The peak body representing Australian Universities, Universities Australia, has adopted The National Best Practice Framework for Indigenous Cultural Competency in Australian Universities. Not something, if you read the key points, I’d have thought should be overly controversial.
But, interestingly, a bunch of right wing voices are warning direly that the incorporation of Indigenous knowledges into university curricula will spark off culture wars.
Anyone else see something of a self-fulfilling prophecy at work here?
It’s one way of policing and re-inforcing “The Great Silence” about all things Indigenous (or, in its postmodern mode, the restriction of Indigenous voices to those approved by the right wing commentariat, and the assimilation of Indigenous policy to approved neo-liberal paradigms).
This is also not dissimilar to the way the proposals for Indigenous recognition in the Constitution are being furiously narrowed down in the op/ed columns of the press.
I’m struggling to see how “indigenous knowledges and perspectives” have anything to add to a software engineering curriculum, Mark.
It’s Kim’s post, Rob!
But I note a comparable proposal to include cultural competencies for working with Indigenous people and communities in mining engineering degrees. It may be that most vocational courses would benefit from a part of the curriculum being devoted to organisational/communication/cultural concepts and skills, given that everyone has to work in the world with others!
Similarly, the proposal would lend itself to a broadening of the science or vocationally focused curricula in first year ala the Melbourne Model.
I could certainly see it as being extremely beneficial in Health Sciences teaching, for instance.
Sorry, Kim, Mark!
No worries!
I don’t have the link to hand, and I’m just about to head out to a meeting, but it’s worth pointing out that some of the discussion on this demonstrates that it’s not some diktat that every course, unit or subject must have Indigenous content. Most of the ways in which it has been implemented at some unis, or is proposed to be implemented at others, made an awful lot of sense to me.
WRT your comment on the Melbourne model, that’s what I was going to add – the implications of wanting to teach this kind of thing to university students almost inevitably leads to something like the Melbourne model.
But I’d also note that the Melbourne model is going down like a lead balloon with school leavers so far.
I don’t think you have to go the full hog and make most vocational degrees postgrad, but having some core courses or some ‘breadth’ requirements in the first year of every degree seems to me to be a good idea. A degree in leisure management, for instance, needs to include something more than that!
I’d also observe that the market model of response to student concerns/feedback/choices obscures the fact that 17 or 18 year old school leavers are in fact not the best judges of how they should be educated.
Just quickly (on phone).
A distinction should be made between reasonable discussion of the idea and culture warrior predictions that they will themselves cause a stink – designed to discredit it in advance and stop it.
I’m struggling to see how “indigenous knowledges and perspectives” have anything to add to a software engineering curriculum.
That, Robert, is exactly why they should be added to the curriculum.
The stipulation “all university curricula” is just plain silly.
Why not embed knowledges and perspectives (pardon me while I vomit into my mouth a little) where they can be helpful, and avoid the guaranteed tokenism of shoehorning them into areas where they will be of no use?
See Mark’s comment @5.
Thanks for alerting me to existence of the calallaxy blog.
/sarcasm
Mark and Kim: this actually sounds like a bloody good idea that’s being hampered by the own wanky pseudo-academic prose expressing it. This then makes it easy for the culture warriors to sabotage it. I mean: “embed knowledges and perspectives” – the ipecac syrup for the new millenium!
Software requirements, Robert. Imagine trying to work together with an indigenous community – the customers – to create software for their needs. What cultural and linguistic difficulties can one foresee in listening to them, and which ones could hamper you in providing usable software for them? I bet there’s going to be loads.
On the other hand, I too cannot see how “Indigenous perspectives” can aid beginning programmers in learning Python or Java. The only idea that comes to mind is teaching them how to produce Unicode programs early in the piece – allowing Yolŋu Matha speakers to type in the actual name of their own language. Other areas – data structures, networking protocols – I haven’t the foggiest.
D&O, you’re awful close to tone-trolling here, methinks.
I mean, if you consider the phrase “embed knowledges and perspectives” to be infelicitous, kindly suggest one that expresses the same idea, with greater clarity, elegance and economy of words?
If you can’t, well, then, quit yer whinin’ already!
…what’s your preferred mode of communication? Interpretive dance? Scent marks? Agitated screeching?
My concern would be what gets thrown out in exchange to add this to the curriculum. Take 1st year engineering for example which is often very broad anyway to cover the basics of all major fields of engineering and already has about 30 contact hours a week.
However perhaps offering some electives in the later years would be a good idea for those who think they’ll benefit from it.
I think “curricula” here means broad, faculty-based curricula. So instead of having an indigenous perspective on software engineering, all first year engineers would be required to take a course on Indigenous people and science. I guess it would be the same one the science kids take (since science and engineering are basically the same course until the engineers go away to learn how to twiddle spanners and paint pretty pictures, while the scientists learn how the world works in more depth).
I did science at Adelaide Uni and I think I would have benefited from a single first year course on the history of science and indigenous culture: great indigenous scientists, the relationship between eugenics and aboriginal dispossession, discredited theories of race, Indigenous people and scientific experiments, Indigenous people and mining… it would cover the gamut from the Stolen Generation to sacred sites to Maralinga. Maybe chuck in some stuff about Indigenous under-achievement in the sciences and the reasons why, and I guess that the engineers might actually learn something useful in their degree!
re the python, java counterexamples – isn’t the point to have these perspectives at the course level, not necessarily the subject level. And i thought universities tried to provide broader education than just vocational, I think UNSW used to require all students to study a humanities subject as well as their tech subjects.
I would also consider anything encouraging more thinking in unfamiliar modes to be directly relevant to programming – it’s a creative process and creativity feeds on diversity imnsho
faustusnotes @ 16 – well I come back to the question of what do you throw out of the course to make room for this new subject? Maths? Physics? Chemistry? Design?
We already have universities complaining about having to run remedial courses for students starting engineering like degrees because their maths skills are not up to scratch. Diverting time from technical competency in the early years makes it even harder for students in the later years because they’ll lack even more assumed knowledge.
On the other hand in the later years when you are specialising there is more room for these sorts of things. They could drop some of the pointless management subjects
Seems a bit silly to only cover indigenous culture – there’s lots of other cultures which could also be covered at the same time (eg major immigrant groups) which would be just as valuable.
There’s no room for these things in 2nd and 3rd year, in my experience, Chris. I overloaded courses in 2nd and 3rd year in order to get the basic requirements for mathematical physics, as did all my colleagues, and the engineers were busy as hell in 2nd and 3rd year. But 1st year is a cruisy year by anyone’s standards, and you could easily tack on two more courses.
A one year course covering some basic political history from a science perspective could be nice too, you’re right. It’d be interesting. Might help scientists understand stuff outside their own immediate field. “Contemporary topics in Science and Politics” or something.
As for remedial courses – that’s not a problem that’s going to be fixed by ditching an indigenous studies course, or any other. That’s an entirely separate course. ANyway, isn’t an engineering degree basically just a course in remedial mathematics?
Please address the actual OP too. Thx.
Software requirements, Robert. Imagine trying to work together with an indigenous community – the customers – to create software for their needs. What cultural and linguistic difficulties can one foresee in listening to them, and which ones could hamper you in providing usable software for them? I bet there’s going to be loads.
Down and Out, I suspect that there is little or no training in working with customers of any stripe to create software for their needs. Singling out those massive consumers of specialist software the “indigenous community” (homogenous as they are) is a bit absurd.
Mercurius: I did not intend to troll, “tone” wise or otherwise. But since you asked:
While slightly wordier, I would suggest that “add Indigenous knowledge and ideas to the curriculum as appropriate” is a lot clearer – and I think clarity is more important that length. But you may disagree.
Having said that: even if Universities Australia had written a “Best Practices” document of such style and economy as to make Ernest Hemingway weep, the cultural warriors would whinge anyway.
Shorter me: it’s better to vomit than take a catallaxative.
to answer your question: no interpretive dance, better
Just so I make myself understood: I might vomiting is
“I could certainly see it as being extremely beneficial in Health Sciences teaching, for instance”
Mark, I think you’ll find that this sort of thing already is taught in many places where it should be. If people in places where it isn’t very relevant want some education in it, I really don’t see why a short-course or something like would be a better idea — at present, many degrees have 12 hours contact time for two twelve week semesters each year, and so not surprisingly many are already full up with things that are of specific use to the degree. Given this, in effect, what you are saying is that students should be dedicating a whole lot of time to this issue when in places like Victoria, there are few Aboriginals — my bet is that most people will encounter approximately zero in their day to day lives, and that includes myself.
I also don’t really see why, if you were worried about cultural competency in certain groups, you would want a simple Aboriginal focus — there are many groups in the community that have various non-obvious cultural preferances and I think, if anything, some are certainly harder to deal with than Aboriginies, whose differences, at least in Victoria, are mainly caused by the rather more general problem of poverty.
Sorry: the last two lines in my last post were meant to be snipped. Now on to wilful:
I believe that some training in basic requirements analysis should be necessary for software developers, period. It’s hard enough at the best of times. I did not intent to “single” out a very inhomogenous indigenous community indeed as of special need.
But I have done requirements analysis with mostly white civil engineers – I didn’t enjoy it, but I remember it. How would I have dealt with people whose non-verbal cues were different to mine? Pretty badly, I expect.
@15 @18 @23 — you wanna watch that you don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good…after the long history of sending Indigenous people to the back of the queue/back of the bus — it’s a bit rich now to say we oughta ‘wait to implement this program because there are so many other worthy projects we could be doing…’
Off the top of my head, have you any knowledge or understanding of the way Indigenous communities (in Australia and other places) communicated bits of information, using binary logic — ? Or the protocols they employed in mapping landscape and resources? How these relate to process diagrams / decision trees / fuzzy logic / networking / modular architecture?
No?
Neither do I. Because of what Sam said @9
The best thing that could happen to university would be to add an extra year to high school, (for people that want to go onto university)– reforming the curriculum at the same time. A general knowledge subject including content about indigenous Australians would then be able to find a place during high school.
You could also reform the TAFE system and making it not only for “trades” but also for things like tourism management, etc. Narrowing even further the responsibilities of universities.
Please address the OP. I’ll keep saying that til people start doing it.
Mark @2: I spent 8 yrs working for the BHP mine on the Groote Eylandt Aboriginal reserve. I would agree that an understanding of the local culture is important for people living and working there.
This understanding is important both in terms of telling outsiders what changes from our “normal” behavior are desirable when dealing with the locals (Ex: Not using the names of the dead.) It is also important to avoid unfair judgments. (Ex: Different ideas of where the boundary lies between fulfilling family obligations and nepotism.)
What you need to know when you go to a place like this is fairly location specific. There are important cultural differences and degrees of traditional behavior from site to site. There are also going to be differences re how well the locals understand us and what cultural rules they really do think it is important for us to respect. Adding Aboriginal culture to mining engineering seems a waste of time to me because it may create the idea that you know something when you really don’t.
Given the number of people who end up working overseas it is desirable that graduates understand the need to do homework before working alongside different cultures. There is also a need to understand that the problem is not so much the really foreign like my Groote Eylandt friends (the need is obvious) but ones where the differences are far more subtle (think working with people from the US.)
faustnotes @ 19 – in my experience first year was pretty busy, but that was an engineering degree. Fourth year has electives as well as management and law subjects and it would seem to fit into that kind of mould.
The point about remedial courses was more about time. With high contact hours already (25-30), add a few more for remedial maths/physics a lot of students are really going to struggle, especially if they need to have part time jobs. Personally I found 4th year easier time-wise but that might have been because things technical subjects are pretty specialised by then.
Mercurius @ 25 – no I don’t want the perfect to be the enemy of the good enough either but if we’re talking about introducing the subject so for example engineers are able to work well with people from other cultures than the dominant one, then it seems like a huge missed opportunity to only include one culture in the course.
If its more along the lines of what you’ve described, then it should either be in the main course if its directly relevant to protocols/algorithms (and you might not like this, but the cultural background of the algorithm would not be that relevant to the course – they don’t discuss the cultural background of other algorithms except sometimes in a vague passing reference) or otherwise in a history elective perhaps.
Currently I am reading WEH Stanner’s “The Dreaming and other Essays” funnily enough. Robert Manne, the editor of my copy, says:
“This silence did not begin in innocence, as a ‘simple forgetting of other possible views’ … it arose rather … in the systematic strangulation of national conscience.”
I see the agitating about ‘another culture war’ operating in the same way. In his Boyer lectures, Stanner said he was sure this silence would end. He was, in this solitary instance, incorrect. It never ends. Why gesture to a ‘culture war’ you might think? I say because the notion of incorporation of Indigenous knowledges into university curricula raises the intentionally and regularly repressed history of race relations. In effect the unspectacular inclusion of indigenous knowledges then operates as an acknowledgement of that. It’s power then becomes, in fact, spectacular.
Anyway, the fact that this thread is thus far silent on the silencing aspect – which is after all the central point of the post – is interesting.
Thanks, C-G. I agree it’s interesting.
Chris @29 – I repeat, please make comments responsive to the thrust of the original post.
Kim, I think most of this discussion has been if not discussing the silencing at least paralleling it. Discussion of vocational commitments or focus crowding out cultural competency, whether it is relevant to particular vocations etc seems similar to the silencing – I think the silencing is more a result of people who see indigenous culture as irrelevant than an achievement of whitewashers who want to ban discussion – perhaps the culture warriors may even stimulate interest.
And on the vocational side it seems the report is seeing indigenous cultural competency as a generic skill. This difference of opinion over whether universities should provide purely vocational bodies of knowledge or should teach people to think probably also informs the culture warriors.
But is it really so amazing, Kim? You seem to be saying that you’re a bit shocked that people are not willing to completely change their consciousness. To really apologize for the historical crimes associated with the colonisation of Australia, would be a complete break from other more fundamental cultural behaviors like competition for wages, business takeovers, to some extent the whole concept of ownership as it is in relation to use, wealth accrual (talk about the 1%!!), etc. etc.
I think the “Great Silence” is really a kind of melancholy, as people, who are saddened by their national history are also realistic enough to know, that it can’t be changed. And the world they live in cannot be changed by making an issue of it. It’s not about ‘us’ self-treating by saying to ‘them,’ “sorry!” It should be about actual local issues– how can underprivileged people (not just minority groups) be given the opportunity to contribute to their communities, etc.
What’s actually postmodern, is this focus on bumper sticker like issues, as if the priority of a political issue can somehow be weighed in the ability to package it in a 10 x 15cm rectangle. Concepts such as political tribalism etc. they are the intellectual barriers to real cultural development, in my opinion.
I had a look at the website because there’s a lot of numpty upthread. So I thought I’d see for myself.
Kim, this is going to be bloody controversial. The second document is long (>400 pages) and looks to be a work of substance. The first document sets out the principles – they don’t seem empty motherhood statements but are backed by the second document. And a program that is reflexive and able to measure itself.
This seems nothing less than an effort to bring the broader indigenous community into the body of learning and knowledge embedded in the tertiary sector. Given the culture warriors are trying to trash all knowledge that doesn’t fit into their narrow value sets, this effort is another threat. It will prevent, or at least delay, assimilation (and silencing). There will be no “us” in a safe, homogenized future, but more of this bloody celebration of the other.
After all, educating Aboriginal people means teaching them our stuff. It doesn’t go the other way. Faark! People might learn something they shouldn’t need to know.
Kim @ 31 – sorry!
Oh come on, Mercurius – you’re not seriously defending that sentence are you? If you can’t see what’s wrong with it then I’d suggest that Sam @9′s riposte to Robert applies to you – the fact you can’t see what’s wrong with it means that you need corrective instruction.
“knowledges” indeed – what’s wrong with “knowledge”?
And I missed one phrase – bring the broader indigenous community into the body of learning and knowledge embedded in the tertiary sector
…thereby enriching it.
In relation to what JohnD said above about cultural competency, I think that’s an opinion based on experience– I was talking to a Swiss guy who spent a few years living in St. Louis and we were comparing our experiences– and what’s amazing is when people who understand themselves to be well-educated and modern, self-reflecting, articulate etc. realise that they don’t understand each other and they really don’t know why. To some extent, the kind of treatment that a discussion about a minority group gets in a vocational type course at uni, (maybe 5-6hrs?) can really only consolidate this misconception.
Of course, that right wing groups are able to play the post modern game at least as well as so-called progressive political proponents is plain to see. Progressive politicians are not able to manipulate the big symbols in our culture, the way that conservatives are, because the big symbols are already so well anchored– take the Tea Party, for example. It’s relatively easy to animate disgruntled white Americans, who have grown up believing in the national myths of their national history. You can’t access that same tradition as easily to agitate for a change to global warming!
Good post Kim and some apposite comments especially faustnotes @16. Point well made. As for more culture wars I reckon bring ‘em on as the best way of shattering the silence. There are only two memorial sites to massacres in NSW and there is scope for many, many more. They should be everywhere as a constant reminder of who we are and where we have come from. Incorporating indigenous knowledges into tertiary education is long overdue as a form of recognition. Who knows if this keeps up one day we might even be able to even get over the notion that Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth were the first people to cross the Blue Mountains.
Well goodness, someone’s been passing around the grumpy pills.
@30 G-G, I don’t know to whom your disapprobation about the Silence about the Silence was directed, but as a languages teacher at a rural high school with lots of Aboriginal students, trying to start up an Indigenous languages program under the auspices of some very determined Elders, up against a seemingly bottomless well of indifference from the locals, I don’t need to be lectured by a nym on this great purple blog about The Silence. Trust me, I get it.
@36 — dd, as you are a derrida derider, it’s hardly surprising that you are riled by the notion of knowledges which challenge the one great hegemonic Knowledge to which you subscribe. That is your problem. However, anyone who has passed the first semester of an epistemology course should not be greatly troubled by the concept of knowledges. This sort of thing has only been a live topic for the last 2,500 years or so. Do try to keep up.
Mercurius 40, I hazard a guess that DD is not talking about epistemology; he is talking about English. The plural of knowledge is knowledge. (Don’t get me started on “behaviours”.)
Well said Joe. If we are talking about non-specific courses aimed at helping people deal with other cultures there are two groups of problems.
Firstly There are the problems associated with dealings with cultures that are clearly very foreign (such as the Anindilyakwa of Groote Eylandt). What we learned from the Anindilyakwa was just how different cultures can be and that many of our assumptions about how things are just ain’t necessarily so. (The experience also gave us a much better understanding of what we are and what is important.)
I don’t think we should use Aborigines as our example of the very foreign. The historical baggage and sensitivities are are going to confuse the messages.
Secondly, there are problems dealing with cultures that are subtly different from ours (such as the white culture(s) of the US.) Subtle things like different sense of humor, different attitudes to authority, titles etc. can have important effects on workplace relations.
Andrew Norton has never struck me as a ‘culture warrior’. His first objection sounds very reasonable to me: “The ‘all’ in recommendation 1 is a step too far. There are no Indigenous ‘knowledges and perspectives’ on much of what is taught in universities, if by that we mean their traditional knowledge.”
If a graduate is going to work with indigenous people who have trouble communicating with non-indigenous people (the only indigenous person I’ve worked with had no problem) why not let them do a course then, rather than trying to teach something to every first year?
The Indigenous Cultural Competency Project says:
I would agree that most graduates will face situations where a level of intercultural competence is desirable. Given the wide variety of cultures these graduates might have to deal with the most important message to take away from school or university is that you need to do your homework before blundering in. For business’s the message is: consider specific cultural competence training. (I have had it for both Aborigines and Japanese because I have been in jobs where these skills are desirable.)
On the other hand, very few graduates will ever be in situations where indigenous cultural competence is likely to be relevant. Even for those who will have extensive dealings with indigenous people it is questionable whether generalized University course are more appropriate than more specific training aimed at particular professions and particular groups of indigenous people.
By all means have a school of cultural competence to do research and train the people who will become professionals in this field. But something for all graduates……..
@41, yeah, Sam, I get that too. I teach ESL. In my field, we talk about Englishes.
In any case, if you’re right and DD’s objection was stylistic rather than epistemic, file it under the large and groaning file of “we don’t have to bother with Indigenous perspectives because something something I don’t like the way that sentence parses”.
Asserting power through linguistic privilege is an old move, and anyone who tries it these days can expect to be called on it.
There seem to be two themes running through this thread:
a) What to do about including Indigenous perspectives across all Faculty curricula (big, scary, unfamiliar territory and unlikely to reflect favourably upon us).
b) Somebody’s penmanship about said issue (small, safe, familiar territory about which we can happily quibble until the Australian Open broadcast starts).
That some have chosen to deflect to the latter at the expense of the former is commonplace, in the circumstances. This habit, I think, forms part of the Silence that G-G alluded to above.
I think there is another theme, Mercurius, which is doubt about the existence of discrete forms of knowledge specific to indigenous Australians or other First Nation peoples. I suspect that the logic of that doubt derives from a widespread apprehension that there is no longer a significant body of anthropologically ‘pure’ indigenous knowledge, ie, of pre-invasion knowledge.
However, on the basis that indigeneity is a living experience all Aboriginal experiences of persecution, dispossession and the conditions of existence of a group of people facing an ongoing genocide would go towards indigenous knowledges. The different ways that the coppers murder Aboriginal people with impunity in different states go to multiple forms of knowledge (therefore knowledges). A beginning exercise for tertiary students might be to compare and contrast the deaths of TJ Hickey (Redfern, NSW) with Mulrunji (Palm Island, Qld).
Sounds to me like something that should be covered in late-Primary/Secondary (Gondwanaland and Australian history from Aboriginal POV) or on the other hand as post-graduate, if someone is choosing to work in said areas.
“knowledge and skills necessary to interact in a culturally competent way with Indigenous communities”. Knowledge and skills- this is VET-speak and relates to training in specific skill sets.
Perhaps another indication of universities moving into the TAFE arena.
except Charlie, that as Roger Jones said earlier it’s about more than how we can interact without offending, it’s also about what we can learn from their culture. The first is a little patronising, this is how you need to tadjust to these people’s foibles, the second is empowering and a real challenge to ‘the silence’. One is accomodation, the other respect.
Coming back to this a little late, I’m reminded of a way in which I think “Indigenous perspectives” would possibly help scientists, which is in understanding weather and climate in Australia.
Currently most of us – including, I bet, a lot of climate and atmospheric scientists – conceive of Australia’s weather patterns in terms of an anglocentric spring/summer/autumn/winter model. But I don’t think that’s how weather works in Australia. Perhaps if climate scientists and geographers had been exposed to some indigenous-specific cultural training and awareness in first year it might occur to them, when researching and reporting on weather in Australia, to try a little harder to break the anglocentric model.
I guess some have, but in general Australia’s weather is spoken about in terms of the four seasons. Since I’ve lived in Japan – which really does have 4 seasons, and an additional two subseasons – I’m really aware of how woefully inadequate the model is for Australia. I think the best way to get that data out for Australia would be to ask some of the people whose lore is built around a proper understanding of this stuff.
That’s just one example. I bet lots of other areas of science could benefit in little ways from this sort of “why not ask the locals” mentality. And it might help scientists to understand where the science stops and the culture starts (an attitude that even the best-meaning of scientists tend to be terrible at comprehending).
“a) What to do about including Indigenous perspectives across all Faculty curricula (big, scary, unfamiliar territory and unlikely to reflect favourably upon us).”
Alternatively, you could view it as what would help Indigenous people or the relationship between Indigenous people and other groups the most. In this case, as someone that works in a place that trains more clinical/counselling psychologists than anywhere else in Australia, I can’t help but think that training 20 Indigenous people in these areas would probably be more helpful than forcing 20,000 people to do some subject that they don’t care about (that of course is an empirical question, and we’ll never know the answer, but I’m sure you get the drift). Of course, the number we have trained at least since I’ve worked at my current place is zero (although one person worked in that community). So perhaps this would be a better starting point for the government (I’m sure they could add some other medical/allied health workers in also).
Excellent idea, faustusnotes. They count 6 seasons in the Arnhem/Kakadu areas, as I discovered when I visited there as a teen. It stuck in my mind so much, that many years later I tried to apply the same model when living in Sài Gòn. The city’s at roughly the same latitute, but reversed, and has the same tropical wet-and-dry cycle. It’s not a perfect fit, but “Rarranhdharr” (the very, very hot yet dry period before the storms) works in both places. The only difference is that it’s April and May in the city, but September and October down under.
To my mind there’s two orthogonal questions: what direct relevance does the topic have to a given course. And is it a good idea for educated people to have a little formal education in this area?
I’m struggling to see how “indigenous knowledges and perspectives” have anything to add to a software engineering curriculum.
It is directly relevant. A lot of software deals with money, and in Australia money flow is affected by race. In software terms, often it’s either: show that your money flow is not racially determined; or show that your customers are ATSI and we will fund you accordingly. One prevents loss of money (fines, lawsuits), one provides supply of money (subsidies).
I write practice management software for general practitioners (GPs). As part of the National eHealth Initiative the relevant body (NEHTA) broadened their classification of race from “is aboriginal or torres strait islander” in Medicare to none, one, or both of those (also a range of “not known” answers). If we, the software people, do not track this our customers will not get paid the extra for dealing with ATSI patients. They will be grumpy.
Knowing why that tracking is important saves a lot of time (we have spent ~10 hours x 4 people discussing whether “male, female, indeterminate, other” is a complete set of gender labels). Thinking that race might be useful to know be can be very helpful (epidemiologists often want to know it, so we collect it even when we don’t have to). Understanding the background can be helpful at a whole lot of levels, right down to hopefully reducing the incidence of racist bigotry via arguments from authority.
Which leads to the more general question of whether some knowlege of this is useful for everyone. I think so, and especially for the more privileged people who often have little to no (knowing) contact with ATSI people.
Firstly, by changing the climate. Know *why* you shouldn’t be a racist crotchwad is half the battle to get people to stop acting like racist crotchwads. Which helps any ATSI people who are exposed to those former crotchwads (as well as anyone else who doesn’t like racist crotchwaddery. That seems trivial, but I’m bothered by it so it’s important to me).
Secondly, by demonstrating that ATSI issues are important. Important enough to be given time in all courses. People don’t have to agree with the importance for the importance to be demonstrated this way. Cue culture warriors.
Thirdly, to encourage ATSI people. We are trying. Concrete steps. Like this. First, we decided you could vote. Own property. Be citizens. Marry. Use the legal system (one day, perhaps, even, equal rights thereunder). And so on. Handfuls of sand. Slow progress, but progress.
Faustusnotes,
as someone who dabbles in the atmosphere (but don’t we all?), that’s a project that people round the country are working on. The Gould League in Victoria were working on bringing into Primary School. I like the combination of weather and animal-plant interactions to mark the seasons (6-8). Golden wattle season comes four weeks earlier than it used to.
Even more relevant is how do we respond to environmental change? Here, very different epistemologies of knowledge are at work. Also the cultural contexts within which that knowledge is applied can be fundamentally different.
This is an over simplification: The western individual tends to reference themselves to the environment – that is, they perceive the environment with respect to where they are situated (both literally and metaphorically). The indigenous perspective places the person within their environment – they perceive the environment with themselves in it. I have heard the view put that in some cultural contexts indigenous persons cannot abstract themselves out of the environment as we do (this from an indigenous academic). I don’t know how true that is. In a dynamic cultural context, this will all be pretty fluid, in any case.
When it comes to say, adapting to climate change, if it is known that change will occur (overlooking where that information comes from), one view will modify the environment to continue a desired set of activities. The other will “listen” to the land, and work out how they can change themselves or their activities so that the environment they value can continue to “live”. Taken to its full extent, the environment has to live for the individual to live. If we see that adaptation is essentially creative, rather than prescriptive, then the cultural context of listening and talking is really important. Adaptation taken from these two viewpoints is very different – I think understanding these differences is really important.
aargh! wrote it the wrong way round. The individualist tends to reference the environment to themselves… (and modify it, if something needs to be “fixed”)
When I was at university in NZ studying engineering we had a compulsory 2 hour lecture from a bunch of Maori academics. It was a once-over-lightly introduction to Maori politics. Not “how Maori affect/are affected by engineers”, but basic Maori culture and politics as practiced in the more progressive parts of NZ. It pissed off a lot of the white racists in the class, and went over the heads (under the feet?) of others to whom it was all just obvious stuff. Stuff like “Maori signage is important, use it when you can and ideally get it right but it’s better to use it and be almost right than pretend it doesn’t matter”[1].
Just being forced to attend pissed some of the people off a lot. But again, saying “be a racist all you want, but if you want to pass you will attend this and act polite and attentive” is an important lesson to teach privileged white kids. Shoe on the other foot sort of thing.
Adding something like that to all Oz courses would be relatively easy and IMO beneficial. One point is that it is supposed to be tokenistic. The token is the point. Anything after that is a bonus. It’s like singing the national anthem before playing sport: you’re making a point about what’s important and who has power.
That lecture was more of a learning experience than I expected. I knew one of the presenters and none of the content was new. But I learned a lot from the reactions of my classmates. I felt I had to step up and lead a more positive direction of questioning, shall we say. One lesson was that privilege can be used to help undo privilege.
[1] Sometimes intent matters. Signage is one of those times.
Right behind Kim on this. Eurocentric old school racism at its most decrepit and senile and once again some thing borrowed from Tea Party political theology by local ideas and ethics-free drones.. Who has their ticket for the Dark Ages revisit already booked?
My sackcloth and ashes are already in the suitcase, and am inviting Pavlov’s Cat along, to help test the duck-dunking apparatus
“Adding something like that to all Oz courses would be relatively easy and IMO beneficial.”
There’s any number of things you could add to Oz courses if you wanted that would be relatively easy and beneficial in some way or another. But if you let everyone think of things, there would be no more space for actually teaching what the course is about. You can also think of the flip side. Let’s say we got one of those weird religious conservatives in the US as our leader who wanted to add a few hours to the curriculum. I wonder what they would add? This is why you should leave it up to universities to decide what to stick in their courses and not have blanket rules that try and appease one group, unless there really is a very strong compelling reason. If you’re worried about particular groups, there are certainly better ways to go than plugging something into a university course.
Conrad:
First sentence of OP:
File @58 under “didn’t read OP or thread before commenting”.
This proposal is a highly politicised denial of choice.
I studied aboriginal anthropology as an unrelated subject when I was studying biological sciences in the 70′s, but that was out of personal interest – intellectual curiosity and a desire to broaden my understanding. However, whether this topic is included in any course of study is a matter for the individual course designers, and the students who choose units.
Anything else is a politicised attack on the academic freedom which I would have hoped any institution would defend to the last research assistant.
Regardless of how interesting or important the topic may be, this is an appalling proposal, as would be any mandatory form of political indoctrination. Whether you agree with the politics involved or not.
I have no problems with the concept of a cultural studies component but I do worry about who will teach it and their credentials. There is plenty of room for dispute on this score and it has the potential for providing ammunition to critics. Accreditation for cultural studies is a bit of a minefield in my view, less serious but much like the disputation that occurs all too often on heritage assessment of development sites. eg Burrup Peninsula WA or nuclear waste storage near Katherine NT.
“The peak body representing Australian Universities, Universities Australia, has adopted The National Best Practice Framework for Indigenous Cultural Competency in Australian Universities”
Maybe you’re unaware of this, but there’s a vast difference between the peak body which produces recommendations and what individual universities do.
Actually at the risk of offending I really dont think indigenous knowledge should form part of a software engineering course (or an electrical engineering course) for that matter. Lets just keep to the content. Its all very nice that unis want to embed this feel good approach to understanding indigenous cultures in others but as I see it – let the unis put their money where their mouth is and actually create more funded places for the idigenous so that the indigenous actually get more chances to be in those classrooms where they are teaching indigenous knowledge.
Talk is so cheap and modern unis which seem to be constantly inventing news ways to scrabble around for every last cent from students, seem to specialise in hypocritical talk.
Im not complaining at all about people having a greater understanding of indigenous culture. I am however complaining about unis implementing the so called understanding in courses without actually demonstrating much understanding themslves.
Kim: You started with:
I would label none of the commentary above as right wing or anti Aborigine. Yet reading it through there is an enormous variation what we each think studies aimed at developing “indigenous cultural competency” should be all about. Looks like there would be some serious controversiality would have to be worked through before the key objectives of the project could be acheived.
“The peak body representing Australian Universities, Universities Australia, has adopted The National Best Practice Framework for Indigenous Cultural Competency in Australian Universities”
So what?
I would expect the institutions to be academically independent regardless, and the departments, and the course designers to boot.
This proposal is no more appropriate than incorporating Marxism, Christianity or any other extraneous topic into all courses.
In fact, I am disgusted that the peak body should think this is an appropriate proposal, or even that their time should be spent considering it.
@61-66
Good lord this is a depressing thread now.
Chris Harper sees this development as
because, because students should be allowed which units to study and they shouldn’t have to be forced to study anything they decide isn’t important. Or nice. Like blackfellas. Seen it before mate in my own students. Try enrolling in a bible college down in the shire – you’ll be able to defend your freedoms better down there.
Thank goodness we have brave bloggers and journalists who are willing to take on the invidious and menacing Aboriginal Industry and its attempts to subvert our education system. The idea that there exists separate, racialised “knowledges” and that these are somehow equal is inherently racist.
My campus liberal club is already considering a “say no to racism” campaign in light of these recommendations.
I can only see benefits for modern humans, at uni or anywhere, coming to understand how varied and insightful supposedly primitive people or cultures are or were.
The fact is that many human groups with radically different understandings of the world and cultural norms actually managed to survive for tens of thousands of years. With a mostly intact environment which provided all the resources necessary for their survival.
If they were as incompetent as most contemporary subtext suggests, none of us would ever have made it to here.
I think Wade Davis, a recent visitor to these shores, elucidates some of the issues around the modern world and indigenous world views.
I agree with him there’s substance of value for the material (including science) and the psyche in indigenous and traditional knowledges. Not least a deeper and broader understanding of what it is to be a human being on planet earth.
Wayfinders – Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World
http://bit.ly/z3Cdm7
What this thread became, right from the start, is a discussion about the incorporation of Indigenous perspectives into university curricula and what form it could take, and whether the wording of current proposals bodes well or ill.
Kim can shut it down if she wants, or return to asking that we all stay germane to the OP’s topic of certain self-fulfilling prophecies from right-leaning culture warriors. Frankly I find discussing the underlying subject matter more interesting, and it’s very clear that others do too. In the hope that I won’t annoy anyone then…
IMO there are many areas where we could enrich the education of individuals AND improve cultural relations within Australian life by moving in this direction. Some of which could be approached in a blanket way for all students, some course-by-course and particular to the subject matter.
For the one-size-fits-all stuff, currently all that the forgetters and silencers need contend with (and boy do they bitch and moan) is the occasional welcome to country. So Moz’s point about tokenism for its own sake stands up to scrutiny. Why not make it compulsory to sit through a proper class, and even *gasp* demonstrate in an exam that you’ve absorbed what you’ve been exposed to? It’ll flush out the fuckwads, if nothing else.
For the course-specific stuff, there are some areas where it will be useful, and some where it won’t. Like any set of “knowledges and perspectives”, Indigenous ones can’t claim some universal applicability. Anyone wishing to argue otherwise may have at it, but they will need to actually make an argument, not just moan about hegemony.
Chris Harper at 61:
Chris, when I studied physics at the University of Adelaide I had basically no choice of course until third year. I had to study Physics 1, Chemistry 1, Mathematics 1, Mathematical Applications 1 and Stats 1. That’s an entire course load. I dumped Chem 1 for English 1 and my decision was highly unusual. In second year I had to do all the second year applied maths, a lot of the pure maths and all the maths physics subjects, as well as the physics lab and the basic physics courses. I overloaded on mandatory subjects to about 120% of the course load. Third year, I had some choice about pure/applied maths subjects but I also had to take a f**Kton of courses that it was very clear I had no choice about. In Honours I was studying f**king Lie Algebras, for christ sake. My only choice was whether to do mathematical or experimental physics overloads.
Curriculum designers can be very very nasty about course choices, and students in undergrad who want to learn anything useful (like, you know, cosmology) get very little choice about the subjects they take. So I have very little sympathy for the academic freedom argument as it extends to undergrads. Anyone in physics, engineering or medicine had basically zero academic freedom, and if they were told “you have to study art theory so you can understand the symmetry of the universe” they just do it, and do it well.
I also had a sad about comments 61 to 66. I was going to write a comment, but it got so long it turned out to be a post on my rarely updated blog. Hope it is of use.
http://www.pkmurphy.com.au/blog/entry/2012/1/18/cultural-incompetency-and-indigenous-education/
Maybe you should learn the difference between curriculum (to which this proposal pertains) and course design, if you want to keep defending academic freedom today.
Riiiiight. Because, as we all know, being Indigenous is a political ideology, or a religion…and there is nothing about Australia or the experience of going to university in Australian which makes Indigenous culture less “extraneous” than some imported political and religious beliefs from Europe….
…and because, in Australia, in Australian universities, Indigenous cultures and perspectives are extraneous to the experience of becoming a graduate.
Yes, I see where you’re coming from. I see exactly where you are coming from. 1950, or thereabouts.
This is Australia. These universities are built on Aboriginal land (always was, always will be). Indigenous perspectives, experiences, culture and knowledges should have been built into the sandstone from day one.
What is proposed here is a necessary and long-overdue piece of retrofitting, like when they added women’s toilets to the Professors’ Lounge, or access ramps for students who use wheelchairs (…but why are we paying to build ramps when they’re only 0.1% of the students!? DUH, they are 0.1% of the students because there are no ramps…)
@61-66 reek of white privilege. Of course (they say) Indigenous perspectives and cultures are welcome and valued and included…as long as no whitefella, anywhere, has any objections. There’s a reason why the cliche ‘white man speak with forked tongue’ is a cliche, you know.
Essentially, whitefella is happy for blackfella to sit at the table (hey, we’re reasonable!), as long as whitefella retains the prerogative to say what, when, how, where and for how long blackfella sits. In whitefella culture, that is what “fair” and “equal” mean.
And it’s marvellous for blackfella to have their own building, and their own courses and their own department, as long as it is separate and equal, we’re all good. Just don’t come anywhere near our whitefella science buildings, blackfella, you got your own separate building out the back…we built it for you…why aren’t you grateful!?
I mentioned this to a student from Papua New Guinea doing a B.Ed. with the intention of returning to PNG to teach. He assumed this would be an elective !
faustusnotes @ 71
Yes, I am aware that some courses, and some institutions, allow more latitude for undergraduates reading alternative topics than do others, it was partly the luck of the draw that I was able to indulge my interest in studying Australian aboriginal culture and archaeology as part of my biology studies.
Mercurius @ 73 & 74
That is the basis of your argument is it? That I might support and advocate academic independence and academic freedom as vital principles that need defending, regardless of topic, is not to be considered. The only possible explanation of my position is that I actually and truly believe in some sort of separatism and white supremacy, right?
So your position is, to misquote Voltaire’s biographer, “I disagree with what you say, therefore you must be a racist”, right?
Instead of attacking my position on the basis of invented opinions I don’t hold, might I suggest you address the arguments I actually make?
As to the knowledge itself, while it certainly, in my opinion, helped make me a more rounded individual and allowed for more informed workplace discussions, it added nothing to my abilities in my career as a software, systems and data communications engineer.
Chris Harper@76: I think it’s more like “you’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts”. Academic freedom doesn’t mean that the people involved are free to do whatever they want, that’s a perogative reserved for those who have their own private universities (and often they need to own the accrediting body as well).
Learn English just so you can enrol, do maths courses because some idiot lecturer thinks they’re important prerequisites, turn up to class when the lecture is on rather than at a time of your choosing, those are a bunch of rididulous impositions on the academic freedom of the student!
And forcing lecturers to speak English when their preferred language is Spanish (or FORTRAN). Who are these idiots!? How dare they stop us from breaking the lecture for prayers at 12pm? And why can’t I stop women enrolling in my courses? Next you’ll be saying I can’t penalise darkies for talking back!
Moz @ 77
Reductio ad absurdum. huh?
Yeah, that works. Killer argument that. I concede completely.
BTW, are you arguing that lecturers shouldn’t be allowed to lecture in Spanish? Or break for prayers? That doesn’t sound very tolerant.
As for turning up when you like, I knew people who tried that. Didn’t help that the lecture wasn’t on, but I guess they showed willing. Pity they couldn’t pass the exams – didn’t have the knowledge you see.
As to FORTRAN, bit hard to discuss cultural subtleties using it, but I guess you are welcome to try.
If you want to be ridiculous I’m happy to get down there with you.
Chris: Alright, I’ll try again –
You assert that this proposal is “a highly politicised denial of choice” and an attack on academic freedom, to whit.
Really? Academic freedom has stood up to decades if not centuries of attack from the Church, from corporatism, from capitalism, from neoliberalism, yet it crumples at the mere mention of ‘Indigenous knowledges’?
You doth protest too much.
Also, I see what you did there. It’s called deflection. We don’t have to include Indigenous perspectives and knowledes in the curriculum because…(cue Braveheart) they will never take our FREEDOMMMMM!!
Your spirited defence of academic freedom languishes because you are yet to demonstrate any understanding of what it is you are defending. You haven’t even distinguished between curriculum-level (to which this proposal pertains) and course-design level. Your claim to be a stout heart defending academic freedom would carry greater credibility if you could demonstrate that you’d know an academic freedom if it ran over you.
There is nothing prescriptive about this proposal. No one’s “choice” has been “denied”…and your framing of this issue in terms of ‘choice’ is also an assertion of the privilege in which you are steeped.
Since you consider it inappropriate to include Indigenous perspectives and knowledges in the Faculty curricula of universities in AUSTRALIA, where, pray, do you think is a more appropriate place?? It’s a case of ‘if not here, where?’
You have labled ‘Indigenous’ as “extraneous” content…in the context of Australia, that is not even wrong. Do you even know what the word ‘Indigenous’ means?? It is, ontologically impossible for the Indigenous to be “extraneous” to Australian experience.
This is not even wrong. Stop shadow-boxing.
It’s not a case of “I disagree with what you say,” — It’s a case of “what you say is, intentionally or not, perpetuating the silencing of Indigenous perspectives.”
And I didn’t accuse you of racism (funny that you took it that way, however), mostly because I don’t give a shit whether you are racist or not. This is not about you.
Please google ‘white privilege’ and try to understand before commenting again.
Since I’m even more reasonable than Andrew Bolt, I won’t even ask you to “name ten” research programs that have been suppressed/curtailed/chilled by this ‘attack on academic freedom’.
One will do.
We are harangued by people who think it is essential that their particular obsession should be included in every one’s education. Geographers who think it is essential we understand the effect of glaciers on land forms, Shakespeare tragics who think Shakespeare should be a major strand of all education, basic statistical concepts etc. etc. The problem is if we try and placate all these people we will end up with a shallow education in trivial pursuit that fails to teach us how to handle difficult concepts in depth.
What often happens is that someone like the Shakespeare obsessive gets a run in the papers and we all talk about how this is really really serious and what compromise we should reach. If this reminds someone of what is going on here about indigenous cultural competency so be it.
I have no problem with a limited amount of time being spent on general education at various stages in education. I have no problem either with the idea that part of Australian education should include Aboriginal history and culture as long as it is done properly. But nothing said here convinces me that indigenous cultural competency should have the central role proposed by the key elements in the “National Best Practice Framework for Indigenous Cultural Competency in Australian Universities.”
Cultural competency is important for a multi-cultural society like Australia and the world we live in. So let us ask at what stages in our education system this is taught, before discussing to what extent examples from our indigenous cultures will be used in this course.
Chris Harper there is a long tradition in Australian culture of ‘studying’ Aboriginal people and culture. I suspect that your ‘study’, through the lens of biology, may have positioned you as an objective observer and them as a type of megafauna. The initiative under discussion here allows for equivalence between western and indigenous knowledge and so far your only response is astonishment that something like talking Kangaroos are going to be recognised by the academy. It’s funny if a little pathetic.
akn: You are right. Looking at Aboriginal culture and stories through a modern Western lens often misses the point and promotes disrespect. Cultural competency can help both sides overcome these problems because it should deal with the problems that cultural practices were developed to solve. With this understanding the talking kangaroo stories can be understood as a teaching tool rather than a report on exotic biology.
akn: ow, the referendum reference was a bit nasty.
I posted this over at Down and Out of Sài Gòn’s blog, but I think it bears repeating:
The course can be as short as two hours. Or it could be one of those single-semester helper courses where you can choose to take the assessment at the start and skip it if you pass. It doesn’t have to be a huge impost on the students.
The impost on whoever teaches the course is another matter. The whole process of cirriculum development, course materials, assessment and staffing is going to be tricky. Mostly because there are not all that many indigenous staff at universities, and it’s unreasonable to ask (say) a Lecturer in Modern Art to jump in and teach Indigenous Culture just because of their race. So you end up dumping the whole load onto one or two staff in some indig-related department. Hence, one two hour lecture per student.
Where I was we actually had the lectures given by one lecturer from the Maori Studies Dept, assisted by two people from the Maori Students Association. Those three spent most of the first term just giving this lecture. Every semester. That’s all they had time for. 15000 EFTS meant there were always new students who hadn’t attended, so there was always need.
John D @81, indigenous culture is part of Australian culture and identity (though some might say Australian white culture doesn’t exist). It isn’t something to do a study tour on for interested hobbyists, it’s something that needs to be integrated into the national identity as a valued contribution, not as tokenistic decoration or tolerant politeness. It’s not extraneous or gratuitous, it is part of who we are. Despite some unfortunate history there is goodwill there but it depends on respect.
Hmm I then read @83 and kind of agree. But the ‘modern’ western lens we have needs to be able to be supplemented and/or refocused as we move beyond the patronising attitudes of the past.
I would imagine that study of a particular human culture would be done in the faculty where all the other human cultures are studied; where the experts in studying human culture can be found. I would imagine that a an level of appreciation for indigenous perspectives and knowledges that is expected of the average person to be covered as part of the primary/high school curriculum; along side all the other things we expect the average person to have an appreciation for are taught.
In contrast, in faculties of science(s) I would expect to find scientific perspectives and knowledge being studied. I would find claims that indigenous perspectives and knowledge ought to be embedded in the science faculty to have the same merit as the arguments supporting teaching intelligent design as part of science.
akn @ 82
Yeah, you got it. Of course any course of ‘study’ you are unfamiliar with needs ‘scare quotes’, just to show it can’t possibly be as real as one you are familiar with.
ANU really has a reputation for making students ‘study’ rather than really study stuff, doesn’t it?
I am impressed tho, you know nothing about the courses I did, or the emphasis on the topics, but you got the analysis spot on. Congratulations.
Me, I prefer to wait until I am informed before I start passing opinions, and yeah, you’re right, that truly is pathetic. I’m sure your way is better.
As to talking kangaroos? I chat with them on a daily basis, don’t you?
Now, want to talk sociably without the sarcasm? I find conversations where people simple try and one up one another to be a waste of time. I prefer real attempts at information exchange.
Mercurius @ 79
I didn’t say academic freedom was crumpling, but I do argue that this is an attack on it. Universities are traditionally independent bodies which set their own policies and courses. For an outside, or even superior, body to assert what course content should be is an attack on that independence.
A University, in its turn, may reasonably specify that a specific course of study – Marxist theory, Christian theology, Indigenous studies – should be completed before a degree may be conferred, but the university nonetheless may not dictate to individual departments the content of the courses they offer.
To require that a semester unit of Indigenous studies should be passed is within the right of the University. For the University to demand of the Computer Studies department that software engineering be taught from an indigenous perspective is not. That is an attack on academic freedom no less than a superior body making the demand of the University. I will further say that any such demand is nonsensical because in my experience a knowledge of indigenous culture and archaeology has nothing to contribute to software engineering.
The very demand is a political interference which has no place in an academic institution.
What does concern me is the eagerness I see here to require other people to study a preferred political topic. If you, or anyone else, wished to study indigenous culture then my position would be good for you – although I suspect you wouldn’t care about my attitude. However, if you haven’t already, what would this do to your moral position in demanding that everyone else do so?
How would you feel about everyone, Muslims, Jews and Buddhists included, being required to study Christianity? As part of their software engineering training? Would you be as horrified as I would be? I suspect yes, but there are people who would argue that you can’t understand western civilisation without an understanding of Christianity, and that is at least a kissing cousin of your own arguments.
You said : “And I didn’t accuse you of racism”
Try reading @74 again. You didn’t use the word, but the allegations you made there make your intentions clear. Any claim that you weren’t labeling me a racist is fantasy. As I said, your position is “I disagree with what you say, therefore you must be a racist.”
If you want to deny that, that is up to you. I have no interest in any such denial.
An apology I will accept, a denial I will ignore.
Chris Harper – if my tone towards your attitudes seems less than amiable or polite it is because I reckon someone of your age and education ought to be on side with the idea of recognising Aboriginal knowledges as valid forms of knowledge suitable for inclusion in tertiary courses.
Whatever those knowledges may be my support for the idea derives from the potential for furthering reconciliation. This means that non-Aboriginal Australia needs to come to terms with Aboriginal Australia. My experience is that non-Aboriginal Australia has not done so nearly as fully as is necessary to genuine understanding and reconciliation. This failure stems from the ‘big silence’ and the constant backgrounding of Aboriginal culture and concerns. Including Aboriginal knowledges is a step to addressing this.
And what Paul of Albury said.
“For the University to demand of the Computer Studies department that software engineering be taught from an indigenous perspective is not.”
I don’t see the problem with what individual universities do. With things like the Melbourne Model, for example, you are obliged to take stuff that you might not care about too much and are happy to sleep through, so if they want to enforce something on their students, it’s up to them (and it’s not like their students couldn’t just move to Monash if they didn’t like the MM, for example — they already are!). This idea of having to do diverse stuff is quite common in the US (although I know of no university where you have to do compulsary “Indigienous Americans” studies in the US). Alternatively, many universities have degrees that are very targeted at particular areas, so it’s hard to see why they would do anything.
It worries me more than people take these sorts of things from Universities Australia seriously. I’m sure they’d saying almost anything if they thought it would help them get more money from the government, and historically, universities in Aus have pretty much taken whatever the government has dished up without too many complaints.
Chris Harper:
From the first sentence of the OP:
We could play this game all week, couldn’t we?
Paul: The reality is that very few Australians actually know anyone of Aboriginal descent let alone anyone whose life is strongly influenced by traditional culture. I also see any real evidence (apart from art) that indigenous culture has had much to do with the development of current Australian culture and identity.
My family really values the years we spent trying to know the Anindilyakwa. We liked the people, were fascinated by the culture and language and felt that the difference helped us look at our own culture with fresh eyes. Perhaps a deeper understanding of Aboriginal culture would help our mainstream culture look at things with a fresh eye and make changes for the better. But, as you say, that requires much more than a simple add on to all university courses.
@88, Dude, FFS, get over yourself. There is a very good reason why I didn’t use the word “racist” @74 and it’s because I was outlining the gaping contradiction in your position (‘Indigenous’ cannot be ‘extraneous’, by definition). If I was going to accuse you of being racist I would’ve called you a #$%#$%@#%@ racist. Because I am capable of intergalactic-scale invective when I put my mind to it, and if I think I’m dealing with a racist, I don’t leave any room for doubt in the matter. No close reading, or forensic parsing, is required.
Still, since you are a man of your word, I expect you to be true to your word and IGNORE this denial that I accused you of racism. You promised you would ignore it, so you’d better damn well ignore it.
Whether or not you are a racist has no bearing whatsoever on the fact that your basic position is nonsense. You think ‘Indigenous’ is ‘extraneous’ to going to university in AUSTRALIA. This is ontologically impossible. You either misunderstand what ‘Indigenous’ means, or ‘extraneous’, or you don’t know which country you live in.
Either way, I don’t care. You have a problem with this proposal? Great, whatever — it’s YOUR problem.
Chris Harper, if Christianity is crucial to understanding western civilisation then it’s already in the curriculum. And I’d say thanks to the importance of Thomas Aquinas in early tertiary study it’s already there.
There seems to be a view that the ‘modern western lens’ (it is a good description) is rationalist, empiricist – it’s true facts you can perceive, not just fantasy. This is a comforting world view but I’d see it as basically a Victorian world view – 20th century science pretty much outgrew it.
Our perceptions are limited, we only observe what we look for. And our brains manipulate our observations into scenarios that seem be fit with what we believe we already know. So alternative perspectives can stimulate different hypotheses, observations and understandings.
Studies at university level demand that you build mental models of how things work. The perceived world is a simplistic view, modern science and technology have gone well beyond what can be seen. We know some of what was common sense understanding of reality in recent times is no longer as simple as we thought.
We build models, construct hypotheses, those of us who program implement our mental models, using text to create virtual systems that operate consistently (we hope) with tangible outcomes.
As a programmer if I need to refactor a system I need to take one mental model and remap it into another. Do you think exposure to a culture with a long oral history may be relevant to the construction and manipulation of complex mental models?
Do you really think you have nothing to learn from people who have different perspectives?
John D agree it will take more than changing some university courses to change culture but universities would definitely see themselves as intellectual and cultural leaders – if universities can’t open their minds what hope have the rest got
Say what?
Intelligent design is a completely different phenomena from “Indigenous perspectives”; it’s just creationism repackaged to get itself inside the school door, and is a clear and present danger to existing science curricula that use evolutionary models. It’s an enemy.
In contrast, “Indigenous knowledge” would be of immense use in some scientific disciplines. Imagine going on a field study in the Arnhem Land. Do you think the locals know more about the plants and animals than those city-slicker academics? Course they would. In other contexts, there may be little or no relevance – but how do you know before you try? I can’t see any threat between “science” and “Indigenous studies”.
Course, it would be wrong if they replaced the material in the entire Geology curriculum by Dreamtime myths about Altjira creating the earth and then retiring to the sky. But it’s not going to happen, is it? When it comes to that sort of fundamentalism, Westerners own it.
To back up 96, 97 – a couple of years ago at a conference in NZ, I heard a senior Maori doctor say the Maori welcome education and science for managing long term environmental change. Because they knew astronomy – if you didn’t you got lost – they knew ecology – if you didn’t you starved. The use of knowledge in a cultural context is part of Maori culture.
It’s the imperialist or colonialist package that science has been wrapped in, and often still is, that is objectionable. Applied science is always applied in some kind of cultural setting. Getting science into land rights and land management in a culturally appropriate and dynamic manner is a multi-generational project.
Intelligent design and indigenous knowledge systems have two totally different epistemologies.
I’m sure there is plenty of information within “Indigenous knowledge” that could be used as a focus or inspiration for scientific research. Just as there is for other cultures, e.g. traditional Chinese medicine, old wives tales, etc. However, until such things have been studied in a scientific context, they are not scientific knowledge and have no place in a science curriculum.
John D @92:
The issue of what constitutes *authentic* Aboriginal culture was always going to arise. It usually revolves around what is or isn’t ‘traditional’ culture. It also usually involves non-Aboriginal people defining what is authentic and ‘traditional’. This has to stop. The only people with a right to define Aboriginality are Aboriginals. Anyone else attempting to do so is playing out colonialism.
Besides which, on the basis that lived experience as an Aboriginal defines Aboriginality, what Aboriginals from one side of Australia to another on all compass points have in common is a shared history of more than 200 years of special treatment. So, for example, the experience of having children unlawfully removed by welfare agencies is more authentically defining of modern Aboriginality than any remnant of traditional culture. And it is a nationally defining experience for Aboriginal people.
RE the OP:
I think from the perspectives of those on the right, the “apply this to all curricula” approach was seen as a shot across the bow in the culture wars. I think it’s a bit much to point at those who say “don’t shoot across our bow, you’ll start a fight” as being responsible for starting any resultant battle.
akn @99: Your comments here underline my reasons for suggesting that using Australian indigenous people as the example for a course on cultural competency would be fraught because of the sensitivities that you have raised here. I would agree that labels such as “traditional” do become value loaded and ignore the fact that there are Aboriginal sub-cultures in between traditional and the broad culture that are just as valuable and have subtleties that it can be useful to understand.
I wouldn’t like to attend a course on Indigenous cultural competency where I would get into trouble for trying to distinguish the cultures I wa trying to become culturally competent in.
desipis: with all due respect, isn’t this a little contradictory?
Part of a science curriculum for post-graduates (or gifted undergraduates) could be studying Indigenous knowledge using the full scientific method at their disposal – like the methods they’ve developed for fire management in the savannas up North. But now you want to rule that out. Who gets the job then? Assistant Professors?
Down and Out of Sài Gòn:
At that point they’re doing research, which I said I had no problem with. However, the “all university curricula” phrase would include all undergraduate/coursework degrees.
No, I don’t. I don’t want to specifically exclude indigenous knowledge from the curriculum, I just don’t want to specifically include it either. The decision to include content in a science curriculum should be based on the scientific relevance of the content, not on its cultural origin. If there are “indigenous perspectives and knowledges” that have (potential) value to science then they should be promoted through scientific research that shows that (potential) value, not pushed through a political process.
@103 – a bit of a difference between it being a first year subject and a research topic for post grads though! Wouldn’t really expect first years to do that sort of thing and find anything new.
Well John D I dunno. I’d rather have it taught at tertiary level than not however difficult or flawed it may be. But contentiousness is in the nature of tertiary research and teaching. Why not broaden the terrain on which the culture wars have previously been fought by creating a new frontier in the tertiary institutions? There’s never anything to be gained by shying away from a fight like this.
Chris@103:
I guess I’m hardcore – let’s expose the kids to Indigenous influences even before they enter Uni. Make Tiwi and Pitjantjatjara languages electives you can teach in high school just like French and German. Yes: it’s going to be controversial, but if the Americans are getting into the action, why can’t we?
DaOoSG @ 106 – I agree that there should be study of Indigenous culture and history at school. And aboriginal languages should be available at schools – it’d be one of the best ways of ensuring that these languages do not die out. However, I don’t believe that is the context of this proposal.
To me its not even about whether or not such a course would be useful for the students, but if its of more use in this course (especially in first year) than the subject material that this course would displace. Is there a *net* gain? After all there’s a lot of things that could be added to any university course that would help the students be better people.
I know comp sci graduates from the US who had to study a foreign language as part of their course. Did in the end a basic knowledge about the Russian language help them more than another subject directly related to comp sci? I think the idea was that they’d be able to read Russian scientific papers rather than translations but I don’t know if there was really a net gain for them in the end.
I went to uni when i was 30 years old. Before that I was cynical and thought that it was a joke that indigenous australians argued about the extraction of uranium. The experience I had had with aboriginal people was confronting. It took the first year of an english lit course for me to wake up and see what had happened (It included a lot of indigenous writing). However, I don’t believe that people can learn about aboriginal dispossession unwillingly. To me, the question is, how do we open up people’s minds about this stuff? I currently work as a high school teacher and am keenly aware that you cant just change kid’s attitudes with a simplistic curriculum change.
English lit classes are definitely a good place for Indigenous perspectives! And for post-colonialism more generally.
I agree with the hobo from Vietnam, it would be great to have indigenous languages in school.
@106– down and out, Indigenous languages are already in NSW schools — lots of ‘em. The Indigenous languages on offer in any given school are often chosen based on the knowledge and availability of local Elders who can introduce and inform the course, and which historical languages were spoken in the area, although due to Europeans deliberately displacing and moving tribes around, many regions lost the connection to their languages, and you get languages turning up in areas where they weren’t traditionally spoken.
I studied German for 5 yrs at school but, like most of my contemporaries never reached a level where reading German direct would have been more effective than reading a translation. However, I value the time spent learning German because it taught me a lot about English, cultural differences and the relationship between language, culture and pre-occupations.
My wife and I also studied the local language for a while on Groote Eylandt. We realized that we were never going to get to a level where our skills matched the local’s skills in English. However, it was good politics and the language was far more suited for teaching about culture, grammar etc. because it was so different to English.
I would comment that, to obtain the real benefits much of the teaching should be done by people who can talk about grammar and the relationship between a language, culture and pre-occupations.
Science, as a method of understanding the world, I’m sure predates western society and the word itself…
Searching back for more data on the value of indigenous knowledge that relates to what we might now see as scientific understanding I found this.
Reiterating a few stories relating to geological and oceanic phenomena and events, passed down for centuries or millenia within traditional knowledge systems.
Volcanic Eruptions & Geomythology
This page also references how the stories of the Andaman islanders saved them during the 2004 tsunami. The land and the sea were always fighting, and the retreat of the sea was a sign that it would return with avengence, they had to get to high ground. Apparently only those previously converted to christianity stayed and died.
Evidently astronomy and geology, not to mention ecology and meteorology were integral areas of indigenous and traditional knowledge for every single human culture that ever managed to survive. Also material science and basic engineering as well as toxicology and pharmacology. Though they obvously didn’t identify or discuss those forms of knowledge in the way we do.
Everything we know is built on the basis of others starting a long long time ago anyway. None of us would be able to come to the understanding we have of the world now, nor the material resources and infrastructure, without many others before.
At a symposium at Alice a few years ago I met a computer programmer involved in the development of educational software with/for indigenous communties, some in the form of a game. For documenting traditional knowledge and passing it on to future generations. So in Australia even computer folks probably have reason to have indigenous cultural understanding.
Precisely Quoll. Toxicology and pharmacology in Australia remain a an intellectual wilderness for Western science and what better knowledge, in this case Aboriginal use-knoweldge, as a guide.