Getting our hands dirty: Transforming
engagement at the cultural interface
Intended audience
This critical workshop is particularly relevant to those engaged in the broad Indigenous
education space, from the context of supporting Indigenous educational outcomes through to
the embedding of Indigenous curriculum in typically non-Indigenous spaces. Indigenous
centre staff, senior institutional leadership, academics involved in Indigenous curriculum
design and integration, and institutional change agents will all come away with insights into
how they can apply the concepts within their own practice and institutional context to better
effect change aligned with reconciliatory process and outcomes.
Learning outcomes
Through active engagement with an emerging discourse that challenges the current status quo
in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education, participants will be able to:
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Articulate a critical stance on issues and practices within higher education
Critically appraise existing approaches to the Indigenous space within higher education
Develop critically informed, context specific strategies to reconceptualise the engagement
of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students and staff within higher education.
Workshop description
The politics of self-determination, long informing Indigenous practice within higher
education, has been mostly overlooked in scholarly critique of Indigenous engagement with
the academy.
This theoretical blind spot has led to the uncritical furthering of practices that actively work
towards reinforcing the simplistic Indigenous/Western dualism that discourages meaningful
engagement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge and people with higher
education. As Nakata (2013, 294) argues, as professionals working within the context of
Indigenous higher education, we have situated “the commitment to Indigenous political
ideology and Indigenous cultural practice ahead of a commitment to the possibilities that
might come from fuller engagement with Western knowledge theory and practice, and greater
engagement with university systems and processes”. The notion that self-determination, as it
manifested within universities throughout the 1970s and 1980s, remains contemporary to the
needs and aspirations of Indigenous Australians in the 21st century is highly problematic.
The extant nature of this belief, and its consequences, will be examined via a couple of
current, thematically linked ‘artefacts’, each informed by the politics of self-determination.
Firstly, a mandated institutional emphasis on Indigenising curriculum - this remains a
polarising piece of strategic thinking within higher education with a large proportion of
academic and professional staff either ‘sympathetic to the cause’, or resistant to it. However,
while non-Indigenous involvement in the Indigenous curriculum embedding agenda is
necessary, doing so at the expense of ‘voluntary’ participation through relationships
embodying the reconciliatory process is antithetical. Secondly, the positioning of Indigenous
centres - in many institutions, Indigenous centres are strategically positioned as enclaves
existing within what are often perceived to be hostile and culturally unsafe environments.
This positioning is too commonly constructed by Indigenous leadership that often perceives
and defines intra-institutional relationships as largely oppositional and informed by separate
‘blackfella’ practice. It follows then that, despite good intention, existing institutional
conceptualisations of what is required to ‘get the job done’ in the Indigenous space remains a
result of tacit acceptance rather than a process of critical review and renewal.
Informed by Nakata’s notion of the ‘cultural interface’ (Nakata, 2007), this workshop will
explore both these ‘symptoms’ of a problematic ideological approach, and ways in which
Indigenous and non-Indigenous staff in higher education can better engage at the cultural
interface. Via critical reflexivity around current practice, participants will be encouraged to
reconceptualise approaches to intra-institutional organisational function and inclusive
curriculum development, moving towards a reshaping of reconciliatory elements that may
ultimately serve the needs of Indigenous Australians and institutions more effectively than
existing practice and process permit.
Nakata, M. (2013). The rights and blights of the politics in Indigenous higher education.
Anthropological Forum: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Comparative Sociology, 115. doi:10.1080/00664677.2013.80345
Nakata, M. (1997). The cultural interface. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education,
36, Supplement, 7-14.
Facilitator biographies
Braden Hill
Murdoch University, Perth, braden.hill@murdoch.edu.au
Braden Hill is a Nyungar (Wardandi) man from the south-west of Western Australia. He is
currently the head of Murdoch University’s Kulbardi Aboriginal Centre. Having previously
worked as an academic, Braden is now leading the University’s efforts to increase the
participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in higher education. His research
interests relate to Indigenous education, identity politics, queer identities in education and
transformative learning. Braden was also valedictorian of his graduating year.
Jonathan Bullen
Curtin University, Perth, jonathan.bullen@curtin.edu.au
Jonathan Bullen is a Nyungar (Wardandi) man from the south-west of Western Australia. He
is Learning Designer, Indigenous Curriculum & Pedagogy within Curtin Teaching and
Learning. Prior to this, Jon was co-unit coordinator of an award-winning large scale
interprofessional health unit, Indigenous Cultures and Health. His PhD research is based
around this unit, specifically focusing on the elements underpinning transformative
pedagogies.