18 Centring Country and relationships

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit

Introduction

Indigenising curriculum through the incorporation of Indigenous perspectives has become an essential component of university curricula nationally and internationally (Universities Australia, 2022; UQ, 2024). Although the focus on Indigenising curriculum is often done in university courses where few to no Indigenous voices are heard, in this chapter, we focus on six courses within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies major at The University of Queensland (UQ). These courses can be considered as immersive in Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous perspectives, drawing on Indigenous expertise from academic staff of the University and members of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. The establishment and commitment to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies major demonstrates an ongoing movement to truth-telling through the amplification of Indigenous perspectives. We share our experiences sustaining and supporting six courses within the major. Our teaching is informed by the UQ Indigenising Curriculum Design Principles (Bunda, 2022), with a particular focus on the design principles of Country and Relationships. In this chapter, we provide context for the teaching choices that have been made to embrace interdisciplinary approaches to understanding Indigenous knowledges and perspectives. To do this, first we locate ourselves and share how we came to know each other and work together. Then we share an overview of the major and the courses we teach. Next, we discuss the student cohort, staffing issues, collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous staff, our pedagogical and assessment approaches, and the active involvement of Indigenous scholars and Indigenous organisations to ensure the major is grounded in authentic experiences and, in some cases, Indigenous knowledges. Last, we outline our vision to strengthen the major and imagine what could be.

Locating ourselves

We commence this article modelling the practice within Aboriginal cultures to locate ourselves when seeking to be known in Country or, in this instance, new spaces, that is, in this publication and to the readers of this publication. We are therefore naming ourselves and our locations in relation to one another and the Country on which we were born and now work.

Levon

My name is Levon Ellen Blue and I am a member of Beausoleil First Nation (G’Chimnissing) in Canada. My known connections to G’Chimnissing are through my dad (now deceased) and my grandmother (deceased) and, of course, through all the extended family including all of my aunties, uncles, nephews and cousins. I grew up, off reserve, in a small town located near Christian Island (the reserve). I spend more time on the island now as an adult than I did as a child because my brother and his family live there. I have been living away from home for a long time. My husband and I came to Hobart, Tasmania, in 2002 for what I thought would be three years while he completed his PhD. We have been in and around Brisbane now for almost two decades. I remember being hesitant about going to Australia back in 2002 and expressing this to my dad. He said, “Levon, you don’t spend your life waiting around for someone to die, go and live your life, you can always make it back within 24 hours for someone’s funeral.” The irony in his advice is that almost 20 years later he did pass away and, because of the pandemic, I wasn’t able to travel back immediately after he passed. I still take comfort in knowing that I took his advice and am living and working in Australia with Indigenous peoples here. He always wanted to come to Australia, not to visit the country but to meet Indigenous people from Australia.

I commenced at UQ in January 2024 to fill the vacancy as course coordinator for ABTS1000 Introduction to Aboriginal Studies, ABTS2010 Indigenous Gender Matters, and ABTS2030 Exploring Indigenous Art, Film, Music and Literature Through Iconic Works, and the role of HDR Coordinator focusing on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Higher Degree by Research (HDR) candidates. I also hold affiliate associations to the Schools of Education and Business at UQ. I now coordinate the second-year courses within the major, ABTS2010 and ABTS2030. Prior to working at UQ, I worked at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) for six years in the Indigenous Research and Engagement Unit, which later became the Carumba Institute. Prior to QUT, I worked and studied at Griffith University for five years.

Katelyn

I am a non-Indigenous woman, born and raised in Meanjin (Brisbane). My 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. I am passionate about working in collaboration and partnership with Indigenous people – through co-teaching and co-researching – and I have undertaken a number of collaborative projects with Indigenous colleagues in teaching and learning, music, and education over the years (e.g., Barney & Proud, 2014; Barney & Solomon, 2008; Bunda et al., 2024). I coordinate three third-year courses within the major: MUSC3570 Indigenous Australian Music within the School of Music (which I discuss elsewhere, see Collins et al. in this Handbook), ABTS3050 Independent Project in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, and ABTS3020 Working with Indigenous People. In relation to ABTS3020, I draw on my experiences as a non-Indigenous person working within Indigenous contexts and focus on the “Rs” of working with Indigenous people: relationships, respect, reciprocity, representation (for further discussion, see Bennett, 2023). I also invite Indigenous academics and community members into the class to discuss particular topics with students and I co-teach with a number of Indigenous people. For example, Tracey has been co-teaching classes with me since 2019, demonstrating to students how Indigenous and non-Indigenous people can work respectfully together in teaching and research.

Tracey

As an Aboriginal person who locates my position respectfully acknowledging both my mother and father, I name myself as a Ngugi/Wakka Wakka woman. The horrid colonial practices of stealing Aboriginal children and incarcerating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples impacted my family. I was born and grew up in Tulmur, Jagera Country. This was as a result of my mother being taken from her family and incarcerated at the Purga Aboriginal Mission, located on Yugurpul Country. My father was born at Barambah, now known as Cherbourg Reserve, and at a young age escaped from there hoping for a better life. He arrived at Purga. My parents’ marriage and eventual exemption from the ironically named Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act, 1897 saw their family raised in Tulmur (Ipswich, Queensland).

In my professional identity, I am the Professor for Indigenous Education at UQ. I have worked at the University since 2019, within the Division of Indigenous Engagement and primarily in leadership roles. In my capacity as the Professor for Indigenous Education, I have led the (Innovate) Reconciliation Action Plan initiative of Indigenising the curriculum throughout the University.

Indigenous studies: The context

Indigenous studies is a unique and important discipline which seeks to educate “both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in preparation for professional work and future engagement with Indigenous Australians, or for more general understanding of the knowledge, cultures, histories and contemporary concerns of Australia’s First People” (Nakata et al., 2012, p. 121). Indigenous studies can be defined as “the study of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and societies historically framed by non-Indigenous disciplinary domains” (Bunda, 2022, p. 8) and is an important contribution to teaching both non-Indigenous and Indigenous students about Australia’s colonial history and rich cultural heritage (Nakata et al., 2012). Nakata (2006) calls for “disciplinary and scholarly issues within Indigenous studies” to be “interrogated and yet retain the necessary cohesion and solidarity so important to the Indigenous struggle” (p. 265). More recently, Moodie (2019) notes that “as an interdisciplinary field, Indigenous studies draws from and contributes to a diverse array of theoretical and methodological perspectives, but ultimately seeks to disrupt accepted colonial binaries” (p. 738; also see Gilbert, 2019). At UQ, we see ourselves as teaching Indigenous studies that draws on a multidisciplinary approach. Through our own locations and from other Indigenous expertise that we invite into the learning space (see Bodle & Blue, 2020), we are offering Indigenous knowledges that position a criticality of Indigenous issues seen through an Indigenous lens. Moreton-Robinson (2016) posits critical Indigenous studies as the “knowledge/power domain whereby scholars operationalize Indigenous knowledges to develop theories, build academic infrastructure, and inform our cultural and ethical practices” (p. 5). The extent to which we can claim that our teaching is framed within this lens is dependent on the degree of criticality that contributors, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, bring to the matters that are being taught in the courses. For example, an investigation of the colonial and continuing importance of land and land ownership has its antithesis, in Aboriginal theoretical ways of knowing, as theft and dispossession. In alignment with this ethos, Levon, in ABTS2010, purposefully centres Indigenous representational works to make visible how the Indigenous voice has been marginalised, and what is being spoken through the iconic works to represent Indigenous voices and why. Katelyn, in ABTS3020, strengthens students’ learnings to understand authentic relationships built within Indigenous practices of reciprocity. Thus, the historically valued and normalised practice of extractive relationships in working with Indigenous peoples becomes exposed as a limiting practice for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

Historical background and current structure of the major in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

The three of us work closely together in developing and revising courses offered in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies major (see Table 1).

Table 1: Courses in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies major at UQ

As shown in Table 1, there are 11 courses within the major for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Students wishing to complete the major are required to complete 16 units. There are two compulsory first-year, or level 1, courses worth 2 units each: ABTS1000 Introduction to Aboriginal Studies and ABTS1510 On Country: Exploring Aboriginal Sites of Significance. In the second year, students are required to complete two courses (4 units) plus one additional second-year course for a total of 6 units. The courses include ABTS2010 Indigenous Gender Matters, ABTS2030 Exploring Indigenous Art, Film, Music and Literature Through Iconic Works, and the choice of one second-level elective. The electives include ANTH2010 Critical Anthropology and Indigenous Australians, ANTH2260 Applied Anthropology and Indigenous Territories, ARTT2103 Australia Pacific Indigenous Arts, and POLS2101 Indigenous Politics and Policy. In the third year, students must complete two courses (4 units): ABTS3020 Working with Indigenous People (2 units), ABTS3050 Independent Project in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (4 units); and/or MUSC3570 Indigenous Australian Music: Indigenous Music-making in Australia (2 units).

Epistemological framing of the courses

In framing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies courses, there are a number of key conceptualisations that the academic team believes have prominence. Students of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies are required to become familiar with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors within the literature commencing with first-year courses and developing greater depth of understanding of the literature across the second and third years of the major. Additionally, the team considers it important that students are introduced to the concept of race, and develop and deepen understanding over the three years of course offerings so they learn how race and Indigeneity intersect to produce different and critical readings of issues that are raised as course learnings.

It is also important that students develop strong senses of criticality that counter the colonial and continuing harmful narratives about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This mechanism allows students to re-think the socio-political histories and knowledges that would have currency within the wider community. The theoretical framing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies deepens as students traverse the three years.

Learning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies culminates in the third-year courses through the application of knowledge acquired in the first and second years, either in a professional practice course interrogating methods of working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people or in a course comprising an independent study project.

The framing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies courses aligns with a centring of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices within the discipline and thus counters white colonial constructions as the only positioning of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia. This is not to say that colonial positionings are not useful in the discipline. Such writings, when studied across trajectories of time, demonstrate the extent to which stereotyping and racism were normalised in the (Western) knowing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Becoming familiar with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authoritative voices is foundational to students understanding why critical positions are important and why the concept of race informs the learning about why Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have been treated with disregard within the socio-political and historical landscape of this country.

Continuity and staffing

As an academic group of specific expertise, we are cognisant of the working life of our team and have sought to replicate the experienced academic team members by including and nurturing early career academics into the team. Dr Allanah Hunt, a Barkindji and Malyangapa woman, has joined the team and is coordinating two first-year Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies courses, ABTS1000 Introduction to Aboriginal Studies and a new course starting in Semester 2, 2025, ABTS1050 On Country: Exploring Aboriginal Sites of Significance. Professor Anne Pattel-Gray, a Bidjara woman, has also joined the team and provides additional academic leadership for the major.

In early January 2024, Levon was employed to coordinate two of the first-year courses offered in Semester 1, ABTS1000 and ABTS2010. The courses are compulsory for first-year students completing the major or electives for other students. These courses attract approximately 100 students combined. There is a larger issue at hand, one which has local consequence and impacts the sector: that is, the availability and readiness of Indigenous academics to teach in Indigenous studies. It is a situation that many faculties struggle with across Australian universities.

To counter the possibility of student disappointment in not having an Indigenous academic from Australia coordinating these courses, Tracey joined the classes in Week 1 to discuss with students how staff and students would work together within the courses. The courses are also designed to include the involvement of Indigenous and non-Indigenous academics working in various disciplinary areas who are invited to deliver guest lectures.

The discipline cannot call upon an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander labour force that is somehow/somewhere awaiting an entry to the academic work of teaching for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies. Moreton-Robinson (2020) has pointed to the inadequacy of the university sector in teaching courses and programs about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies, and, within the discipline, about race. This is an interesting reality that points to the problematic in place. An absence of investment in such courses and programs has led to generations of people in this nation remaining uneducated and under-educated as to the history, effects and continuing impacts of colonisation. Additionally, the absence fails to produce the next generation of potential academics who are able to teach about the history, effects and continuing impacts of colonisation. This reality is exacerbated by the low numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students enrolled in such courses and programs and who then may wish to follow a career path into the academy in the field of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies. Such a wish list, if it does come to fruition, may take a decade to be realised. Meanwhile, economic pressures on university budgets threaten the existence of courses and programs with low student numbers which can be closed because they are not seen as economically viable and sustainable. The major remains supported in the Bachelor of Arts. The need to build the numbers of Indigenous academics across universities is a key goal of Universities Australia’s Indigenous Strategy 2022–25 (2022) and certainly the recruitment and nurturing of Indigenous staff is also vital (e.g., Povey et al., 2023).

Student cohorts

The majority of students enrolled in the major do so as an elective. Some students may only complete one course and others may complete a couple, depending on the space they have within their degree. Very few students undertake the major and, from what was reported to us recently from the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, 31 students graduated from the major or minor from 2018–2022. Certainly, there can be a diversity of students undertaking Indigenous studies, including non-Indigenous Australian students, Indigenous students “who are often a minority” in Indigenous studies courses and significant numbers of international students (Nakata et al., 2012, p. 122). The teaching of Indigenous studies by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous academic staff, at times, requires a heightened sense of what is occurring at the “cultural interface” for students (Nakata et al., 2012). The complication arises when students carry negative presumptions about the course content and are unwilling to alter dispositions. Teachers are then required to apply sophisticated pedagogies to bring learning calmness to the teaching context.

Pedagogical approaches: Centring relationships and Country

Although the six courses we teach into are unique in their content, they have been developed to follow a similar model. We invite Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members into the classroom. Indigenous academics such as Professor Anita Heiss, Jim Walker, Dr Condy Canuto, and non-Indigenous academics such as Associate Professor Gary Osmond, Professor Murray Phillips and Associate Professor Maggie Nolan at UQ deliver guest lectures. We also work with the campus resources, including BlackWords, the database within AustLit, and take students to visit the UQ Anthropology Museum, UQ Art Museum and UQ Library. We also have consciously made decisions and allocated funding to ensure we include the involvement of Indigenous organisations in the courses where relevant. For example, in ABTS1000, we procure the services of BlackCard, a local Indigenous organisation providing cultural competency training in an online or face-to-face environment. Students have the opportunity to meet outside the Gallery of Modern Art in South Bank, Brisbane, to commence “an introductory tour around South Bank’s Cultural Precinct, exploring one of the largest and most exciting collections of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander public artworks” (BlackCard, n.d.).

The Indigenising Curriculum Design Principles (Bunda, 2022) are all relevant to the major, with Relationships and Country positioned as particularly important. By way of example, Tracey and Katelyn have been co-teaching students in the courses Katelyn coordinates, ABTS3020 and MUSC3570 (previously MUSC2810), since 2019 to model the importance of relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Our approach is centred on relationality, as it “encompasses principles of generosity, empathy and care that connote ideals of respect, consideration, understanding, politeness and nurturing” (Moreton-Robinson, 2000, p. 18). We also co-teach relationality through using the method of storying (Phillips & Bunda, 2018) with undergraduate students to create a safe space in which students’ stories can be valued and respected – a space where students can critically theorise their own identities and cultural and historical experiences (Benmayor, 2008). This is particularly important in the contexts of Indigenous studies and Indigenising the curriculum where (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) students and (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) educators need to understand their location, positioning and relationality to Indigenous people. In our co-teaching, we aim to create and model teacher–teacher, student–teacher and student–student relationships inspired by these principles. In our classrooms, students and educators are asked to be generous when sharing, to be empathetic to others’ life experiences and to practise care within the dialogues that arise, not only with fellow students, but also with us as teachers.

The design principle of Country is also centred. For example, in Semester 2, 2025, the new course ABTS1050 On Country: Exploring Aboriginal Sites of Significance will focus on exploring important Aboriginal sites in and around South East Queensland with visits to historical and contemporary sites that have shaped and continue to shape understandings of Country in South East Queensland, including around Meanjin (Brisbane) and visiting the Ration Shed at Cherbourg. Through engaging site visits and reflective practice, and by learning about significant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders, students will gain a deeper appreciation of the contributions by Indigenous Australians to this land.

Assessment examples

The alignment of learning outcomes with course content, pedagogical practices and assessment types is critical to quality teaching and learning. The team utilises multiple assessment types and aims to be cognisant of innovation and cutting-edge developments. We give attention to two assessment types here: storying and the use of artificial intelligence (AI).

Storying

Indigenous studies can often include difficult topics about the realities of colonisation in Australia. Students can find the materials confronting and often student engagement can drop. Through a successful 2021 UQ Teaching Innovation Grant, we have introduced storying (Phillips & Bunda, 2018) as an approach in several Indigenous studies courses to weave a “knowledge basket” to assist students to come to terms with the difficulties, discomforts and emotions experienced by Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in Indigenous studies contexts and to enhance engagement.

In 2023, we introduced a new assessment item to ABTS1000: a reflective journaling assessment. We called the assessment “Knowledge Basket: Storied Reflections”, which involved students writing weekly journal entries of 200 words in response to a topic theme in the course. In class, Tracey outlined storying as a reflective practice for students, and provided examples of her own stories and guidance on how the students might create their own storied reflections. Students were then given a prompt/focus question to guide their storied reflection which was following the lecture. The reflections were marked and feedback given to assist the students in writing the following week’s knowledge basket entry. When writing the reflections, students were asked to choose one or more storying principles (from Phillips & Bunda, 2018) to ground their work. “Knowledge Basket: Storied Reflections” allowed space for students to not only explore their own location and positionality in relation to Aboriginal history, but also to make critical connections to literature, to rethink their initial responses and to question their understandings of Indigenous topics (for more information, see Bunda et al., 2024). Although the assessments vary slightly, in each semester ABTS1000 has continued to have a form of the knowledge basket assessment.

AI and Indigenous studies

Academics in all disciplines are currently faced with the challenge of ensuring their assessments are secure and have to make decisions about how students can engage with AI tools when completing assessments. In ABTS2010, which Levon convenes, one of the assessment tasks asks students to create a Wikipedia entry for an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander woman who does not have one. During Levon’s first time coordinating the course, she asked students to analyse a Wikipedia page that she had asked ChatGPT to generate about colleague Dr Melanie Saward, who is a proud Bigambul and Wakka Wakka woman. Melanie gave prior permission to Levon for the students to focus on her during the class. The Wikipedia page generated for Melanie looked realistic and included awards and publications associated with Melanie, but the trouble was that not everything generated was accurate. Levon asked the class to work in groups to investigate what was correct and what was not.

Inspired by the tutorial activity described above, Levon re-designed the Wikipedia assessment for Semester 1 in 2025 and added an AI component. Students are now required to create the Wikipedia entry on their own (part 1). Part 2 requires students to ask an AI tool to create the Wikipedia page for the chosen Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander woman, and they then provide a 300-word summary on the pros and cons of having AI generate the Wikipedia page. At the time of writing this chapter, students are currently working on this assessment and some students in class shared that they were excited that Levon was embracing AI rather than banning it.

Levon also incorporated a short lecture on AI prior to this assessment being due because she could not assume that everyone knew how to use AI. One thing she noticed when preparing for the AI lecture was that the AI tools appeared to have advanced since the previous year with regards to accuracy. She is eagerly awaiting the assessment from the students to read about their experiences.

Concluding thoughts

When we decided to co-edit this Handbook together, it was the three of us with responsibilities into the major in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Since that time, Professor Anne Pattel-Gray and Dr Allanah Hunt have joined the team. Both are Indigenous women who bring their own expertise, experiences and knowledges into the courses. The future of this space is unknown, but we hope to continue to work together to model the ways Indigenous and non-Indigenous people can successfully work together to centre respectful relationships and explorations of Country and transform students’ understandings about Indigenous peoples, histories and cultures. We acknowledge that there is much infrastructure yet to be built for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies at UQ, including securing Indigenous (internal and external) teachers/knowledge holders, quality pedagogical practices in a digital world, and stronger research and scholarship of teaching. The uptake of an Indigenised curriculum within the University has been heartening and will have the effect of strengthening Indigenous perspectives, studies and knowledges. The major in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies is situated with other disciplinary courses and, together, enables the University to claim a space whereby multiple knowledges co-exist and enrich learning and teaching.