Humans of CSE August

In this month’s edition of Humans of CSE, we delve into the unique experiences of an Indigenous computer science student here at UNSW.

Can you introduce yourself?

Hi I’m Isabella and I'm a Vice President at the First Nations Engineering and Science Society (FNESS). I grew up on Worimi country but my ancestors were Gamilaroi and unfortunately, a part of the stolen generation. I don't know too much information but I want to get more involved with the Indigenous community so I can learn more about myself and my ancestors. I've also been a part of the First Inventors, which was a TV show where we worked on making a drone with boomerangs as the propellers. Currently I am studying a Bachelor of Computer Science and technically I'm a second year, but I have been here for a couple of years doing part time study. My job right now is an intern at IBM where I do a lot of programming, software development, and cyber security. It's a lot of fun, I really love it.

Why did you choose UNSW?

I started uni in 2020 but I came to Sydney in 2021. Originally I went to the University of Wollongong but I wanted to learn more than just Java. Wollongong did really well, but I wanted lower level stuff and that's why my teacher recommended UNSW because of their MIPS course, which was COMP1521. I was able to get in through Nura Gili where I did an interview, allowing me to transfer to UNSW.

When you came to UNSW what was your experience of the entry process/pathway?

It's a mixed bag. I feel like it could be better, which is why we made FNESS. We basically found that the engineering faculty as a whole doesn't do a lot with the Indigenous stuff. If you look at the arts or law faculty, they've got a lot of Indigenous stuff there, whereas the Engineering department doesn’t have much. I was the ambassador for the Nuragili engineering pre-programs in 2022 which were three week intensives, like uni but put down to three weeks. It's really intense and a lot of students struggle with it because it's a very intensive program where you do maths, design and a couple of other courses. Tyson Namok this year has put together a group to encourage more indigenous engagement. He has coffee chats now and textbook reimbursements. This wasn't around when I first started. But it is available now thanks to Tyson. I haven't had a lot of experience with this as I have been sick but I can tell it helped a lot of students this year. Tyson also runs science and engineering student drop ins that have free food. This connects students and FNESS each term.

Does the program get a lot of students?

At the time I only had three students that were actually in the program whereas the other programs had about 10 to 12 students. A lot of the reasons why Engineering is not as popular is because a lot of Indigenous students come from rural backgrounds or from outside Sydney - resulting in them believing they're not smart enough to get into engineering. I want to change that and so does all of FNESS. We're trying to show them that even if they’re terrible at maths, it's okay because there is help we can provide over here including tutoring programs at Nura Gili.

Is it common for Indigenous kids to believe they aren’t smart enough to do engineering?

So that is a thing that I've constantly heard when I was in high school, because we had Indigenous programs in high school where we used to go and you would get free food. We used to call it the cultural room and basically a lot of the times people would go in there for help with math but a lot of the complaints were, “Oh, I'm not smart enough to do anything related to math so I'm going to do the lowest math course”. I was also recommended to do it or other things like that and it's just very unmotivating. So when I said that I wanted to study computer science, a lot of my teachers sort of looked at me and were like, “Are you sure? it's a lot of maths” and I'm just like,  “I can learn maths” but then they were like, “yeah, but in uni, it's very, very difficult, you should do something more interesting, like art”. The teachers weren't really encouraging towards engineering at my high school, they weren't directly discouraging it. It was just sort of like, a lot of students go through and unfortunately a lot of them do fail. It's like when something happens so many times, they sort of just go, “okay, well, are you sure? Are you positive?” They would have past students that dropped out and they'll think that you might drop out too. It was sort of like a protection thing and it definitely came from a place of love, but it did come across as kind of harsh.

Have you been able to learn much about your Indigenous heritage and family history?

I don't know a lot about my ancestors. Some Indigenous students will know everything about their ancestors but if you come from the stolen generation, there's almost nothing. Growing up in high school, it was really disheartening when everyone had a family tree and I couldn't get past a certain stage. It’s heartbreaking because then you find out about the birth, deaths and marriages of the people that you do actually have information on. Some of them were children when they had children and it also hurts because a lot of the family don't want to talk about it. So obviously if I went up to my grandmother being like, “what's my heritage like?” She would be like, “don't ask”,  as there's so many things wrong. There's definitely a bit of generational trauma.

I'm trying to find out more information about my ancestors without hurting my family but that is very difficult. Sometimes you'll find that with a lot of the identity stuff, some members in our family will just prefer to not associate themselves as Indigenous even though we are. If you go into the history it becomes quite confronting. For my family it's pretty bad, because I believe my great great grandmother was stolen and then she was more or less just forced to have children with white people. People who are commonly a part of the stolen generation usually either don't have access or they don't know how to get access or sometimes they don't want to find out because it's just too confronting. I'm part of the belief that I would like to know that my ancestors existed. I would like to find out more about them because at the moment we're sort of pretending that they don't exist which is not fair.

Tell us about your society FNESS

We were all having our own issues, and even though Nura Gili is able to cover a lot, they can't cover everything. So we had problems. We'd go to Nura Gili but they were unable to help, leading us to collectively create FNESS.

For what we do, we've got the Boomerang project happening and we've also started bringing in a couple of fun events with free food, which everyone loves. We'll have stalls where we'll show off and advertise something but because we're really tiny, we can only do so much. I think we've only got about 12 members in our society, which is low, but I actually think that's just representative of how many Indigenous students do science or engineering, but our goal is to create a community. We would also like people who aren't Indigenous to learn more about Indigenous culture and if you're interested or you want to be an ally, you are welcome to join.

Do you feel a sense of community here at UNSW with other Indigenous students?

Yes and no. So, yes in terms of that there's a community and we do tend to get together when things go wrong but unfortunately due to the way the timetables are set up, there's not really time to really see everyone so the community here is very disconnected unless you're in Nura Gili 24/7.

Do you feel a cultural difference between you and your classmates?

Very often, yes but obviously not purposely. Actually a good example of this was when I was in the maker space for the Boomerang project many years ago. We had a mixture of different students and there were only two Indigenous students on the project with the rest not being Indigenous because they couldn't find any more. So that resulted in the other students not really understanding the significance of having an elder’s boomerang and they would be like, “oh, why don't you just do this? Just make a 3D model of it, it's still the same anyway, ” but I'm like, “no, it can’t be scanned because the boomerang is sacred”. I understood what they were saying, but there can be misunderstandings and a lack of awareness of the culture, especially when it comes to elders' items. They'd often hold it and be like, oh, this is funny, let's throw it.

So what actually is the significance of an elder's items?

So sometimes it depends on each tribe. So some cultures believe that if you take photos of this particular item, you're trapping the soul. Other times you can take photos, it's fine. But sometimes you might not be able to hold it or you need to hold it in a certain way. It's just different things. There's not really one rule but it's best to ask an elder and if you get given something that's from an Indigenous community, it's best to just make sure you understand the significance of that. So that way you don't end up either damaging the product or hurting the community. I was very picky about how the boomerang was handled but I was picky for a reason because I knew the elder behind it had already had his ancestors wronged and I didn’t want to repeat that.

What do you wish more people understood about what it's like to be an indigenous student at UNSW?

Every Indigenous student has different experiences and the best thing you can do is listen, learn and try to understand. You know, if someone is indigenous that might mean that they have a differing opinion to another Indigenous person because there's hundreds of tribes in Australia and they all have different rules. I don't know much about this Country but I know Worimi Country because I grew up there. A lot of people will say “if you're indigenous, you must know everything about this community here” when that’s not true, they’re all different.

Do you think the tech world could learn anything from the indigenous?

Absolutely, IBM has a really cool thing which I really love where on every single one of their offices in Australia they've got this really nice plaque that states what Country they're on, which not a lot of companies do. Another thing which IBM has are these little puzzle sets, which are actually Indigenous artworks. I really like them because they're done by actual Indigenous artists. These art-works will say what Country they’re from - and it’s really nice to just sit down and put it together with a team-mate because it opens up discussion on what different symbols or parts of the art-work mean.

Did you have an indigenous person in your life that inspired you to do computer science?

In high school there was a lot of stuff with Indigenous art, but being autistic and liking computers, I wasn’t really drawn to art. This involved a lot of arguments between me and the cultural group. Although it seems counterintuitive being able to talk to them, even if it was in a way where it was probably not the most motivating, it did the opposite. I just wanted to spite them.

So you built a drone that used boomerangs as the propellers?

Yes, and we're building another one with the help of Uncle Moogy. He allowed us to scan one of his personal boomerangs and we kind of want to test it out with different boomerangs of different shapes and sizes. The original boomerang drone didn't fly great. They probably didn't show this in the show, but it actually crashed. The boomerangs wanted to go in different directions. So it wasn't a complete success but it still flew. We're still investigating. I still want to make more things.

How intrinsic is indigenous culture to your day-to-day life?

So it sounds silly, but I believe that my ancestors are watching over me and the reason why this is important to my day to day life is because whenever I feel really crap or if I feel bad, I interact with birds, usually crows or currawongs. I believe that they’re my ancestors watching over me. Everywhere I’ve gone I've always had crows around. In Wollongong, I had a crow - like a wild crow that would just approach me. Here at UNSW I had a currawong that would approach me. But the reason why I'm bringing that up is because Indigenous people have a lot of connections to the land. It's important to my day to day life because whenever I feel  disconnected, it's a reminder that I am connected.

And another thing that's important is that even though I don't have a lot of information about my ancestors, I still like to try and learn. I like to approach every day with the attitude that every day is another day where you get to learn something new and maybe today is the day I'll find out more about my ancestors!

What advice would you give to younger indigenous students who might be considering studying computer science?

If you're thinking of studying computer science or if you have an interest in computers, just do it. Sorry, that's very cheesy. If you're scared about mathematics, there is help. It's never too late to learn and there's no such thing as being too stupid. That's not a thing. You will be able to persevere through a lot because your ancestors could persevere through a  lot. You probably don't believe in yourself but you should. Your ancestors didn't have the same opportunity. It's probably something they would have loved to have done, a lot of them weren't even allowed to go to school.

For more useful resources:

CSESoc Discord - A great place to ask questions and get advice from fellow students!

UNSW Subreddit - This is not CSESoc affiliated, however it is popular amongst students when seeking useful advice that may have been asked by past students in subreddits. Use at your own discretion.

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Richard Zhang, Andre Ford, Liem Phan