Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T16:13:04.920Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Learning Cycles: Enriching Ways of Knowing Place

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2020

Sandra Wooltorton Open the ORCID record for Sandra Wooltorton [Opens in a new window] ,
Peta White Open the ORCID record for Peta White [Opens in a new window] ,
Marilyn Palmer  and
Len Collard
Sandra Wooltorton*
Affiliation:
Nulungu Research Institute, University of Notre Dame Australia, Broome Campus, Broome, Western Australia
Peta White
Affiliation:
School of Education, Deakin University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Marilyn Palmer
Affiliation:
Edith Cowan University, Bunbury, Western Australia
Len Collard
Affiliation:
4School of Indigenous Studies, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
*
*Corresponding author: Email: Sandra.Wooltorton@nd.edu.au
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We share a story about a katitjin bidi, a learning journey in a bioregion with a multimillennial Aboriginal history. As part of this katitjin bidi, three environmental educators implemented a place-based pedagogy called ‘becoming family with place’, while a fourth participated in the preplanning and final reflective stages. Our story includes cycles of ways of knowing, resulting in an enriched practice of being-with our place. Our story is underpinned by Aboriginal epistemologies to reimagine regenerative futures linked with those of ‘the long now’ — the past, present and future here now. Ours is a particular story that lives in a particular southwest place. There are layers of meanings that live right across the landscapes in the southwest of Australia — and many of them are hiding in full view. You might like to try this pedagogy in school learning, teacher education, and community education contexts.

Keywords

culturejusticeenvironmental educationepistemologymethodologyplaceecological spirituality
Type
Research-Practice Articles
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abram, D. (1996). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Albrecht, G. (2012). The age of solastalgia. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/the-age-of-solastalgia-8337.Google Scholar
Barnes, P., Cameron, J., & Willis, H. (2010). The Australind journals of Marshall Waller Clifton 1840–1861. Victoria Park, Australia: Hesperian Press.Google Scholar
Country, B., Suchet-Pearson, S., Wright, S., Lloyd, K., Tofa, M., Sweeney, J., … Maymuru, D. (2019). Goŋ Gurtha: Enacting response-abilities as situated co-becoming. Environment and Planning: Society and Space, 37, 682–702.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennell, T. (1993). Kura. Bunbury, Australia: Kurangkurl Consultancy.Google Scholar
Bennell, E., & Thomas, A. (1981). Aboriginal legends from the Bibulmun tribe. Perth, Australia: Rigby Publishers.Google Scholar
Bird Rose, D. (1996). Nourishing terrains: Australian Aboriginal views of landscape and wilderness. Canberra, Australia: Australian Heritage Commission.Google Scholar
Bracknell, C. (2015). Kooral dwonk-katitjiny (listening to the past): Aboriginal language, songs and history in south-western Australia. Aboriginal History Journal, 38, 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bracknell, C. (2017). Conceptualizing Noongar song. Yearbook for Traditional Music, 49, 92–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bracknell, C. (2019). Connecting Indigenous song archives to kin, country and language. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 20, 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bracknell, C., & Scott, K. (2019). Ever-widening circles: consolidating and enhancing Wirlomin Noongar archival material in the community. In Barwick, L., Green, J., & Vaarzon-Morel, P. (Eds.), Language documentation & conservation special publication No. 18 Archival returns: Central Australia and beyond (pp. 325–338). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Buchanan, J., Collard, L., & Palmer, D. (2019). Koorliny birniny, ni, quoppa katatjin: Respect and ethics in working with Indigenous Australian communities. In Westoby, P. & Banks, S. (Eds.), Ethics, equity and community development (pp. 123–143). Bristol, UK: The Policy Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collard, L., Harben, S., & Rooney, A. (2015). Boodjar: Nyungar placenames in the South-West of Western Australia. http://www.boodjar.sis.uwa.edu.au/index.htm Google Scholar
Collard, L., Harben, S., & van den Berg, R. (2004). Nitja beeliar boodjar noonookurt nyininy: A Nyungar interpretive history of the use of boodjar (country) in the vicinity of Murdoch University. https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/21353/1/Nidja_Beeliar_Boodjar_Noonookurt_Nyininy.pdf Google Scholar
Dodson, P. (2010, November 15). Constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians is not just symbolic. Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/genuine-attempt-to-write-first-peoples-into-nations-contract-20101114-17sm8.html Google Scholar
Greenwood, D.A. (2016). Creative tensions in place-conscious learning: A triptych. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 13, 10–19.Google Scholar
Hayward, K. (2009). Spirit stones. Perth, Australia: ABC TV. http://www.spiritstones.com.au/spiritstones.com.au/home.html Google Scholar
Haraway, D. (2015). Anthropocene, capitalocene, plantationocene, chthulucene: Making kin. Environmental Humanities, 6, 159–165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harasymchuk, B. (2015). Place-based education and critical pedagogies of place: Teachers challenging the neocolonizing processes of the New Zealand and Canadian schooling systems [Unpublished doctoral thesis]. University of Canterbury, New Zealand. https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10092/10662/ThesisJuly202015.pdf;sequence=1 Google Scholar
Harben, S., Collard, L., & Stasiuk, G. (2005). Our country, our stories, our people: Recording traditional knowledge. https://www.wheatbeltnrm.org.au/sites/default/files/knowledge_hub/documents/RTKlitweb_0.pdf Google Scholar
Heron, J. (1996). Co-operative inquiry: Research into the human condition. London: Sage Google Scholar
Hopper, S.D., Silveira, F.A.O., & Fiedler, P. (2016). Biodiversity hotspots and Ocbil theory. Plant and Soil, 403, 167–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerins, S., & Green, J. (2019). ‘Like a rusty nail, you can never hold us blackfellas down’: Cultural resilience in the Southwest Gulf of Carpentaria. In Russell-Smith, J., James, G., Pedersen, H., & Sangha, K.K. (Eds.), Sustainable land sector development in Northern Australia: Indigenous Rights, aspirations, and cultural responsibilities (pp. 177–202). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (2017). Facing Gaia: Eight lectures on the new climatic regime. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Mia, T. (2008). Kepwaamwinberkup (Nightwell). In Morgan, S., Mia, T., & Kwaymullina, B. (Eds.), Heartsick for country. Fremantle, Australia: Fremantle Arts Centre Press.Google Scholar
Morrison, A., Rigney, L.-I., Hattam, R., & Diplock, A. (2019). Toward an Australian culturally responsive pedagogy: A narrative review of the literature. Adelaide, Australia: University of South Australia.Google Scholar
Nakata, M. (2018). Difficult dialogues in the South: Questions about practice. The AustralianJjournal of Indigenous Education, 47, 1–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmer, D. (2019). [Balyits]. Personal communication on 20/11/19 with Wooltorton, S. and Collard, L.Google Scholar
Pascoe, B. (2014). Dark emu. Black seeds: Agriculture or accident? Broome, Australia: Magabala Books.Google Scholar
Perkins, R. [Writer] & Kelly, F. [Director]. (2019). The end of silence: The genesis of the Uluru Statement. The ABC Boyer Lectures. Australian Broadcasting Corporation.Google Scholar
Poelina, A., & McDuffie, M. (2018). Nyikina collaborative filmmaking in the Kimberley: ‘Learning to listen with your eyes, and see with your ears’. In Morrissey, P. & Healy, C. (Eds.), Reading the Country: 30 years on. Sydney: University of Technology, Sydney.Google Scholar
Scott, K., Roberts, L., Woods, G., & Roberts, A. (2011). Noongar Mambara Bakitj. Crawley, Western Australia; Wirlomin Noongar Language Stories Project; UWA Publishing.Google Scholar
Stocker, L., Collard, L., & Rooney, A. (2016). Aboriginal world views and colonisation: Implications for coastal sustainability. Local Environment, 21, 844–865.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Styres, S. (2018). Literacies of land: Decolonising narratives, storying and literature. In Tuhiwai Smith, L., Tuck, E., & Yang, K.W. (Eds.), Indigenous and decolonising studies in education: Mapping the long view (pp. 24–37). Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuck, E., McKenzie, M., & McCoy, K. (2014). Land education: Indigenous, post-colonial, and decolonizing perspectives on place and environmental education research. Environmental Education Research, 20, 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wheatbelt Natural Resource Management. (n.d.). Nyungar budjara wangany: Nyungar NRM wordlist and language collection booklet of the Avon Catchment Region. Northam, Australia: Author.Google Scholar
Whitehouse, H. (2011). Talking up Country: Language, natureculture and interculture in Australian environmental education research. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 27, 295–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, L. (2018). Transformative sustainability education and empowerment practice on Indigenous lands: Part one. Journal of Transformative Education, 16, 344–364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, L., Bunda, T., Claxton, N., & MacKinnon, I. (2018). A global de-colonial praxis of sustainability — Undoing epistemic violences between Indigenous peoples and those no longer indigenous to place. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 47, 41–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wollaston, J.R., Henn, P.U., & Burton, A. (1948). Wollaston’s Picton journal (1841–1844): Being volume 1 of the journals and diaries (1841–1856) of John Ramsden Wollaston. Perth, Australia: Paterson Brokensha.Google Scholar
Wooltorton, S., Collard, L., & Horwitz, P. (2015). Stories want to be told: Elaap Karlaboodjar. PAN: Philosophy, Activism, Nature, 11, 3–18.Google Scholar
Wooltorton, S., Collard, L., & Horwitz, P. (2017). The land still speaks. Ni, katitj! PAN: Philosophy, Activism, Nature, 2–15.Google Scholar
Wooltorton, S., Collard, L., & Horwitz, P. (2019a). Layers of meanings in our landscapes: Hiding in full view. In Ellis, M. (Ed.), Critical global semiotics: Understanding sustainable transformational citizenship. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Wooltorton, S., Collard, L., & Horwitz, P. (2019b). Living water: groundwater and wetlands in Gnangara, Noongar boodja. PAN: Philosophy, Activism, Nature, (14), 5–23. http://panjournal.net/.Google Scholar
Wooltorton, S., Collard, L., Horwitz, P., Poelina, A., & Palmer, D. (2019). A place-based methodology for becoming family. Manuscript submitted for publication.Google Scholar
Yunkaporta, T. (2019). Sand talk: How Indigenous thinking can save the world. Melbourne, Australia: Text Publishing.Google Scholar