Deirdre Howard-Wagner

Embedding aboriginal cultural knowledge in curriculum at university level through aboriginal community engagement

Purpose This chapter outlines the successful community engagement process used by the authors for the Kinship Online project in the context of Indigenous methodological, epistemological, and ethical considerations. It juxtaposes Indigenous and western ways of teaching and research, exploring in greater detail the differences between them. The following chapter builds on and extends Riley, Howard-Wagner, Mooney & Kutay (2013, in press) to delve deeply into the importance of embedding Aboriginal cultural knowledge in curriculum at the university level. Practical implications The chapter gives an account of an Office for Learning and Teaching (OLTC) grant to develop Indigenous Online

Governance of indigenous policy in the neo-liberal age: indigenous disadvantage and the intersecting of paternalism and neo-liberalism as a racial project

ABSTRACT Thinking about the governance of Indigenous poverty as an economic, social and racial project, the paper offers a way of understanding the dynamics of Indigenous policy formation in Australia in the neo-liberal age as what Howard Winant first coined a racial formation. In providing this analysis, this paper sits alongside a small, but growing body of work that reveals the racialized effects of governing through poverty in the neo-liberal age.

Teaching culture as social constructivism

Teaching complex learning domains such as cultural awareness relies on individual perspectives. In this paper we present the process and technology to develop an online system to share multiple experiences of Aboriginal Culture in NSW, Australia within a social-constructivist framework. The focus of the material is the Kinship system used for thousands of years in this region. This topic exemplifies the knowledge used to maintain societies and provides the setting for social conflict with the non-Aboriginal people who came here in recent history. We are using stories from the community to augment the learning material. Using innovative web services, teachers can select the stories that are relevant to their course, and link these within a range of scenarios being developed. The scenarios enable students to select the way they relate to the characters, listen to their stories, and become aware of their own role in the community.

Taking Justice to Aboriginal People: Everyday Access to Justice as a Promising Area of Indigenous Policy in Australia

As Australia moves into the twenty-first century, its policy towards its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples has focused on two primary areas: (1) making Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities safe as part of the Council of Australian Governments National Indigenous Reform Agreement (Closing the Gap); and (2) providing a fair, equitable, and accessible system of justice for Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander peoples.