Situating the ‘beyond’: adventure-learning and Indigenous cultural competence

Abstract

In 2010, an Indigenous Elder from the Wiradjuri nation and a group of academics from Charles Sturt University travelled to Menindee, a small locality on the edge of the Australian outback. They were embarked upon an ‘adventure-learning’ research journey to study ways of learning by creating a community of practice with an Elder from the Ngyampa/Barkandji nation. This article first explores the implications of this innovative approach to transformative learning for professional development and for teaching and learning practice. It then reflects on the significance of location for pedagogic approaches aimed at closing the education gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians in universities.

Keywords:

• Australia
• Indigenous
• cultural competence
• pedagogy
• location

Acknowledgements

We wish to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which our University campuses are located, paying respect to the Elders, both past and present, and extending that respect to all Indigenous Australians. We would like to acknowledge, with gratitude, the work of Associate Professor Wendy Nolan, Director, Centre for Indigenous Studies at CSU and her considerable involvement and leadership to set CSU on the journey to cultural competence, and acknowledge her leadership across the sector. Our sincere thanks to our fellow travellers: Dr John Harper, Dr Jillene Harris, Mary O'Dowd, Aunty Gloria Dindima Rogers and Associate Professor Marian Tulloch and to our hosts, Aunty Beryl Philip Carmichael Yungha-dhu and Julie Philip. Thanks also to Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) Professor Ross Chambers, our Deans and Heads of School who made the journey possible. We are also most grateful to the anonymous peer reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Notes

1. In this article, the term ‘Indigenous’ refers to Indigenous Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, not Indigenous peoples in other parts of the world.

2. After a decade of litigation instigated by Torres Strait Islander Eddie Mabo, the Court ruled that the native title of the Indigenous peoples was recognised in common law. For more detail, see http://home.vicnet.net.au/~aar/aarmabo.htm

3. Co-ordinated by Dr Barbara Hill in a close working relationship with the Centre for Indigenous Studies. In particular, the Centre's Acting Director, Wendy Nolan, CSU is incorporating Indigenous Curriculum and Pedagogy in all its undergraduate onshore courses by 2015. Under the University's Indigenous Education Strategy (IES), the institution has made a large commitment and has structures to support the IES at all levels of governance. CSU has a top-down and bottom-up approach; there is resistance but there is also a strong movement of support. The content can be in existing subjects and courses and is also being introduced via new subjects or suite of subjects. The Indigenous Board of Studies looks at all this content and makes its determinations accordingly. More information can be found at http://www.csu.edu.au/division/landt/indigenous-curriculum/

4. To encourage more widespread adoption, in 2010 Universities Australia commissioned guidelines to be drawn up for ‘National Best Practice for Indigenous Cultural Competency in Australian Universities’. These are being written by a consultancy group led by Wendy Nolan, Acting Director, Centre for Indigenous Studies at CSU. For more information see http://www.universitiesaustralia/edu.au/category/indigenous.

5. ‘Aunty’ and ‘Uncle’ are the common English language honorifics for Indigenous Elders.

6. Indigenous people constitute 2.1% of the population of New South Wales. Information retrieved 10 May, 2011, from http://www.daa.nsw.gov.au/communityprofiles/CommunityPortrait06 H Menindee.pdf

7. The ‘Never Never’ is the name of a vast, remote, imaginary area of the Australian Outback, first described in Barcroft Boake's poem ‘Where the Dead Men Lie’ (1897). Isolated white pioneer life in the Northern Territory was described by Mrs Aeneas Gunn (Jeannie Gunn) in her classic novel, We of the Never Never (1908). ‘Never Never’ is the name of the fictional desert in Baz Luhrmann's film Australia (2008) across which no white person has ever succeeded in travelling and which, but for an Indigenous shaman (David Gulpilil), almost proves the undoing of the white heroine (Nicole Kidman) and hero (Hugh Jackman). The term ‘beyond the black stump’ has been used since the early nineteenth century for an imaginary point beyond which the country is considered remote and uncivilised, an abstract marker of the limits of established white settlement. The poetic documentary film, The back of beyond (John Heyer, 1954), is about the journey of a white postman whose post-delivering route many kilometres long, lies along the Birdsville Track in the desert regions of southern and central Australia. The feature film Back of Beyond (Michael Robertson, 1995) is a thriller/adventure set in the central Australian desert which in the past, ignoring the many Indigenous people who had lived there for millennia, was widely referred to by white Australians as ‘the dead centre’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jane Mills

Current address: Jane Mills, Journalism & Media Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia.