Islands in the stream: Indigenous academic perceptions of Indigenous senior leadership roles

ABSTRACT

While the number of Indigenous people holding senior positions across the Australian higher education sector is steadily increasing, understanding the value and subsequent contribution of senior Indigenous leaders is an area that has not been investigated in significant detail previously. Commencing in 2018, the Walan Mayiny: Indigenous Leadership in Higher Education project set out to examine the roles and responsibilities of senior Indigenous appointments. This article outlines the value of such positions through centring the voices of Indigenous academic staff. More specifically, findings reported in this article pertain to the perceived value, perceived characteristics and the perceived challenges of Indigenous leadership across the sector. Three sets of values are identified by Indigenous academics to be critical to Indigenous leadership: ‘visibility, voice and advocacy’, ‘decision making and action’, and ‘institutional accountability’. In terms of characteristics, Indigenous academics believe senior Indigenous leaders need to be resilient, be committed to the wider Indigenous community and also have the ability to create and communicate a vision. There are a number of key challenges facing senior Indigenous leaders such as the significant scope of the role, racism, and in some cases the value of the role is not understood and considered tokenistic. Through better understanding the nuances associated with these positions, the sector can best serve Indigenous staff and students, as well as the broader academy.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous leadership
• higher education

Acknowledgement

We would like to sincerely thank the Indigenous academics who participated in this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The difference between the DVC role and the PVC role is the reporting line; i.e. the DVC position usually reports to the Vice-Chancellor, whereas the PVC position often reports to a DVC or the Provost.

2 Walan Mayiny translates to ‘strong people’ in Wiradjuri language.

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to thank the Australian Research Council for funding this project [grant number IN180100026].