Education academic and researcher Professor Grace Sarra has long lived with a well-formed sense of social justice.
Raised in a large and tight-knit extended family, she grew up caring about “making a difference for our mob’’.
Professor Sarra has spent more than 30 years in the education sphere - as a primary school teacher, advisor for the Department of Education in Indigenous spaces, and in academia.
Now working in the QUT School of Early Childhood & Inclusive Education, Professor Sarra has extensive experience working within schools and across all sectors in education in Indigenous and low socio-economic communities and railing against low expectations and stereotypes of what these students can achieve.
She has worked to improve educational outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and low SES students, as well as research spanning early childhood, inclusive education, and incarcerated youth in detention centres. Her work has been widely supported and funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC), Aboriginal Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), industry and government.
A proud heritage
Born and raised in Townsville, in North Queensland, Professor Sarra, nee Savage, is of Aboriginal heritage from the Bindal and Birriah nation, and Torres Strait Islander heritage of Mauar, Stephen and Murray Islands.
Her mother, Dorothy Smallwood, is the eldest of 19 siblings and Professor Sarra, in turn, is the oldest grandchild of “all the younger ones coming through’’.
Dorothy Smallwood achieved her Diploma in Community Welfare and worked in education for many years as a community education counsellor at Townsville State High School, supporting Indigenous students to embrace their cultural identity and to help improve their educational outcomes.
Professor Sarra’s late father Samuel Savage, who passed away in 2022, was a respected Torres Strait Islander man and a traditional healer who worked from a teenager to retirement age as a railway ganger, building railway tracks by hand, alongside his brothers.
From a young age Professor Sarra was taught to be proud of her Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage and was instilled with a strong sense of identity from her upbringing in both cultures.
In turn, she has passed this to her own children, Ezra, 26, Talia, 24, and Marcellus, 20.
“Growing up, I was always taught to be proud of who I was and where I came from and to never be ashamed of being Indigenous or let anyone put me down,’’ she said.
“It gave me pride and respect for the cultures of our people.’’
Her parents also instilled “strategies of non-violence’’, teaching that “you can make a difference with words’’. They also strongly encouraged the importance of education and supported their children and their extended family to get a good education.
After initially thinking she may pursue a career in nursing to follow her role model Aunty, Professor Gracelyn Smallwood (but “I don’t like blood’’), Professor Sarra turned to teaching instead, completing a Bachelor of Education at James Cook University.
She began teaching in Townsville and Charters Towers, before moving to academia at Toowoomba’s University of Southern Queensland, then back to primary school teaching at Cherbourg, 250km northwest of Brisbane. She also worked as an Indigenous education advisor within Education Queensland, before becoming the first student at QUT to complete the Doctor of Creative Industries.
Professor Sarra has been an academic at QUT in the Faculty of Education and now Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Justice since 2007.
It was in her role as an education advisor where Professor Sarra met her husband, Indigenous educator Dr Chris Sarra. He founded the Stronger Smarter Institute that works to improve the educational outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and has been awarded numerous honours including NAIDOC Person of the Year 2016, and 2010 Queensland Australian of the Year.
He has held various senior government positions and is currently chief executive officer of the Office of First Nations Engagement and Innovation in the Department of Premier and Cabinet.
Making an impact
Professor Sarra is currently a researcher at QUT, working with projects including the $35 million QUT-led ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, a world-first centre dedicated to creating positive digital childhoods for Australian children aged from birth to eight years.
The centre is running a major longitudinal study called Australian Children of the Digital Age (ACODA), tracking 3000 families over four years in how young children engage with digital technology which she currently co-leads with Professor Daniel Johnson (QUT) and Dr Julianna Zabatiero (Curtin University).
She is also a researcher in a three-year, multi-university ARC Indigenous discovery research grant with Associate Professor Marnee Shay (UQ) co-designing Indigenous education policy in Queensland that engages indigenous families and communities in the design process “from the beginning to the end’’.
In 2014, Professor Sarra received an ARC Indigenous Discovery Grant with QUT colleague Adjunct Associate Professor Bronwyn Ewing to assess mathematical learning potential of incarcerated Indigenous and low socio-economic young people at the Brisbane Youth Education and Training Centre.
This year, Professor Sarra was part of a research team with Associate Professor Marnee Shay (UQ), Fred Cobbo (UQ) and Professor Margaret Kettle (CQU) and was awarded an Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) grant.
The project created local Indigenous curriculum resources to support Aboriginal language revitalisation, called the Binung Ma Na Du Cultural Stories and Living Histories on Wakka Wakka Country.
A passion for making a difference is also shared by Professor Sarra’s family.
“My family are all oriented towards making a difference for our mob in the work that we do,’’ Professor Sarra said.
“It’s about making an impact where we can.’’
A simple hope
As an Indigenous Australian, Professor Grace Sarra, has, unfortunately, experienced racism and discrimination.
She remembers an “ugly negative experience’’ when a teacher did not give her a reference upon leaving high school, due to, she believes, “a negative perception of what an Indigenous person should be’’.
She recalls the feelings of people watching her when walking into a store and of the too-many-to-count times she has waited to be served despite being ahead of other customers.
“Growing up we experienced it. We lived in a very racist town,’’ Professor Sarra said.
“Racism and discrimination is a reality for Indigenous people in Australia. We see racism and discrimination, and even today, it hasn’t changed.
“I remember having to explain to my children, when they were six or seven years old, that this is racism and discrimination.
“Walking around the shopping centre with my son when he was in high school, I would want him to stay close to me…just the looks he’d get walking into a shop. I did not want him to experience that, but that’s just a reality for our kids.’’
These experiences, and many others too, steeled Professor Sarra to succeed and fight for Indigenous people against discrimination and injustice.
And she has a simple hope - that her work has contributed to making the world a better place for future generations, including her young grandchildren, Jada, 3, Koda, 18 months, and Ty, seven months.
She’s not under any illusions that all problems faced by Indigenous Australians will be fixed any time soon. There is, she says, still “a long way to go’’ in terms of closing the gap in Indigenous and non-Indigenous educational outcomes, as well as changing mindsets, attitudes and perceptions.
Unfortunately, she says the ‘no’ vote in the 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum, while “not surprising’’ has had the effect of halting even small gains.
“The momentum has stopped,’’ Professor Sarra said.
“I hope that a lot of things that Indigenous people have to endure - issues of systemic racial bias, discrimination and prejudice – will improve and not be as bad for my grandchildren and their future children coming through.
“There are more opportunities now for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. And if these can assist in providing improved health and educational outcomes, and reduced youth incarceration, we’ll have more Indigenous people in positions that recognise the importance of listening, valuing and privileging our voices that have been silenced for too long.
“We’ll have more Indigenous doctors and lawyers and more Indigenous people sitting within Parliament, as well as our own people in decision-making positions in their own local Indigenous communities.
“I have hope. I mean if you don’t have hope, what is there?”
QUT has established the Faculty of Indigenous Knowledges and Culture with students to begin their studies in 2025. The faculty has been established as part of the QUT Connections strategy, which has a key priority of recognising and fostering Indigenous Australian excellence. QUT has clearly stated its commitment to Indigenous Australian education and research with the QUT Indigenous Research Strategy launched in 2022, the development of a QUT Indigenous Australian Portfolio, the award-winning Campus to Country strategy, and the QUT Indigenous Employment Strategy.
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