Yalanji Quest
Code Club Australia’s exciting new release project is here ready for Hour of Code 2022!
The concept of Yalanji Quest is a partnering initiative with IndigiLab and the Telstra Foundation. The aim and objective of the project is to increase more awareness about the importance of First Nations cultures in STEM education and provide cultural resources for teachers and students to understand Indigenous perspectives in science.
The Yalanji people are from North Queensland. Their country extends from south of Mossman to Cooktown in the north, and Palmer River in the west. They have a strong relationship and connection to the land and rainforest developed over thousands of years, shared through legend and history. The Australian Instititue of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Studies (AIATSIS) website has an interactive map that shows the geographical location of the Yalanji people.
Nature is hugely important to the Yalanji culture. They have intimate knowledge of the cycles of life, animals and rainforest, passed down through generations. Their seasonal calendar is used to identify the changes in season on the land and is broken into 5 different times of the year.
The first Yalanji quest is to explore Bubu, the land. During the Jarramali (stormy) season, November to December on the Yalanji seasonal calendar, you can find plenty of mayi (food) to eat in the bush and Junkar which grows on trees near creeks. Junkar is a cherry like fruit on the Lilly Pilly tree that is delicious to eat during this time, but with the runoff from heavy rain some mayi can become toxic. To ensure that you won’t get ill it’s important to collect fruit that is high off the ground in the stormy season.
In the project coders are introduced to 2 characters who are integral to the Yalanji Quest games. Ngukay is an elder and providers the user with information and instructions, ready to the play the game. Indigi Bot is our main character and is controlled by the user.
Our first Yalanji Quest project is aimed at users with a small amount of experience using Scratch. It uses coding that involves character control, cloning, broadcasting and score keeping. Keep an eye out for the next projects in the series which will give an extended version of this project that uses coding to create gravity and parallax scrolling. We will also be releasing a third version of the project that uses video sensing blocks to have a person truly interact with the game.
Meet our project testers
Code Club Australia went to visit students in year 3 at Edge Hill State School who volunteered to be testers for the project and provide feedback. Kaye worked with 2 highly engaged classes who worked through the project to create the game and to challenge each other to play. Luke Briscoe, CEO of IndigiLab was also there to help students, see the project through kid’s eyes and be part of the fun. We thank the year 3’s and their teachers for hosting us and being part of the release of Yalanji Quest!
We acknowledge and pay respect to Yalanji elders both past and present and acknowledge the people who have paved the way to sustaining Yalanji Language, Culture and Science and the First Law.
Happy Coding!
Kaye, Code Club Australia
