Being-Country in Urban Places: Naming the World Through Australian Aboriginal Pedagogies

Abstract

This paper explores the pedagogies of a Murrawarri/Dharug co-researcher enacted during three activities: becoming animal; welcome dance; and message sticks. We think-with Trist and consider the possibilities of being-Country in urban places. The research draws on data collected as part of Naming the World, an international project informed by posthuman and new materialist theorizing and Indigenous understandings of humans as fully intertwined with the world. We grapple with the intersection of posthuman and new materialist perspectives alongside Indigenous onto-epistemologies in early childhood education settings.

‘We love sharing your land’: Children’s understandings of Acknowledgement to Country practices and Aboriginal knowledges in early learning centres

“…We know that play cements ideas (Fleer, 2021). Although appropriation of Aboriginal knowledge and identity is not appropriate for adults (Carlson, 2016), Indigenous educator Narelle Twist uses a pedagogy of play with Aboriginal language and practices with all children to explore shared identity (Somerville et al, 2019). In our study this imaginative play perhaps opens up an ambiguous space that supports sensemaking, reduces othering, and creates the possibility of Aboriginal peers being present in the centre.…”

Educator perspectives on embedding Acknowledgement to Country practices in early learning centres in Australia

“…He argues these transformative pedagogies have underlying and complementary principles, with commonalities in their tools of experiential learning, group dynamic learning through listening and contemplation and student-centred learning. Others caution that settler colonial understandings of place (rather than Country) and environmental education can erase and deny Indigenous worldviews (Somerville et al, 2019).…”

“…Acknowledgement practices are emergent in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. For example, in one preschool the Acknowledgement was offered as a welcome dance with the children using a pedagogy of ‘drumming, singing, dancing, rhythm’ developed and enacted by Aboriginal educator Narelle Twist (Somerville et al, 2019, p. 103). Twist used Aboriginal pedagogies to frame Acknowledgement practices into three categories: becoming animal; drumming, singing, dancing, rhythm; and artefacts and imaginative play.…”

“…Twist used Aboriginal pedagogies to frame Acknowledgement practices into three categories: becoming animal; drumming, singing, dancing, rhythm; and artefacts and imaginative play. Twist created embodied learning experiences for children embedded in Indigenous worldviews, drawing on Country and Aboriginal protocols (Somerville et al, 2019). Adam Duncan, an Aboriginal educator, insists that children’s voices should be integral to developing Acknowledgement practices (2017).…”