reach 8,000 Yolngu people in their homes. In 2002 “Yolngu Radio” was born, now broadcasting 24 x 7 through two satellite systems and twenty transmission sites across the region and in Darwin, with most of the programming in the local language.
July 2000 he launched his book “Why Warriors Lie Down and Die”. Now in its seventh printing the book allows others to walk in the shoes of Yolngu People and experience some of the persistent problems they experience, and to identify some ways forward.
Now he is working on establishing an e-learning classroom to deliver literacy and numeracy training to Yolngu adults and children where they live, in their own language.
