Between indigenous and non-indigenous: urban/nature/child pedagogies

Abstract

This co-authored paper offers Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal perspectives on the emergence of urban/nature/child pedagogies in a project to reclaim remnant woodlands. Set in the context of indigenous issues explored in a special edition of the journal on land based education, the paper engages critically with a claim by a group of ecologists, that as urbanisation increases globally indigenous languages and knowledges are being lost in parallel with the loss of species.¹ The paper analyses children’s multimodal images and texts in the book, Because Eco-systems Matter, produced as an outcome of the project. In identifying possibilities for alternative storylines to those of loss and moral failure, the paper concludes that pedagogies incorporating contemporary hybrid Aboriginal forms of language and representation offer all children the possibility of re-imagining a traditional past into a contemporary present/future. In this present/future their learning and actions have the potential to name and change their worlds.

Keywords:

• Indigenous urban
• contemporary hybrid forms
• new pedagogies

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge Willmot Public School, Greening Australia, and the Office of Sustainability Western Sydney University for the implementation and representation of the Cumberland Plains Woodland project. We would also like to thank the editors of this special edition for their careful reading and feedback on the paper and the anonymous reviewers, all of whom have contributed significantly to the final version.

Notes

1. Lower case indigenous is used to signify indigenous people in a general sense, upper case Indigenous is used for specific Indigenous people. In most cases Aboriginal is used rather than Indigenous for Aboriginal Australians who prefer this to the term Indigenous.