Liz Millman
My professional background is in education. I was a primary teacher, then moved to ‘adult learning’, ie Adult Education’, in my work I was developing approaches to support adults and young people to see themselves as Lifelong Learners with the basic skills need to do this.
I also worked in Early Years, teaching 4–7-year olds and then moved to training Nursery Nurses and Childcare Workers. This led me to explore the challenge of working with others to develop anti racist approaches in Early Years settings and helped me to recognise that all the languages of families living in UK should be valued and treated with respect.
I developed a particular interest in Jamaica, exploring the two ways that Jamaicans speak and developed an interest in and friendships with people in Jamaica and in the Jamaican Diaspora.
As a child I visited my Welsh father when he was working in Nigeria, and as a child in school in Worcestershire, I learned about the cultures of the countries of the British Commonwealth. I was entranced by the idea of a country where yellow birds sat ‘high in banana trees’, and wondered what it would be like to shop in Linstead Market in Jamaica.
So, an invitation by the Jamaican Government to take part in their Adult Education Week in 1997 was too good an opportunity for me to miss. So, like those now taking part in the LLI / Taith programme I jumped at the chance, and it was life changing. I have travelled back to Jamaica almost every year since then and organised well over 50 exchange visits – mainly between educationalists, funded by the British Council, on various programmes including ‘Connecting Classrooms’.
I have also worked with Jamaican poet, Yasus Afari, since 2007, by which time I was ‘retired’. Together we set up Learning Links International and founded the North Wales Jamaica Society with locals in Bangor. Yasus Afari is fascinated by Wales and before Covid hit he visited most years to support Black History Month activities across Wales.
Now you know why I wrote an application ‘to explore the shared history of Wales and Jamaica’. I want to enable more people to have the life changing opportunity to visit Jamaica, that the life changing opportunity I took up all those years ago.
Also in Jamaica its warm / hot all year, and I have found Jamaican people very friendly and interested to learn and keen to explore aspects of our shared history.
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My focus now is to explore ways that we can work together to explore our shared histories, and to learn to fully respect one another’s ideas and ways of doing things, as well as appreciating the languages they speak and enjoy the food others prepare.
For English people it’s hard to change our mindset of being right – knowing that there are right and proper ways to speak and do things – ignorantly ignoring the fact that other people speak and manage life just fine, speaking other languages, eating different food and enjoying different music and ways of doing things.
In our mixed up world of today, many people are living in other people’s countries, for example think about this – probably as many people with Welsh heritage live outside Wales – as those Welsh people who live in Wales, possibly more!
Immigration / migration – settlers / invaders ?
I say - ‘I moved to live with my daughter in Australia’
– not ‘I have migrated to Australia’, or ‘I have emigrated to Australia’
or ‘I am yet another British person who had ‘the right’ to go and live in someone else’s country, based on the fact that Britain invaded the great continent now called Australia in ?? and killed off most of the locals, and please note I had to pay the descendants of the convicts who are now called the ‘Government of Australia’ a great deal of money for the privilege of moving into the country that their ancestors stole from the people who had lived there for millennia’.
While on this injustice – the First Australians (a term use to describe people from many, many different language speaking lands – Australia is bigger than Europe) – the First Australians reasonably tried to put forward an idea to the invaders of their lands, that they – the original custodian and owners of the lands now called Australia, could perhaps have a voice to the Parliament set up in 1900 by the descendants of the invaders. When the current political party took over in 2023 they offered a Referendum to put this proposal into Australia’s constitution.
Now bear in mind there are far more European people descended from the first invaders and others from every country on the planet, who fancied living in Australia rather than the country they ‘come from’, than there are the descendants of the original inhabitants of the peoples who hold the longest years of custodianship of the lands now called Australia.
The Referendum went disastrously wrong and the majority of people in Australia voted ‘No’ - as voting is compulsory under Australian law, many must have taken the easy option ‘if you don’t know, vote no’. Again interesting to see the power of the English language.
So, as of today in 2024, the original peoples of the continent that is today called Australia, that is part of the British Commonwealth / Stolenwealth, don’t even have a voice to the Parliament of the invaders.
On other issues:
‘Parenting in Wales’ – this approach gives parents bringing up children and young people in Wales today, the opportunity to explore the background to the strategies and approaches being developed in Wales to ensure that our young people have the best and safest start to their lives, whether they are born in Wales or have moved to Wales.
‘Parenting in Wales’ enables parents to explore how to create a ‘learning family, providing practical, helpful guidance to support the challenges of helping your children and young people gain the skills and strategies needed and suited to life in Wales in the 21st century.
In Wales today families need to recognise that they are bringing up children who are at least bilingual, if not multilingual.
English as a first language is fine, but English and first language English speakers often hold a view that this is the only way to speak and think, and that speakers of other languages are ‘less than’ – take the classic example when in Spain on holiday and a Spanish person doesn’t understand what you are saying, an uninformed English speaker just speaks loudly and clearly and slowly in English, as if that will make a difference. Often it does! But only because so many folks around the world have learned a little English on TV or in the media, or their great grandparents lived in one of the many countries colonised by the English-speaking British. Patagonia is the only remaining colonised country where Welsh is spoken.
Wales is a bilingual country where Cymraig / Welsh and English/ Sasnaeg ? have equal status and if one language needs to be dominant, then its Cymraig /Welsh. This is Cymru/Wales.
Cymraig/Welsh as a first language is fine, but in Britain it is also necessary to speak English due to the dominance of English, created by the legacy of Britian’s imperial past and English language dominance created in the 45 ? countries of the British Empire.
Wales’ legacy to the British Empire was Eisteddfod, the recognition of the importance of poetry, music and performance as an approach to share cultures. Eisteddfod was never really adopted in England, Scotland or Ireland, but it alive and thriving in Australia, Jamaica (as ‘Festival) and many other countries. In Jamaica they still even dance the Quadrille and dance around a May Pole to Reggae Music!
Scotland’s legacy to the British Empire is bagpipes – almost everywhere in the old British Empire that you visit – there will be someone who can play the bagpipes, or they have Highland games with blokes wearing kilts!
Ireland’s best-known legacy left around the countries that were colonised / stolen by the British - is Guinness!
England’s legacy is English, a language that dominated and sometimes decimated the languages spoken by people living in their own home lands. Another legacy was the wealth shipped back to the UK that was created in / stolen during the years of colonisation / invasion, also the stories of the unbelievably cruel and crass ways that these stories of invasion unfolded. Listen to First Australian / Aboriginal Heritage poet ??? and you have to laugh at his stories of the ignorance of the British invaders – but you don’t laugh when you understand the wickedness and cunning of the British invasion strategies, all approved and legislated for by the British Parliament – for more information try reading Hansard – now online with Parliamentary records going back to 17??.
What an interesting language English is – it even has words like colonised invented to save the embarrassment of act of stealing another people’s land and resources, or even people! The Slave Trade was given a capital S and T to make it seem OK and proper – there is nothing OK or proper about people trafficking / kidnapping/degradation of other human beings, even if you gave them Capital Letters.
Of course I could go on …….