Sea Country: navigating Indigenous and colonial ontologies in Australian environmental education

A Sea Country Learning Partnership in Times of Anthropocenic Risk: Offshore Coral Reef Education and Our Story of Practice

“…Western interpretations of Country as ‘the environment’ are too shallow, as this inherently reproduces the epistemological (and educational) deficiencies of the nature–human binary. Country is better understood as an interconnected web of social, ecological, and spiritual relationships (Whitehouse, Watkin-Lui, Sellwood, Barrett, & Chigeza, 2014). Sea Country education takes the form of relational learning whereby ‘knowledge entails the concept that people “belong” and are part of the land, sea and sky: these spheres are not set apart, but rather are kept balanced and in tune’ (Whap, 2001, p. 23).…”

Rethinking relationships with curriculum by engaging with foxes and sharing stories in early childhood spaces

“…Settlers have employed various theories to justify their actions. These include manifest destiny, the doctrine of discovery and the concept of terra nullius (Tuck et al, 2014; Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013; Tuck and Yang, 2012; Whitehouse et al, 2014). The effect of settler colonial takeovers has been that many Indigenous people have been alienated from their lands.…”

“…The effect of settler colonial takeovers has been that many Indigenous people have been alienated from their lands. Furthermore, among Indigenous populations in colonized places, healthy lives have been compromised, as evidenced by high rates of infant mortality, social service apprehension, and incarceration and by low life-expectancy numbers (Duhaime, 2008; Whitehouse et al, 2014). Wolfe (2006) names these factors in discussing settler colonialism and the ‘logic of elimination’ (p. 387), while Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernández (2013) more specifically describe curriculum as a project of replacement, which is of concern in this article.…”

“…Calderon (2014) decries ‘dominant settler ideologies of land [that] leave little room for Indigenous-informed frameworks and little to no possibility for decolonizing work in education’ (p. 25). The ontological and epistemological orientation of current curricula, for example, Quebec’s Educational Program for Childcare Services (Ministère de la Famille et des Aînés, 2007), informed as it is by a settler colonial ethic (Whitehouse et al, 2014), must be completely revised if Indigenous knowledges and practices are to become integrated into educational systems and the replacement project thwarted. One way of engaging in serious paradigmatic shifts towards Indigenous curricular frameworks is by thinking with nunangat (Calderon, 2014; Rowan, in press, 2015b; Tuck et al, 2014; Whitehouse et al, 2014).…”

Questions of ecopedagogy in tropical oceanScapes in the age of coral ecocide: An autoethnographic description

“…In his company giant barracudas passed by and I did not panic. In my explorations of finding a way past the western ontological obsession with binaries, I have written on Australia as a nature-culture (Whitehouse, 2011) and, with my colleagues, explored the ontological and educational formations of sea country (Whitehouse et al, 2014). My favourite children's book is Margaret Mahy's 1973 version of The man whose mother was a pirate.…”