A school leadership program is teaching Indigenous students about their culture, history and languages, but one young leader says a national school curriculum on Indigenous languages would be almost impossible to roll out.

Key points: At Mount Isa in north-west Queensland, a group of Indigenous students are learning about their culture through a leadership program

At Mount Isa in north-west Queensland, a group of Indigenous students are learning about their culture through a leadership program Elders attend the school to share their stories and to be interviewed by the students

Elders attend the school to share their stories and to be interviewed by the students One of the goals is to build confidence and pride in the students taking part

Tremayne Gemmell calls himself a bridge between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

The teenager, who is of Scottish and Aboriginal descent, has been involved in a school leadership program that teaches Indigenous students about their culture, history, and languages.

The Ngawa Indigenous Leadership Program, at Mount Isa Spinifex State College in north-west Queensland, is vital for young Indigenous students, Tremayne said.

But he said a national approach to rolling out programs — teaching all schoolchildren traditional languages — would be almost impossible.

"Aboriginal culture in general is not surviving, so we need to pass it on to the next generations to keep it alive," Tremayne said.

"I'd like to learn more about the history, but it's difficult because you're from different tribes, different clans. You can't learn about the one clan.

"I don't think you can approach it [a national curriculum] really.

"You've got Aboriginal people who belong to that tribe and they barely know any of their culture, so it would be hard for the Government to go back and try and get all of that."

Tremayne said he learned about his culture from his grandmother and his uncle.

"They love to share stories no matter what, even if it's not about the culture," he said.

Tremayne said racism was a constant issue for all Aboriginal people, and said his generation needed to step up.

"I feel like they [his generation] need to not fall into the stereotypes of living off benefits … and be a better person than the other people," he said.

Aunty Dolly

Mount Isa's Dolly Hankin is affectionately known as Aunty Dolly. ( ABC North West Queensland: Kelly Butterworth )

Dolly Hankin, who is mostly known as Aunty Dolly around Mount Isa, is a Torres Strait Islander and has often stepped in to mentor and help the next generation understand culture.

She said she believed schools should embrace their multicultural student bodies and learn in many ways.

"Today's generation [of Indigenous children] and non-Indigenous children — anyone from anywhere that comes into a library — grabs a book [and] reads the stories in the book," Aunty Dolly said.

"Our way of telling our stories is through singing and dance because our great-great-grandparents did not know how to write.

"So we remember our traditional songs as great-grandfathers' or great-grandmothers' life experiences.

"We have a diverse and multicultural community here now in Mount Isa and in the country. We should be open to any form of education of any language."

Aunty Dolly has lived in Mount Isa for 38 years and raised her six children there.

"I put my children through the school and it was easy, they were thriving for education," she said.

"Speaking from experience, my children are all workers. From Year 11 they all went into work [and my] grandchildren [will] probably go that way too."

Despite her family's success, Aunty Dolly said as a community a bigger approach was necessary to combat Indigenous unemployment rates.

"We need to give our Indigenous children a chance to get out there and experience work," she said.

"First of all, whoever is going to do the implementation needs to have a lot of patience.

"Because our people, shame factor is a very big thing — it doesn't knock them about, it just makes them extra hard and slow to work with."

Jodie Lobegeiger

Spinifex State College teacher Jodie Lobegeiger. ( ABC North West Queensland: Kelly Butterworth )

Jodie Lobegeiger, an English and humanities teacher at Spinifex State College, has been running the Indigenous leadership program that Tremayne Gemmell has been participating in.

As an Indigenous woman herself, Ms Lobegeiger said she saw the program as a way for students to learn about historical mistreatment, and how it impacted on Indigenous Australians.

She recently invited local Indigenous elders to attend the program to share their stories with students, and give the students a chance to interview their elders and record their views on culture.

"I'm an Indigenous person born and bred in Mount Isa, so I became involved in the program out of pure passion for the Indigenous community," she said.

"This group is open only to Indigenous students, the reason being that they then filter their knowledge into our school community.

"I think that's a really nice opportunity for them to share their lost culture."

Ms Lobegeiger said building confidence and pride into the teenagers was one of her biggest goals.

"This program is really important to build pride, because as we know, unfortunately, there was an era of Indigenous or Aboriginal shame, when a lot of people weren't identifying themselves as Aboriginal," she said.

"It's to help the Indigenous community grow and gain respect from the wider community as well."