Mudjil'Dya'Djurali Dabuwa'Wurrata (How the White Waratah Became Red): D'harawal storytelling and Welcome to Country “controversies”

Abstract

The overarching purpose of this paper is to critically engage with non-Indigenous representations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Welcome to Country ceremonies, particularly within the conservative mainstream media and academic setting. The foundations of the paper will be drawn from both the critical Indigenous standpoint theories of white pathology by Moreton-Robinson (2015) and colonial storytelling by Behrendt (2016). Both these theories suggest that, too often, non-Indigenous representations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are more a reflection of non-Indigenous ideologies than accurate portrayals of Indigenous positionings. Further, an ancestral D'harawal Law Story will be utilized to reveal that Welcome to Country ceremonies, despite their contemporary adaptations under colonization, may be considered an essential contextual representation of Australia's true history prior to colonization, and thus should not be dismissed due to ideological misrepresentations or even tampered with by a colour-blind rhetoric.

Challenging the colonial legacy of/at Macquarie

“…But, unless the University explicitly addresses the implications of being welcomed so often to Dharug Nura by Dharug yura, how can it hope to welcome international students, scholars and families to Nura in the same spirit of generosity and optimism as offered to the institution by Dharug yura and Nura? A similar point is made by Bodkin‐Andrews and colleagues when showing how “non‐Indigenous attempts to understand this ceremony may be seen as a continuation of colonial discourses that speak more to the underpinnings of non‐Indigenous people than to the true nature of Welcome to Country ceremonies” (Bodkin‐Andrews et al, 2016, p. 482).…”

Goŋ Gurtha: Enacting response-abilities as situated co-becoming

“…However, setting stories and learning in English text is fraught. Publishing is an inescapably unidirectional mode of communication that conveys predetermined and fixed knowledge, yet the learning we seek to share as a Collective is fundamentally relational and contextual, and embedded in social relationships (Bodkin-Andrews et al, 2016). Representing traces of moments and stories that arise from more-than-human connections in written work risks processing Indigenous knowledge through the conventions of western scholarship (Brigg, 2016) and 'refractive translation' that changes the meaning and logic of what we seek to share (Cole, 2017;Lloyd, 2012;Porr and Bell, 2011).…”

Exposing the patterns of statistical blindness: Centring Indigenous standpoints on student identity, motivation, and future aspirations

“…It is the position of the authors of this article that any commitment to Indigenous research methodological standpoints should take a more reflexive approach to discussing results, as Indigenous-specific interpretive and epistemic relevancies are too often inadequately engaged with by subjugating positivistic, and Western frameworks. Bodkin-Andrews, Bodkin, Andrews, and Whittaker (2016) have noted that Indigenous storytelling and learning practices, within and between diverse Aboriginal clans and nations, act as an intrinsic method of continual knowledge exchange between peoples over thousands of generations (see also Archibald, 2008;Martin, 2008). As a result, storytelling becomes an ongoing process of mutual learning that was not frozen into one time point, or one 'research paper' or 'literature review'.…”