Embedding Indigenous Knowledges in an Indigenous-Led Social Change Leadership Program: A Study of Placed-Based Curriculum

• In Event: Indigenous Futures: Forging New Educational Possibilities and Leadership for Social Change Through Decolonizing Learning Environments

Abstract

This paper presents a model for the embedding of Indigenous knowledges in an Indigenous social change leadership program located in the Oceania region, that aims to build a curriculum for Fellows that deeply recognises place, while at the same time acknowledging our orientation to place is informed by history, empire, language, and culture. Elevating Indigenous ways of knowing as the first consideration of the work and connecting to embodied Indigenous experience underpins the program’s aim of systemic social change.

The call to ‘decolonise’ the curriculum and educational research has been ongoing for decades, entering the educational research agenda in the 1990s (Smith, 1999; Smith & Smith, 2019). In more recent times there have been calls for curricula in higher education institutions to include Indigenous knowledges (Walter & Aitken, 2019). The program we deliver is charged with putting Indigenous ways of knowing and agency as the first consideration of all topics, and to connect to the embodied Indigenous experiences of all the participants who work across the Indigenous-led program.

Working out what it means to embed Indigenous knowledges in the curriculum has required discussion, thought and reflection. To decolonize the curriculum is to recognise that colonization is a process of dispossession and control, resulting in a crushing oppression (Jackson, 2020). Recognising and valuing place is one way an ethic of restoration can be achieved. With an increase in Indigenous researchers and educators there is an abundance of examples of local knowledge and working in local communities with elders and knowledge holders (McKinley & Smith, 2019). Centring Indigenous knowledges in our work honours those who have brought us to this place and made what we do possible – the knowledge holders and leaders of the past who have kept Indigenous knowledge alive and have nurtured and spoken Indigenous languages.

Delivering the program creates an action research approach. The embedding of Indigenous knowledges in the curriculum follows a cycle of plan, act, observe/record and reflect, followed by a revised plan, and so on. Data that feeds into the cycle is extensive and includes strategic planning, focused meetings, interviews, a survey and a focus group. Everyone involved in the development and implementation of the curriculum constantly reflects on the work through being present during intensives and regular curricula meetings.

Embedding Indigenous knowledges in the curriculum has been considered successful from all participants. Over the three years we have become aware of further opportunities to extend the work, such as spending time ‘on Country’ with local Indigenous communities through the facilitation of the program’s Fellow alumni. This has had a significant impact on the Indigenous communities, and the Fellows whose communities host us.

Indigenous peoples have been systematically excluded from the institutions of knowledge and have been, and are still currently, the focus of hostile, racist, and unethical research. Through embedding Indigenous knowledges in the curriculum for a postgraduate qualification from a traditionally white university, we are redefining what it means for the university to be in relation with Indigenous peoples and communities.

Author

• Elizabeth McKinley, University of Melbourne