9 Toward relational knowing

School of Political Science and International Studies

Humanities and social science disciplines in Australia are largely derived from colonially-infused European ideas, forms and ways of organising and governing human beings together. No doubt many scholars pursue innovative and rigorous analyses, including regarding power relations, inequality and injustice. But because it is impossible to fully separate oneself from the cultural milieu in which one knows, the structural conditions of knowing generate knowledge that reproduces dominant socio-political forms and entities. These include the state, as the provider of socio-political order, and the individual, as a rational and self-interested actor.

Furthermore, political science in Australia remains broadly derivative of British-European ideas and prescriptions aligned with settler-state governance. There has been some consideration of First Nations political relations with the settler-state in recent decades following Peter Loveday’s observation, in his presidential address to the Australasian Political Studies Association conference of 1982, that scholarly interest in Aboriginal politics is “not so much about Aboriginal politics as about white politics as it affects Aboriginal life” (1983, p. 2, emphasis in original). Overall, though, it remains the case that “Australian political science is a child, agent and beneficiary of settler-colonialism” (Brigg et al., 2019, p. 424).

But Australian political scientists live and work on First Nations land amidst an ongoing and unresolved Indigenous–settler conflict. The emergence of Welcome to Country and Acknowledgment of Country protocols from the 1990s have – alongside sustained activism by First Nations people – begun to seep into the cultural milieu in which political scientists work. I was brought up in Darumbal Country, toward the Gangalu side, in Central Queensland. I now live on the lands of the Kulpurum Clan of the wider Goori peoples of South East Queensland. The presence of Kulpurum and Goori Ancestors in the landscape and the ongoing struggle of First Nations people present me with an existential and political query. In the words of Irene Watson (2012), First Nations Ancestors speak in a voice that asks “by what lawful authority do you come to our lands? What authorises your efforts to dispossess us?” (p. 12).

This chapter presents my perspective on engaging Indigenous knowledge and pursuing organisational change in Indigenising curriculum from within the School of Political Science and International Studies at The University of Queensland (UQ) in the mid to late 2000s. To do so, I refer to a selection of initiatives and activities in the School. These include elements of advocacy, supporting colleagues, consolidating legitimacy and leveraging institutional mechanisms. My view is that this work requires responsiveness to changing institutional conditions along with persistence, care and at least some stoicism. Most importantly, I think, effective Indigenous engagement requires self-awareness of one’s position in the global history, conditions and processes of knowledge production. This links naturally with a willingness to put one’s self into play and to enter relationships. It may extend, I suggest, to thinking relationally. The recently articulated UQ Indigenising Curriculum Design Principles – Country, Relationships, Respect, Reciprocity, Cultural Capability, Benefits and Truth (Bunda, 2022) – are a helpful guide for both the everyday practice of Indigenising curriculum and turning toward relational knowing.

By the time I was employed as level A fellow at UQ in July 2005 and then as a level B lecturer from 2009, I had some relationships with First Nations people, and some understanding of Country. I had worked for several years as a conflict resolution practitioner, including with Aboriginal co-mediators amid conflict involving First Nations people. Through these experiences, and experiences in the Global South, I had developed some cultural capability. So, I was working with at least three of the design principles for Indigenising curriculum, though without meaningful standing or authority in the University. Crucially, the relationships I had were based in respect, rather than being transactional (Bunda, 2022). The confidence this gave me to act despite my limited institutional standing, including to advocate and challenge in a mainstream setting, was important because at that time there was very little by way of Indigenous engagement in my School. In such circumstances, some challenge is necessary. There was also little by way of firmly established institutional or policy levers, such as a Reconciliation Action Plan or Indigenising curriculum agenda, to draw upon.

The first key action I took was partly borne of frustration about the overwhelming influence of European-derived (and thus, white) knowledge in political science and related disciplines. While these disciplines were casting – and continue to cast – themselves as providing universal knowledge, the combination of my reading and contact with diverse peoples in Australia, the Pacific and Southeast Asia made clear to me that these disciplines are “ethno-sciences” of one sort or another. They may produce knowledge about different contexts or peoples, but their major and orienting categories and assumptions about what knowledge is and how it should be produced – their epistemology, ontology and methodology – are thoroughly suffused with European ideas and origins. A sub-problem I saw, and continue to see, is superficial and transactional engagement with Indigenous people and issues. Indigenising the curriculum is not a simple matter of adding Indigenous perspectives. In many disciplines it requires challenging and recasting, and sometimes fully reconstructing, dominant assumptions and ways of knowing.

The fact that these problems exist beyond political science led me to propose and advance a small initiative – a seminar series involving First Nations people – to alert colleagues to the challenges faced. Beginning in October 2009, and with the support of some colleagues, I ran an annual forum titled “How white is your university? The cultural politics of knowledge”. The description sought to provoke and challenge by raising serious issues:

Marketeers will exploit the advertising opportunities presented by IK [Indigenous knowledge], but this belies a series of challenging questions that will be with us for the foreseeable future. How should we go about the difficult work of unpicking the deeply colonial relationships that permeate our universities and ways of knowing? Is embedding IK necessarily bound with social justice issues? What are the most fruitful lines of endeavour? What are the pitfalls?

Effective advocacy, of course, requires support and a rationale. I knew that at least some colleagues in my School would be supportive, as was my Head of School. I also knew that a small number of people in other Schools would be supportive, as were my small number of UQ First Nations colleagues and contacts. The description for the event also made the case:

Knowledge institutions are increasingly responding to calls to recognise, embed and advance Indigenous knowledge (IK) in higher education teaching and research. Australian universities have begun to adopt policies on IK, in some cases alongside Reconciliation Action Plans and other engagement initiatives. These developments are in turn connected with broader questions about diversity, globalisation and responsiveness to difference in higher education in the early 21st century.

Advocacy and other forms of Indigenous engagement must be informed. Becoming and being informed underpins the courage and confidence to act and helps in avoiding missteps, though does not guarantee this. In two patterns I have noticed over the years, some colleagues cast themselves as somehow disempowered in acquiring knowledge about Indigenous issues, while others want to acquire knowledge directly from First Nations people. These patterns, among knowledge workers who are otherwise adept at researching, categorising and analysing information, seem a curious and overly self-centred response. My view is that non-Indigenous knowledge workers, living and working on Aboriginal land amidst an unresolved political conflict, are obliged to seek out information, especially given that they have the skills to do so. While individuals may feel that they are not personally equipped in terms of their existing knowledge, there is a large volume and a variety of resources available for those willing to extend their knowledge without unduly burdening First Nations people.

Questions naturally arise about which knowledge is appropriate or respectful, and it is true that publications from earlier times or certain New Age spiritual sources contain problematic perspectives or inaccuracies. But the combination of the usual tools of knowledge workers (What is the provenance of the source? How has it been reviewed and received?) and the variety of resources available readily help to address such challenges. There are institutionally vetted sources, such as the training, policy statements and other materials provided by the University. There are peer-reviewed sources by Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars.

I also suggest that some of the best learning is also available through less institutionally linked forms of knowing and representation. First Nations people make a remarkable and outsized contribution to Australian literature, theatre, cinema, visual arts and music. Novels, plays, movies, art and song provide insightful and moving representations of First Nations experiences and perspectives, and often support deeper learning than that available through more institutionalised forms of knowledge. These sources are enjoyable and provide a way to deeply reflect on one’s own reactions and ethical positioning in Indigenous–settler relations. They can also be drawn upon in teaching and learning. Cross-referencing these sources of knowledge helps to build richer and more nuanced understandings.

Of course, engaging with sources cannot wholly substitute for relationships with First Nations people, and the desire to acquire knowledge directly from First Nations people is understandable. But my view is such relationships cannot and should not be forced. They will emerge in time, naturally and as need be, through engagement with Indigenous issues. First Nations people can experience a lot of pressure and expectation to educate non-Indigenous people. This burden is likely to be additional to the same sorts of pressures that many people experience – jobs, caring responsibilities, social obligations and so on. Beyond the demand on time, informing and hand-holding non-Indigenous people can be exhausting. If non-Indigenous people can inform themselves with sources produced by First Nations people (which are often prepared with the purpose of informing and educating), then this takes a load off First Nations people, including in the relationships that non-Indigenous and Indigenous people share.

Beyond advocating and informing oneself, it is crucial to provide resources and fora for people – students or colleagues – to Indigenise their understandings while consolidating the institutional legitimacy and base for Indigenising efforts. In my experience, this is best achieved by suggesting guideposts for engagement while allowing people to inhabit their understandings and pursue Indigenising curriculum efforts in their own ways. There are risks in such a relatively open approach, but there is also no definitive guidebook for pursuing this work, and no possibility of perfection.

While I undertook or led much of this work in our School, I socialised and pursued it as a collective effort (as is necessary for organisational change). The work was open to and undertaken by many people, linking PhD candidates, casual and permanent academic colleagues, and adjunct Indigenous knowledge holders. It was always with the support of the Head of School. Small amounts of resourcing were occasionally made available by Heads of School to undertake minor tasks, such as literature reviews. The “we” I refer to below shifted and changed over the years and membership was largely shaped by personal interest and passion. Our informal group was rarely more than a handful of people, and the nature of our meetings and collaborations evolved and shifted with the work.

The work of providing resources and fora began in our School in 2012 with a Discussion Paper and Draft Literature Review, followed by a workshop titled “The Indigenous Politics of Political Science and International Studies (POLSIS)”. The goals were to document the state of play in our discipline, begin to direct colleagues toward resources that they might draw upon in their teaching and to consolidate our efforts institutionally. Amidst these efforts, we also sought to articulate language to help clarify the terms on which we would engage in Indigenising work. For instance, the Indigenous Politics POLSIS discussion paper makes a distinction “between reflexive and substantive engagements with Indigenous issues, people and – particularly – knowledge” (emphasis in original).

A reflexive engagement is taken to be one that to some extent reflects or otherwise folds back upon the epistemological, methodological or ethical terms of knowledge production. A substantive engagement is taken to be one that primarily focuses upon issues or content through more-or-less established and taken-for-granted epistemological and methodological assumptions of political science without putting these into question. This distinction is significant because engagements with Indigenous knowledge (and arguably Indigenous issues and people) necessitate reflexivity. The accompanying issues are contentious and challenging, and POLSIS staff will be better placed to engage competently with Indigenous issues, people and knowledge by having some understanding of them.

Beyond these kinds of statements, we tended not to provide explicit guidelines about how colleagues should go about including Indigenous issues and perspectives in their courses. One resource we developed, a community site on the University’s learning management system (LMS), provided suggested literature and other sources as well as contacts of Indigenous knowledge holders available to give guest lectures without telling colleagues how to go about Indigenising curriculum per se in their courses. But we also did not pursue or celebrate a laissez faire approach; for instance, we also held a series of workshops for colleagues to discuss and test their ideas for including Indigenous perspectives and engaging with Indigenous approaches.

We also continued to advocate for the primacy of Indigenous knowledge and perspectives to socialise the idea of sources of authority and knowledge other than from within the discipline of political science. We ran, for instance, a series of discussions called “How the Country was Run” that centred Indigenous knowledge holders. The title of the workshop was drawn from Kombumerri Indigenous Elder and political philosopher Mary Graham, who has variously stated that Aboriginal people are “owners and runners of Country”, and “we used to run the country” (personal communication). This initiative speaks directly to the UQ Indigenising Curriculum Design Principle of Country, and the need to acknowledge Country “as a living entity with which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have a relationship … as [a] foundational source of Indigenous knowledges” (Bunda, 2022, p. 13). By foregrounding the fact that Indigenous people governed the continent prior to European arrival (and the continuation and legitimacy of Indigenous governance), we were able to emphasise the standing of pre-existing systems of governance and note the recency and contingency of the approaches to politics taught by colleagues in the School.

Over time, the resources from the Indigenous Politics POLSIS discussion paper and the LMS were added to through a suggested readings list and, in 2020, the complementary “Incorporating Indigenous Scholarship Tip Sheet”. This resource, which was picked up more broadly at UQ (see Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation, n.d.), acknowledges the complexities, anxieties, political dynamics and epistemological challenges in incorporating Indigenous scholarship into courses, and provides a range of suggestions for dealing with them.

To provide an everyday visual reminder and resource for engaging with the task and challenge of Indigenising, we also developed a permanent display in the main foyer of our School. The display, comprised of three banners and titled “Seeing Country Through Different Eyes”, acknowledges that staff of the School live and work on Aboriginal land amidst unresolved political conflict (School of Political Science and International Studies, 2020). While the central banner contains the acknowledgement, the outer two banners are partial maps of the lands on which UQ is situated. One is an interpretive map of UQ St Lucia and surrounds as an Aboriginal cultural landscape, drawn from interpretive material compiled by Paul Memmott with Des Sandy, Alex Bond, Arthur Isaacs, Ray Kerkhove, Brian Coghill, the Aboriginal Environments Research Collaborative and the Institute for Social Science Research. The other map is of Aboriginal First Nations language groups, from Kabi Kabi and Badtjala language groups in the north to Bandjalang language groups in the south, based on the work of J. G. Steele in the 1970s and 1980. The maps are accompanied by text inviting viewers to consider the partiality and contingency of maps, and how the maps may “help us to see our world differently”.

One of the accumulated effects of providing resources and fora for colleagues is to consolidate a local organisational tradition of engaging with Indigenising efforts. This helps to generate and consolidate a type of institutional legitimacy for Indigenous engagement – a sense that “this is one of the things we do”. In my experience, it is best to build this sense before formalising any measure to minimise resistance or overt conflict (though it is also not possible to bring everyone with you and occasional tensions and conflict are to be expected). Of course, an interplay of implicit/informal and formal efforts are necessary. In our School, informal generators and markers of institutional legitimacy included collegial workshops, the LMS site, corridor conversations and the 2020 “Incorporating Indigenous Scholarship Tip Sheet”. More formal/explicit markers of institutional legitimacy included the 2012 embedding of a strategic Indigenous engagement goal in the School’s operational plan, the development of a section of our website on Indigenous engagement and the installation of the foyer display discussed above.

The building of the practices and institutional legitimacy for Indigenous engagement at the local level is, of course, nested within the wider institutional and sectoral setting. This wider setting provides a variety of shifting reference points for local action. When we began our Indigenous engagement work in the School, UQ was in the very early stages of developing central policy stances, such as the education principles on Indigenous Australian matters (EPIAM) policy (see Barney, 2012). The EPIAM strategy evolved into UQ’s Indigenous strategy and, with increasing levels of institutional purchase, we now have a fully-fledged Reconciliation Action Plan agenda. A parallel evolution of policy occurred at the sectoral level, including through the Australian Government’s 2008 Review of Australian Higher Education (the Bradley Review), the 2012 Review of Higher Education Access and Outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People (the Behrendt Report), and the 2011 National Best-Practice Framework for Indigenous Cultural Competency in Australian Universities (prepared by Universities Australia).

Institutional and sectoral policy shifts and stances need to be drawn upon carefully, as colleagues may resent centralised and hierarchical impositions, but they also provide useful reference points for legitimising and authorising local initiatives and change. Our efforts in the School have continually evolved in relation to – and by drawing upon – UQ policies and developments in the wider sector. UQ’s first Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) was valuable for providing a structured setting (RAP actions) that we could respond to for the period 2019–2022. Among a range of School actions, the RAP provided the impetus and institutional legitimacy for a School discussion that let to us collectively commit to increase the proportion of Indigenous scholarship across the School’s curricula to at least 10% by 2022.

While institutional policies and associated incentives are valuable resources, my view is that we do our best work when our motivations are intrinsic. An assumption underpinning my claim is that most, if not all, academic colleagues who are called to engage with the work of Indigenising curriculum are interested and invested, to lesser or greater degrees, in the processes and outcomes of knowledge production. This work places each of us as human beings, explicitly or implicitly, into relation with other human beings and the common good. In turn, we are part of the global history, conditions and process of knowledge production. The accompanying institutional relations of knowing place academics in ways that we should be aware of, and work with, to pursue effective Indigenous engagement.

The institution of the university and the various disciplines that guide academic work also empower authoritative knowers. They do so in particular ways that typically cast the knower as a sovereign being (a self-sufficient, internally complete and cognitive centre of knowing) in command of knowledge. The “official story” that academic knowledge workers tell themselves and are told by their peers and institutions is that they the knower “achieves distance from their subject matter through the scientific method, the rigorous application of reason, critical scrutiny or other institutionally licensed method” (Brigg, 2016, p. 153).

But the commonplace self-conception of the scholar as a sovereign knower is a thinly disguised fiction, and the knowledge practices that support this understanding are “an elaborate set of tricks which researchers and knowers play on themselves and others” (Brigg, 2016, p. 153) to authorise their knowing:

Knowledge is always and necessarily emplaced and relational, emerging through assemblages of non-human and human elements (from laboratory equipment and research teams to computer software and individuals) and institutional arrangements (from local-level hiring decisions about fellowships to national research-funding priorities). Throughout the conception, execution and dissemination of research, individual researchers rely upon others to formulate questions, pursue inquiry, and verify and circulate knowledge. These manifold exchanges evince a relationally constituted researcher rather than an autonomous and pre-existing sovereign knower. (Brigg, 2016, p. 153)

A key problem for Indigenous engagement arises from this empowering move: the tendency for the knower to return to their self and their tradition as an authoritative base – often the authoritative base – for knowing. This “disavows other knowledges and forecloses upon possibilities for entering into serious exchange and engagement with them” (Brigg, 2016, p. 154). The understanding of reason as transcendental, and of the sovereign knower as an empowered agent of reason, facilitates the notion that it is not necessary to engage with other peoples’ knowledge traditions because European-derived knowledge is assumed to be the ultimate and universal arbiter of true and authoritative knowledge (Latour, 2002, pp. 8–9).

The possibilities of doing something other than returning to one’s self and tradition speaks directly to the UQ Indigenising Curriculum Design Principle of Relationships. When Bunda (2022) writes that “relationships are an important touchstone within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural practices” (p. 14), I take her to be referring also to a thoroughgoing and fundamental attentiveness to relations as foundational in Aboriginal Australian socio-political ordering (Brigg & Graham, 2020). This extends to knowledge-making, as Bunda (2022) clearly implies – Relationships are listed second after Country in the design principles (pp. 13–14). Following this line of thinking, knowers are bound with and constituted, along with knowledge, through complex webs of entanglement. A related insight emerges in European-derived scholarship in recent decades in science and technology studies and related scholarship.

This stance does not suggest that our knowing cannot be systematic or rigorous. It merely suggests that being systematic requires being aware of where we know from, how we know and the relations we are implicated in. Doing so invariably places one within the global history of knowledge production. From within Australian universities, it suggests asking: Where do the ideas that I work with come from? What conditions have led to their ascendency and currency? What are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ ways of knowing in this place? How am I related with these peoples and their knowledge through knowledge production?

These and related questions primarily speak not to shifting university and sector policies and commitments, but to who we are and how relate with each other as human beings. And most people recognise that the way to relate meaningfully with other human beings is to put one’s self in play in ways that “move beyond the transactional”, to centre “mutual care” and to pursue engagement as “a shared practice” (Bunda, 2022, p. 14, emphasis in original).

Notions of relationship and shared practice may for some suggest ease, comfort or friendship. These are possible, but my view is that Indigenous and other senses of relationship do not naturally or primarily suggest such positive modes of relating. As Mary Graham and I have stated, “relational autonomy and a relationalist ethos do not imply a peaceful Aboriginal arcadia imagined by some Europeans” (Graham & Brigg, 2023, p. 593). Relationships often imply challenge. They can be tough and difficult. While I continue to be fortunate to have some warm and nourishing relationships with First Nations colleagues as friends, I have also had – and continue to experience – bumps and bruises. I have been accused of many things: of moving too fast, or too slow; of being too critical of social science; of not being an adequate ally to Indigenous people; of doing too much and not doing enough. I continue to have doubts in the face of such criticisms. But I have also come accept that there is no perfection. While conflict and challenge are important opportunities for self-critique and reflection, I find it hard to imagine meaningful engagement among the violence and ruins of settler-colonialism that does not, at times, involve tensions.

The work of Indigenous engagement and Indigenising curriculum can also, quite practically, only be done in relationship across cultural difference and with others. I have written this chapter from my singular point of view as a clean and efficient way of presenting my perspective on engaging Indigenous knowledge and navigating organisational change from within the School of Political Science and International Studies at UQ. But I have always only been able to do this work as an evolving assemblage entangled in relations with key Indigenous interlocutors, interested and interesting colleagues, thoughtful and often caring Heads of School, engaged Executive and Associate Deans, and many others.^[1] These and many other people have supported and enabled the work (and much other work besides) through the School of Political Science and International Studies. If we have been able to make some progress over the years – and surely much remains to be done – then it has been achieved through these relations.

In this chapter I have sketched my perspective on engaging Indigenous knowledge and pursuing change in Indigenising curriculum from within the School of Political Science and International Studies at UQ. This is not a complete record but a series of reflections about certain initiatives and activities from the mid to late 2000s until 2022. My discussion has covered efforts to advocate, support colleagues, consolidate legitimacy and leverage institutional mechanisms. I have suggested that some circumstances require more of one type and effort and less of another, but I believe that all are necessary, alongside persistence, care and responsiveness to changing institutional conditions. The UQ Indigenising Curriculum Design Principles – Country, Relationships, Respect, Reciprocity, Cultural Capability, Benefits and Truth (Bunda, 2022) – are a helpful guide for pursuing such efforts.

But perhaps most important in my view is a willingness to put one’s self into play, and to accept the vulnerability that comes with stepping back from being a “sovereign” knower to at least consider what might be involved in becoming a more consciously aware relational knower within the global history, conditions and processes of knowledge production. The path of entering genuinely into relation generates its own rewards, while providing a grounded and self-reflective way of pursuing the work of Indigenous engagement and Indigenising curriculum.