Brooke Collins-Gearing

Reflective Practice: Ancient Wisdom and Practice—Australian Indigenous Reflections in Teacher Education Through Shared Storying

The one thing that all Australians, or people living in Australia, have in common is that they walk in Aboriginal Countrys every day. Countrys that, when respected, seen and read appropriately, when listened to and heard, when felt, teach us about our interconnectedness to everything around us. In this chapter, where we craft and use a notation that is reflective of Australian Indigenous Knowings, we Story the power of reflective practice when engaging with how we live in Country. Reflection is an ancient wisdom inherent in Indigenous Knowings. Our reflective practice embraces our connections with the world, our ability to live as part of the world, rather than distinct from it. Our world and our world view privileges Indigenous Knowings showcased here through the construct of Lilyology. In this chapter we Story our shared experiences as Aboriginal practitioners, as Aboriginal academics engaging with pre-service teachers in Australia, in the hope that we can respond to the question “How can we speak to those non-Indigenous people who are only beginning to understand Australian Indigenous concepts of Country?

Re-reading Representations of Indigenality in Australian Children's Literature: A History

Australian childrens literature has a history of excluding Indigenous child readers and positioning non-Indigenous readers as the subject. Rather than portray such literature, particularly before the 1950s, as simply racist or stereotypical, I argue that it is important for teachers, of all students, to help readers understand how nationalist or white Australian myths were constructed on Indigenous land and knowledges.

The Rhetoric of Benevolence as an Impediment to the Protection of Indigenous Cultural Rights: A Study of Australian Literature and Law

An examination is undertaken of how the rhetoric of benevolence impedes concepts essential to property relationships acknowledged by the Australian common law tradition and thereby sunders attributes of ownership and personhood from Indigenous communities. It is argued that this rhetoric did not just perpetuate paternalism, a colonising strategy that subordinated Indigenous culture to non-Indigenous protectors but deflected debate from the harm caused by the distortion of Indigenous knowledge and appropriation of cultural rights.