1 June 2004

Morning Star Scholarship awardees Tracy Roehr and Phillip Shields

Two scholarships from the Morning Star Scholarship Program worth $2,500 each were presented to two Indigenous undergraduate students at Charles Darwin University today.

Behavioural Science student Tracy Roehr was awarded the Pamela and Alan Harris Scholarship and Visual Arts student Phillip Shields was presented with the NBC Consultants Scholarhsip.

Provided under the Morning Star Scholarship Program, the scholarships are designed to reward Indigenous students for their commitment to completing tertiary education by assisting them in their third or final year of study at Charles Darwin University.

Mother of two Ms Roehr said “I am thrilled to have been awarded a Morning Star scholarship and it will help me financially to complete my undergraduate studies. I plan to continue into postgraduate study specialising in psychology.”

Mr Shields said his scholarship will help him research the history of his extended family in Western Australia which was affected by earlier government policies of assimilation.

“The Scholarship will help fund a trip back to my people’s land to record my family’s history through art. I know that this process will have an extraordinary impact on my art and creativity, especially in my final year of undergraduate study,” Mr Shields said.

Morning Star scholarships symbolically recognise awardees as being rising stars while acknowledging the significance of the Star to Indigenous Australians.

In one Indigenous interpretation, the Morning Star is let out on a string each morning to give light to the world so that its people may not be lost in darkness. In several communities the dance of the Morning Star honours ancestors.

For details of the general conditions, including eligibility and application requirements, of the Morning Star and other scholarships, interested people should access www.cdu.edu.au/scholarships.