7 Indigenising the curriculum in the School of Music

School of Music

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit

Introduction

Music schools and conservatoria within universities have historically been situated in Western art music traditions. As Bracknell and Barwick (2020) note, “the core business of Australia’s music institutions and most domestic music studies, remain predominantly grounded in Europe’s classical traditions and continue to position Indigenous people and music on the fringe” (p. 71). We are also mindful that universities are situated on unceded Aboriginal lands where there are long histories of music making by Indigenous people. In the years since publication of the article by Bracknell and Barwick quoted above, there has been considerable movement in different directions; for instance, in the work towards Indigenising the curriculum, a key action at The University of Queensland (UQ) through the Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), and in late 2024, the move to the next level of the Reconciliation Australia RAP framework – a Stretch RAP – to advance reconciliation. We are committed to this journey to advance recognition and respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music-making. Indigenising the curriculum benefits current and future students, their teachers and the communities from which Indigenous expertise is drawn. In this chapter, we explore our collaborative work on Indigenising the curriculum in the School of Music at UQ. Our work is informed by the UQ Indigenising Curriculum Design Principles (Bunda, 2022) with a particular focus on the design principles of Relationships, Benefits and Country. In this chapter we first locate ourselves and then discuss our collaborative work together. We then reflect on benefits and challenges. We focus on curriculum areas where traditionally there has been an absence of Indigenous perspectives, and where staff perceive considerable challenges in remedying this situation. We discuss the incremental steps we have taken in this process: undertaking an in-depth literature review of scholarship relating to this topic, conversations and collaborations with Indigenous performers and Indigenous staff across UQ, the appointment of an Indigenous Industry Fellow, and the implementation of new learning objectives and teaching and learning activities within a musicology course. To conclude, we discuss our plans to further Indigenise the curriculum within the School of Music.

Our positioning

Denis: I am a non-Indigenous man, born and raised in Carlow, Ireland. I completed undergraduate studies in music in Dublin before completing a PhD in historical musicology at Stanford University in California. I emigrated to Australia in the early 2000s to work in the UQ School of Music, where I have been ever since. I teach undergraduate and postgraduate courses in musicianship, music history and research methods. I am an active and dedicated researcher in the history and theory of Western art music from the late Middle Ages to the 18th century. I am very conscious that my teaching and research areas have hitherto been little influenced by Indigenous forms of knowledge or by Indigenous knowledge holders. A challenge that I face is to develop new ways of embedding Indigenous perspectives into all areas of the curriculum where I am active. Successful realisation of this challenge will be beneficial not only for students in my classes, but also many other colleagues in musicology and other areas who aspire to correct the absences of Indigenous perspectives and knowledges in their professional domains.

Katelyn: I am a non-Indigenous woman, born and raised in Meanjin (Brisbane). My educational background is in music and Indigenous studies. I have been working within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit for the last 17 years and I am also affiliated with the School of Music at UQ. Strong long-term relationships and partnerships with Indigenous people is at the centre of my teaching and research. I co-lead a podcast series on teaching called Indigenising Curriculum in Practice with my colleague Professor Tracey Bunda. I am particularly passionate about pathways for Indigenous students into higher education and advancing understandings about the role of collaborative music-making between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

Deline: Ngayku Burri “Burrikari Milbirrba” Ngayu Yalanji Bama. Ngayu kadayn binga binga Kamba Kamba Julaynwarra, Kubuirriwarra, Burunku. My name is Burrikari Milbirrba and I am a Yalanji person. I came from the ancestors of the Daintree, Mossman and China Camp area. Katelyn and I have known each other for over 20 years. We first met in 2004 when she interviewed me alongside my two sisters as part of her PhD research project. We continue to strengthen our relationship through music-making, co-teaching and co-writing. In 2023, I was appointed as an Industry Fellow in the School of Music. In my role, I shared the blak experience (Munro, 2022) through music stories and worked with students to perform a musical Acknowledgement of Country. I have also had discussions with teaching staff about Indigenising the curriculum, performed as part of the School of Music lunchtime concert series with my sisters (see Figure 1) and contributed to Katelyn’s class to outline some key points in Aboriginal music history.

Nisa: I locate myself as a woman of colour and non-Indigenous person in Australia, working and living in Meanjin (Brisbane), on unceded Aboriginal lands. On my mother’s side we are Crimean Tatar and Southern European and on my father’s side we are Originaria Yucateca, Mexican. Growing up in a family of musicians and artists on Jinibara and Kabi Kabi Country (Sunshine Coast), I have always been passionate about the power and joy of music and its important role in community, education and social justice. Having studied at UQ, I have an academic background in Indigenous studies, art history, anthropology and politics and am honoured to work on this project as a Research Assistant.

About the UQ School of Music

The UQ School of Music offers the Bachelor of Music (BMus) degree, a major in Music in the Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree, a major in Music in the Bachelor of Advanced Humanities (Honours) and a minor in Music Psychology in the BA degree. The School also offers a taught Master of Music (MMus) degree, as well as Master of Philosophy (MPhil) and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degrees by research. The BMus and BA (Music) major comprise a shared core sequence of courses in musicianship, music history and music technology. One-to-one performance or composition instruction is provided to BMus students, while these students, as well as those in the BA Music major, can take a range of elective courses in music or other disciplines throughout the University. Many undergraduate students choose to undertake dual degrees with Education, Science or Arts, and new dual degree programs are planned to commence in 2026.

The School of Music has historically undertaken numerous collaborative performances between students, staff and Indigenous performers, including working with Yorta Yorta opera singer and composer Deborah Cheetham Fraillon to perform her opera Eumeralla and with Kaladunga didjeridu performer and composer William Barton. Academic staff within the School also work in partnership with Indigenous performers in their teaching, including Julie Ballantyne’s work with Yugumbeh performer Candace Kruger and Eve Klein’s collaborations with Gugu Yalanji Birrigubba performer Jungaji Brady. Julie Ballantyne and Eve Klein have also recently worked collaboratively on a project with experienced First Nations musicians and an Australian Indigenous community organisation, Inala Wangarra Incorporated, located on the traditional lands of the Yuggerabul people (Ballantyne & Klein, 2024). This project investigated the concept of human flourishing within creative arts and involved a series of workshops involving Inala Wangarra youth that led to musical outcomes that featured in Eve Klein’s City Symphony, an augmented reality mobile app experience (Klein, 2022).

The Head of Composition at the School of Music, Robert Davidson, has extensive experience working with Indigenous artists over the last 25 years as a member of the performance ensemble Topology. This experience has significantly influenced Robert’s approach to all aspects of curriculum. In his composition teaching, Robert consciously draws on examples of existing practices by Indigenous composers, while, in his contemporary art music course, he refers to the historical experiences of Aboriginal artists in negotiating the white musical world (for example, with reference to Aboriginal opera singer Harold Blair). In his classes, Robert discusses how non-Indigenous Australian composers have been influenced by music created by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. These composers include Peter Sculthorpe and Anne Boyd, as well as more recent figures such as Iain Grandage who has collaborated with many Aboriginal  and Torres Strait Islander musicians. Robert draws students’ attention to how these collaborations have been informed by Indigenous Australian perspectives (see also Barney, 2023).

Notwithstanding the successes of individual staff members on specific aspects of Indigenising curriculum, formal planning is underway to promote and oversee a broader and more ambitious Indigenising curriculum process at School level. A formal plan would be particularly useful to identify and assist staff working in areas of the curriculum where there is a notable absence of Indigenous perspectives. While staff are enthusiastic and supportive of the goals of UQ’s first RAP and now the Stretch RAP, there is generally a dearth of resources for assisting them to develop learning materials for Indigenising curriculum that are appropriate for their specialised domains. This issue is particularly acute in the School’s courses in musicianship and music history. These courses focus on Western art music practices, with emphasis on notated musical traditions, aural awareness and skill development, tonal harmony, instrumentation and formal design. Music history courses cover musical genres and styles, with particular emphasis on how music both responded to and was an agent of social and cultural change in Western contexts from the late medieval period to the present day.

To date, only a small number of Indigenous students have undertaken the BMus degree and/or a Music major as part of their Bachelor of Arts degree at UQ. One of those students is Biripi and Worimi man, Jamaine Wilesmith. Jamaine has worked closely with music technology academic Chris Perren to record and produce his first two solo songs under his performance name Durriwiyn and he became the first student to release a single through UQ’s record label Corella Recordings in 2023. More than 30 students and staff were directly involved with the creation, distribution and promotion of the two commercially released singles and a music video. Through working with Jamaine, students gained awareness of Indigenous identity, creativity and storytelling, while Jamaine gained valuable portfolio products to support his emerging music career. Reflecting on the experience, Jamaine said

Making the music video for “Fade Away” was probably the most empowering experience that I’ve had during my journey in becoming an artist … Everyone involved was amazing and made me feel like a star and I hopefully can share that with others along the way. (personal communication, 2023)

Students have also had the opportunity to work with William Barton as part of a recording session with him and violinist and composer Veronique Serret. Through a positive and successful recording experience, students gained new understandings of how interactions with Indigenous performers may differ from their expectations of performers from other cultural backgrounds. By supporting Indigenous artists, students participating in the Corella Recordings project learn not only technical and professional skills, but also greater intercultural understanding through close personal interaction, and they gain increased confidence in collaborating with Indigenous artists.

The School currently offers one undergraduate course focused on Indigenous music making titled MUSC2810 (changing to MUSC3570 in 2025) Indigenous Australian Music, coordinated by Katelyn. She invites Indigenous performers to join her in the classroom to co-teach with her. Performers over the last 12 years have included Deline Briscoe, Ruth Ghee, Toni Janke, Getano Bann and Condy Canuto – all of whom have long-term relationships with Katelyn. Underpinning this course is an emphasis on relational pedagogy.

Relational pedagogies, and questions of how to engage and connect with students, have become more central in recent research within higher education (e.g., Felten & Lambert, 2020). Relational pedagogies also intertwine with recent calls to decolonise the curriculum (Bracknell & Barwick, 2020). This links closely with UQ’s institutional strategy on Indigenising curriculum (Bunda, 2022), which notes that relationships are fundamental to Indigenising curriculum. In Indigenous studies contexts, relationality is particularly important because “it is the lived experience of being accountable for ourselves and each other” (Bennett, 2023, p. 11).

The Indigenous Australian Music course is also informed by embodied pedagogy (e.g., Dixon & Senior, 2011; Mackinlay, 2005). Embodied approaches within the tertiary classroom through participation in music-making encourages students not only to theorise their experiences, but also to actively engage with creative, political and ethical matters (van der Schyff, 2022). In the course, this often involves students learning a song from performers who co-teach with Katelyn. This creates a participatory performance learning experience which engages students in an active reading of Indigenous music making via the body/voice/dance as text. Deline and other Indigenous performers who collaborate with Katelyn in class share their knowledge of various performance styles and genres through interactive workshops where students are provided with opportunities to not only be in dialogue with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander musicians, but to co-perform alongside performers.

Indigenising the tertiary music curriculum

As noted in the introduction, music schools and conservatoria within universities are centred on Western art traditions. Bracknell and Barwick (2020) describe this context of tertiary music training as:

A serious disjuncture between Australia’s current cultural aspirations and its practical realities … where Indigenous music is frequently evoked to showcase the distinctiveness of Australian culture, yet conservatoria – whose role, by definition, is to decide what is conserved – have failed to find a sustainable path to its inclusion. (p. 72, p. 71)

At the same time, “there is broad recognition of the need to address inequities in Australian universities in relation to First Peoples … There have also been projects to increase First Nations musicians and scholars, musical practices, traditions and knowledges in curricula” (Onus & Treloyn, 2024, p. 163). For example, Burslem (2019) notes that “new units in Australian Indigenous music traditions and cultures are springing up across the country” (p. 114). Much of this work is led by Indigenous scholars (e.g., Bracknell, 2019; 2023) or undertaken in partnership between Indigenous and non-Indigenous music educators (e.g., Onus & Treloyn, 2024). Unlike in primary and secondary school contexts, there is currently no national tertiary music curriculum or models of learning and teaching that educators can consult to construct or embed Indigenous perspectives in their undergraduate teaching content. Rather, music schools or conservatoria construct specific modes of learning and available units based on staff expertise. Further, there are limited resources to draw on in relation to Indigenising the musicology curriculum. However, Webb and Bracknell (2021) suggest that educators can begin to work towards centring their practice on meaningful engagement with and respectful inclusion of Indigenous perspectives through a “pedagogy of partnerships” (p. 81).

How have we been Indigenising the music curriculum?

Our current work on Indigenising the curriculum within the School of Music is informed most especially by the Indigenising Curriculum Design Principles outlined in the oyster shell cluster sketch devised by Professor Tracey Bunda. We see our work as centred on the importance of Relationships, Country and also Benefits for Students and Staff in Indigenising the music curriculum.

A strong impetus towards addressing the evident absence of Indigenous perspectives in certain areas of the music curriculum was the award of a research grant to Denis and Katelyn from the Musicological Society of Australia (MSA) through its Special Funding Scheme in 2023. Funds from this grant permitted us to undertake a literature review of Australian and international scholarship related to Indigenising the curriculum in the field of music, with particular emphasis on musicology. Nisa was employed to undertake this work with Denis and Katelyn. In 2024, following the conclusion of the grant, we deliberately focused on issues around Indigenising the musicianship curriculum. Musicology is a core requirement of all School of Music programs at undergraduate and taught postgraduate levels. Overall, our aim has been to work together to identify and implement topics of study within Denis’s existing musicianship and music history courses taken by all BMus students and BA Music majors. Below we include some of our individual reflections.

Nisa: In the context of higher education in Australia there are a handful of key First Nations and non-Indigenous authors and musicians writing about Indigenising the university music curriculum (e.g., Barney & Mackinlay, 2010; Bracknell, 2015; 2019; Bracknell & Barwick, 2020; Harris, 2020; Mackinlay, 2017; Mackinlay & Barney, 2024; Onus & Treloyn, 2024). While this work is valuable, published work specifically on Indigenising the curriculum in the context of musicology is limited and presents a gap in the field. The literature review undertaken for our project revealed that there are a number of parallel disciplinary areas in Australia and globally that provide valuable and adaptable insights into the Australian context. Globally, there is literature on “decolonising” musicology, music education and musicianship. The terms “decolonial” and “decolonisation” are often used interchangeably with “Indigenising” in the curriculum context. This important work draws attention to the ways in which musicology is deeply embedded in histories of colonialism and continues to privilege and centre Western frames of reference (e.g., Attas, 2022; Foreshaw, 2021; Levine & Robinson, 2018; Walker, 2020). However, while the definitions and uses of “decolonising” and “Indigenising” differ around the world, in the context of higher education in Australia specifically, “Indigenisation” is preferred by a number of scholars because “it recognises the difficulty of changing the fabric of the university” (Guerzoni, 2020, p. 14). Findings from global and local literature highlight the importance of Indigenous-led, co-designed and co-taught curriculum that sees meaningful engagement beyond inclusion narratives (e.g., Bracknell, 2020; 2015; Robinson, 2020; Webb & Bracknell, 2021). In the second phase of the literature review, we are focusing on identifying and developing resources on Indigenising tertiary music curriculum in Australia, specifically taking learnings from interdisciplinary and cross-institutional resources (e.g., Bunda, 2022; Bunda & Barney, 2023–present; Foster et al., n.d.). We also acknowledge the recent initiative by the Musicological Society of Australia to provide members and non-members of the society with an online gateway to worldwide resources for diversity and inclusion. The MSA Diversity Resource List includes information and links to initiatives that are relevant to Indigenisation of curriculum (see Musicological Society of Australia, n.d.).

Katelyn: Collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in this space is key. Indigenising the curriculum cannot be done without collaboration with Indigenous people and music-making provides a creative and powerful platform for collaboration. Yorta Yorta Dja Dja Wurrung musician and academic Lou Bennett (2023) writes of musical collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people as a process of “sharing breath” (p. 17), while Noongar ethnomusicologist Clint Bracknell (2023) describes intercultural collaboration in music between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people as a “brave space” (p. 23) due to the long history of trauma caused by colonisation. When students collaborate with Indigenous musicians through music, they listen and learn from Indigenous people about the diverse forms, languages and styles of music-making performed by Indigenous people and the ways performers resist stereotypes of Indigenous performance through music.

Deline: I have enjoyed the opportunities to work with student musicians at UQ. In 2023 and 2024, I collaborated with the student ensemble Sketch and Rob Davidson to perform a musical Acknowledgment of Country based on a song of mine. I agree with Bracknell and Bennett (2024) that music “sustains Country and Country sustains music” (p. 58) and certainly the students’ response to the feeling of acknowledging the spirit and songs of the land was one of gratitude. Each student gained a deeper understanding of First Nations peoples’ connection to Country, the respect we have for each other’s respective Nations and the difference between Acknowledgement of Country and Welcome to Country. I have also enjoyed conversations with staff about how they might Indigenise the music curriculum and together we have explored potential resources and publicly available recordings that staff could draw on in their teaching.

Denis: Our work here has brought home to me very strongly the need to work with Indigenous experts in a process that is as worthwhile for them as it is for staff and students. We are very grateful for the opportunities so far to engage with Deline who has ongoing relationships with the School of Music. While her expert input and breadth of knowledge are crucial to my developing engagement with Indigenous perspective in music pedagogy, Deline has emphasised how valuable our conversations are for broadening her own knowledge of Western music theory and practice. The mutual benefits of our collaboration underscore the importance of aligning the learning objectives for the courses I teach with the objectives of an Indigenous knowledge holder who generously provides time and expertise for my project. Conversations with Deline and Katelyn have centred on how I can gradually embed Indigenous perspectives into my course MUSC1600 Musicianship 1. This is the first of three compulsory musicianship courses for BMus students and (from 2025) for all BA Music majors. Several students from outside the School of Music take the course as an elective each year. MUSC1600 focuses on the fundamentals of musicianship, an area of the curriculum that may be thought of as instruction in the “how” of doing and understanding music as distinct from specialised instrumental or vocal tuition.

MUSC1600 covers the fundamentals of major and minor keys, triads and chordal progressions that gradually introduce more complex harmonies in Soprano-Alto-Tenor-Bass (SATB) format or in keyboard format. A strong practical training component of the course emphasises aural awareness through singing and rhythm exercises that build up student skills and competencies in musicianship. Assessment is through a range of written and practical exercises that rely heavily on Western music notation as expressed through the technicalities of its written form and its realisation in singing or keyboard playing. Instruction in musicianship could, in a sense, be considered an enclosed and self-sufficient world that draws upon centuries of Western music pedagogy and an abundance of theoretical and practical underpinnings. A challenge here is to identify how Indigenous knowledge and ways of making music can inform the MUSC1600 curriculum. The challenge is particularly acute because there is an absence of published pedagogical resources that demonstrate how any specific learning activity in MUSC1600 could include Indigenous perspectives. There is likewise an absence of scholarly literature that explains how a non-Indigenous course instructor can draw upon the musical expertise of Indigenous knowledge holders when preparing to deliver a course such as MUSC1600. In many ways, I feel that I am in uncharted waters and that I need to choose specific areas of the course for attention so that I can develop the curriculum in stages. It would be foolish to assume that a core course in the curriculum could be immediately transformed into a learning experience for students that effectively and comprehensively embeds Indigenous perspectives. The process is iterative, with much opportunity in coming years for me to reflect on successes as much as on failures and wrong directions in the course.

Exploration of these issues with Deline has so far focused on the topic of melody, in particular the different archetypes for melodic contour and the different purposes and functions that melody fulfils across Indigenous and Western cultures. Other topics for discussion include scales, modes, tuning systems, texts and lyrics in different languages, and instrumental accompaniment. Deline has emphasised to me the importance of drawing upon publicly available resources such as published song collections, recordings and other materials. A good place to begin may be with the Mission Songs Project (Lloyd, n.d.). In this way, students have access to a range of repertoire and can develop awareness and understanding of how different melodic styles can exist within Country and how songs can move through more than one Country (e.g., Turpin et al., 2020). Further, students can appreciate the importance of language and choice of song lyrics and of differences in instruments. Deline also noted possible advantages in initially drawing upon song melodies from across the continent and then focusing on Queensland where case studies could be identified for classroom study and practice. We also dwelt on the importance of Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property (ICIP) and the importance of properly acknowledging and remunerating the valuable participation and insights that Indigenous knowledge holders can bring to the musicianship classroom.

MUSC2501 Musicology and Early Music is a course that I teach to students typically in their third semester of study at UQ. This historical musicology course is compulsory for all BMus and (also from 2025) all BA Music majors. It is taught through a mix of asynchronous lecture content and in-person workshops and tutorials. This course focuses on Western music from circa 1100 to circa 1700. Given its very wide chronological span and the great variety of stylistic genres, compositional techniques, notational practices and documentary evidence, it is not possible for the course to include in-depth coverage of non-Western topics. In general, music curricula for many generations have tended to place Western music history courses in their own dedicated sequence. Complementary but independent courses in what has variously been called world music, ethnomusicology or Indigenous music may exist alongside courses in Western music history, but few present-day tertiary institutions have the resources or staffing to offer a full range of courses on music from all regions of the world. The content of MUSC2501 – Western music from the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period – seemingly presents few opportunities to engage with Indigenous perspectives or Indigenous knowledge holders. However, closer examination of the skills developed by students in this course points to areas of common contact between many communities of musicians, whether Indigenous or non-Indigenous, across wide time spans. For instance, MUSC2501 emphasises the importance of archival materials for the preservation of past musical practices and the transcription of repertoire into modern notation so that this music is more readily available to present-day performers, scholars, students and early music enthusiasts worldwide. The importance of archives and transcription for the preservation and revitalisation of Indigenous musical practices is well understood by researchers in many fields. I have adopted a reading by Bracknell (2020) on Noongar musical heritage which is relevant to MUSC2501 and to another course that I have jointly taught in recent years with other School staff, MUSC4410 Music Research Methods. This course has been a requirement for an Honours degree at the School of Music, although it is scheduled for discontinuation and replacement from 2027 due to curriculum reform at the School. As Bracknell (2020) states, “[m]y research on the revitalisation of Noongar song trials approaches for using archival literature, language and music analysis, plus the development of written resources, as a springboard for enhancing an endangered oral tradition” (p. 216). Study of archival materials and analysis of musical characteristics are core competencies in the field of musicology. I intend to explore and utilise further this point of common contact between historical musicology and studies of Indigenous music and culture. For example, in MUSC2501 I have recently introduced a class activity where students compare approaches to archival research by an Indigenous and a non-Indigenous musicologist. Through this activity, students gain insights into the common challenges facing all music researchers when undertaking research in archives. These range from difficulties in deciphering or transcribing written documents or sound recordings, approaching and negotiating with institutions that house archival materials, convincing academic colleagues about the merits of primary research in archives, and how to apply the results of archival research in ways that revitalise hidden or lost musical traditions for communities from which the archival materials were drawn.

For MUSC2501, I have found that even the early stages of Indigenising the curriculum do not always provide a comfortable journey for students. Classroom readings and discussions can open students’ eyes to how their involvement with a seemingly innocuous topic such as the emergence and dissemination of polyphonic music in Western culture of the late Middle Ages has various unintended and unforeseen implications in our present-day societies. For instance, the exploitation of medieval cultural symbols and artefacts in extremist right-wing and white supremacist agendas can find expression in acts of great violence against members of the population who are deemed to be different or unworthy (e.g., the Christchurch mosque attacks; see Diggelmann, 2019). Furthermore, the great outpouring of public grief worldwide on the occasion of the fire at the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris in 2019 was in stark contrast to limited public commentaries and muted expressions of sympathy or grief for the wilful destruction of Indigenous cultural heritage at the Juukan Gorge and elsewhere in Australia (Boyd, 2020; Monagle & Power, 2019). The intense musical activity at Notre Dame cathedral in the late Middle Ages is a topic of dedicated attention in MUSC2501, and students can readily understand the tragic aspects of cultural loss caused by the fire at this site in 2019. However, through engaging with these classroom readings, students can be jolted into a heightened understanding of the relevance of medieval musical culture to contemporary Australia. Their understanding of Notre Dame polyphony thereby extends beyond appreciation of the compositional and notational accomplishments of musicians active in 12th- and 13th-century Notre Dame to an awareness of the usurpation and manipulation of cultural heritage for many purposes, some of them unethical. Other challenges await students when they become aware of the chequered history of musicological interactions with non-Western cultures around the globe. A useful text that I have introduced in MUSC2501 is by Anna Maria Busse Berger, a German musicologist living and working in the United States. She explores the early pioneers of the discipline of musicology, who often combined careers as scholars and missionaries in Africa in the early 20th century (Berger, 2020). The hazards of attempting to draw comparisons between features of medieval music, such as modes or scales, with characteristics of Indigenous African music have generated much discussion and interest among students about the responsibilities and failures of earlier generations of Western scholarship.

Benefits and challenges

One of the Indigenising Curriculum Design Principles outlined in the Indigenising Curriculum: Consultation Green Paper (Bunda, 2022) is Benefits, and there have been many benefits of embedding Indigenous perspectives in the School of Music teaching and learning, including performance contexts.

Denis: There have been classroom discussions around broad intersections of Indigenous perspectives with international issues of concern. This has helped everyone in the class to reflect on their own assumptions as students of Western music; their love of performance, creativity, musicianship and music-historical knowledge cannot be understood in isolation from big and very challenging societal questions where Indigenous knowledge and perspectives are essential. These questions can connect major events and debates in Australia with seemingly unrelated events of great importance elsewhere in the world, such as the distortion and manipulation of historical artefacts, including those with musical associations, to advance extremist agendas.

Katelyn: The musical Acknowledgement of Country that Deline performed with UQ music students in the Sketch ensemble in 2024 was a powerful and meaningful sonic way of acknowledging Country. As Bracknell and Bennett note (2024), “[s]inging is meaningful in the context of Country but also as an act of resilience and resistance to settler-colonialism” (p. 60), and a number of students told me how performing with Deline assisted them to reflect on what a musical Acknowledgement of Country might sound like. Wuthathi and Meriam lawyer Terri Janke’s (2022) work is key to understanding the importance of Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property (ICIP). This is also an important consideration in relation to developing learning activities and assessments for classroom contexts. When Deline and other Indigenous performers join me in the classroom, students learn so much from the opportunity to learn a song and discuss the complexities and challenges of protocols and permissions in relation to performing songs by Indigenous artists. In this context, performance creates an opportunity for students to engage through song and dance with key topics and issues faced by Indigenous people. This approach of using the concept of “performance” as pedagogy has also been used in other disciplinary areas, for example, using theatre to teach students about history or students in social sciences using their bodies to learn about inequality and participate further in the university classroom (for more information, see the Higher Ed Heroes podcast, Kaempf & Stark, 2000–present).

Deline: I also think one of the challenges when considering Indigenising the music curriculum is the lack of educational resources and models or examples of how do this within the tertiary music curriculum. Another issue that arises is that our traditional and contemporary songs hold our oral history, protocol, lore, cultural mapping and ceremony, which brings us to ICIP matters. ICIP is a protection from the exploitation of cultural knowledge. Many pre-colonisation songs are intrinsically connected to our land and the knowledge systems that have been culminated over 2,000 plus generations.

Next steps

We are currently part of a 2024–2025 UQ Teaching Innovation Grant, co-led by Professor Tracey Bunda and Katelyn, on Indigenising curriculum to develop and further Indigenise Denis’s Musicology and Early Music course (along with courses in biological sciences, engineering, mathematics and physics, geography, and vet science). The team is working closely with an Indigenous Reference Group consisting of Deline as well as other Indigenous staff: Carroll Go Sam, Coen Hird, Cam Raw and Thelma Parker.

Some of the discussions from the first team workshop in September 2024 include the need to:

• build mutually beneficial relationships with Indigenous communities and knowledge holders
• align course learning objectives with the objectives of the communities contributing to the course
• ensure Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) rights of Indigenous people in developing teaching and learning materials (the important work and resources developed by Terri Janke was discussed)
• encourage non-Indigenous educators to get comfortable in leaning into the discomfort.

We are aware that much work is needed to be done to further Indigenise the music curriculum within the School of Music, and we look forward to continuing to work in partnership with Indigenous musicians and colleagues to privilege Indigenous voices, and to respectfully engage and listen to and learn from Indigenous musicians. In this way, we can bravely take the next steps to Indigenise our work.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the Musicological Society of Australia (MSA) for their support in making this chapter possible through the MSA Special Funding Scheme. We also thank Liam Viney for his unwavering support for Indigenising the music curriculum in the School of Music. Thanks also to Rebekah Woodward who has been a member of the MUSC2501 teaching team in recent years. The School of Music and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at UQ have provided supportive environments to undertake this work.