Learning Through an Undisciplined Lens: The Centring of Indigenous Knowledges and Philosophies in Higher Education in Australia and Sweden

• Main Authors: Marsh, Jillian K., Daniels-Mayes, Sheelagh, MacNeil, Kristina Sehlin, Nursey-Bray, Melissa
• Other Authors: The University of Newcastle. College of Engineering, Science & Environment, School of Architecture and Built Environment
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Springer 2023
• Subjects: indigeneity; Indigenous Australian; Indigenous Sámi; Indigenous knowledges; First Nations peoples and cultures; Indigenous standpoint theory (IST); Atkinson; Moreton; First Nations
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1491721

Social justice is part of higher education discourse within university mission statements, graduate qualities and university rhetoric globally (Connell in Higher education, pedagogy and social justice. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 23–36, 2019; Wilson-Strydom in High Educ 69(1):143–155, 2015). In Australia, this focus includes re-centring Indigenous Australian epistemologies and ontologies from the subjugated margins in academia (Moreton-Robinson in Cult Stud Rev 15:61–79, 2009; Nakata in Aust J Indig Educ 36:7–14, 2007) and in Sweden, building an understanding of intergenerational traumas of school-based systemic violence against Indigenous Sámi (Atkinson in Trauma trails, recreating song lines: the transgenerational effects of trauma in Indigenous Australia. Spinifex Press, 2002; Norlin in Samerna och Svenska kyrkan: Underlag för kyrkligt försoningsarbete. Gidlunds förlag, Möklinta, 2017). This chapter highlights opportunities for upward socio-economic mobility for First Nations peoples through surpassing the deficit thinking still prevalent among invader-coloniser populations. Included in this we reference the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals SDG 4: Quality Education and SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities (United Nations in Sustainable development goals, 2021) and its potential to influence educational discourses in teaching practice and curriculum construction in Australia and Sweden. Indigenous Standpoint Theory (IST) and Critical Race Pedagogy (CRP) are utilised as critical frameworks for unpacking the historical background of racial oppression, understanding the complexities of Indigeneity and post-colonising constructs and disrupting whiteness embedded in mono-cultural education. As practicing educators, we have sought in this chapter, to critically explore how Indigenous Knowledges and culturally responsive pedagogies are disrupting ethnocentric ontologies within the university sector through an emergent undisciplined strategy.