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The first recorded Aboriginal person to graduate with an undergraduate qualification from any Australian university was Aboriginal woman Margaret Williams-Weir in 1959 ( Melbourne University, 2018 ). Williams-Weir graduated with a Diploma in Education. There have now been six decades of graduating Indigenous Australian women in the discipline of education, and many other disciplines. In this article, we explore Indigenous women’s presence in higher education through the narratives of our lives as Aboriginal women within education and the lives of other Indigenous women, noting their achievements and challenges. We acknowledge that while the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women participating in university study and becoming engaged in education as a discipline at undergraduate and postgraduate levels has increased, we are still significantly underrepresented. Similarly, while we have seen increases in Indigenous university staff within the education discipline, the employment of Indigenous academics has not reached parity with non-Indigenous academics levels and too few are employed in the professoriate and in senior management positions. We will show how we would not have been able to develop our education careers within higher education without the bridges built by those like Dr Williams-Weir and others who went before us. We will share how we have worked to establish the footings for those Indigenous women who will follow us and others. In this way, we work within the context that is for the now and the future.

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This project was designed to enhance the academic success and profiles of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) through increased proficiency and awareness of computer technology. The program attempted to establish a community of practice with technology, that focused on teaching and mentoring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students by supporting their use of computer technology. Prior to this project, there was no sound base of support for encouraging the use of technology with this group of students in the university and thus they were reluctant and apprehensive about its use in their studies.Initially, we focused on the development of the students' proficiency in word processing so that they could apply their newly learned skills directly to their coursework and assessment in the specific degree that they were studying. Secondly, we introduced the students to the Internet and finally we assisted them with the location of information in the Library and from other sources. Consequently, the key notions of the project related primarily to improving the students' skills in writing, communications, and searching and accessing information.