Elizabeth Mackinlay

Sing, Soothe and Sleep: A Lullaby Education Programme for First-Time Mothers.

This paper reports on an education programme conducted with first-time mothers. The study aimed to establish whether mothers found an education session on lullaby singing beneficial for them and their babies as well as reporting what lullabies were sung and why. Twenty first-time mothers were provided with examples of lullabies and asked to sing lullabies to their babies at bedtime at least four times per week over a six-week period. Data contained in interviews and in diaries kept by the mothers were used to evaluate the value of the education session, the range of lullabies sung and their frequency of use, and to gain insight into mothers’ thinking when choosing lullabies. Results indicate that mothers sing a broad range of lullabies utilising a repertoire of between five and seven lullabies. Reasons for selecting lullabies varied between the different mothers and for different lullabies but most frequently, selections were based on the perception that they were quietening, calming or relaxing for their babies. Selections were also based on whether mothers knew the lullabies and were confident to sing them. The education session was evaluated with mothers reporting on how singing lullabies facilitated a deeper understanding of their babies’ responses, and enhanced their own feelings associated with motherhood. Recommendations are made as to the type and context of future education sessions.

Moving and Dancing Towards Decolonisation in Education: An Example from an Indigenous Australian Performance Classroom

In this paper I explore the special type of thinking, moving and dancing place which is opened up for decolonisaton when students engage in an embodied pedagogical practice in Indigenous education. I examine what decolonisation means in this context by describing the ways in which the curriculum, the students and me, and more generally the discipline of ethnomusicology itself, undergo a process to question, critique, and move aside the pedagogical script of colonialism in order to allow Indigenous ways of understanding music and dance to be presented, privileged and empowered. Key questions are: What is the relationship between embodiment and disembodiment and decolonisation and colonisation? In what ways is embodiment more than, or other than, the presence of moving bodies? In what ways is performativity an aspect of power/knowledge/subject formations? How can it be theorised? What could the pedagogical scripts of decolonisation look like?

Unknown and Unknowing Possibilities Transformative Learning, Social Justice, and Decolonising Pedagogy in Indigenous Australian Studies

For tertiary educators in Indigenous Australian Studies, decolonising discourse in education has held much promise to make space for the diversity of Indigenous Australian peoples to be included, accessed, understood, discussed, and engaged with in meaningful ways. However, Tuck and Yang provide us with the stark reminder that decolonisation requires the return of Indigenous lands and does not equate to social justice. In this article, we take up Tuck and Yang’s concerns about decolonisation discourse into the terrain of transformative learning and pedagogical practice in Indigenous Australian Studies. We first position ourselves personally, professionally, and politically as non-Indigenous educators in the context of Indigenous Australian Studies in higher education and introduce the transformative learning environment of Political, Embodied, Active, and Reflective Learning (PEARL) in which we are currently involved. We then explore in more detail PEARL’s relationship to critical pedagogy, critical race theory, and decolonisation as praxis in the context of Indigenous Australian Studies. Ultimately, we enter into this discussion in a spirit of “unknowing” to question previously held assumptions about the transformative, socially just, and decolonizing potential of our educational praxis in Indigenous Australian Studies while at the same time exploring the possibilities, as Maxine Greene encourages, of decolonised vistas in this field as yet “unknown.”

Creating rainbows from words and transforming understandings: enhancing student learning through reflective writing in an Aboriginal music course

Reflective journal writing is acknowledged as a powerful method for promoting student learning in higher education contexts. Numerous scholars highlight the benefits of reflective writing and journaling for students and teachers in a wide range of teaching areas. There is however, little discussion of how reflective writing is used in teaching and learning in Indigenous Australian studies. This paper explores how reflective writing can help students think critically about the complexities of researching and writing about Indigenous Australian performance. We discuss ways of incorporating and enhancing reflection in teaching and learning Indigenous Australian studies and examine how the use of reflective writing in Indigenous Australian studies can engage rather than educate; democratise rather than dictate knowledge; critically question and reflect upon rather than control and censor what we can know; and actively transform instead of passively inform.

Historical and Dialectical Perspectives on the Teaching of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Musics in the Australian Education System

Indigenous studies (also referred to as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies) has a double identity in the Australian education system, consisting of the education of Indigenous students and education of all students about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and histories. Through explanations of the history of the inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander musics in Australian music education, this article critiques ways in which these musics have been positioned in relation to a number of agendas. These include definitions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander musics as types of Australian music, as ethnomusicological objects, as examples of postcolonial discourse, and as empowerment for Indigenous students. The site of discussion is the work of the Australian Society for Music Education, as representative of trends in Australian school-based music education, and the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music at the University of Adelaide, as an example of a tertiary music program for Indigenous students.

Performing race, culture, and gender in an Indigenous Australian women's music and dance classroom

One perpetual concern among Indigenous Australian peoples is authenticity of voice. Who has the right to speak for, and to make representations about, the knowledges and cultures of Indigenous Australian peoples? Whose voice is more authentic, and what happens to these ways of knowing when they make the journey into mainstream Western academic classrooms? In this paper, I examine these questions within the politics of “doing” Indigenous Australian studies by focusing on my own experiences as a lecturer in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland. My findings suggest that representation is a matter of problematizing positionality and, from a pedagogical standpoint, being aware of, and willing to address, the ways in which power, authority, and voice are performed and negotiated as teachers and learners of Indigenous Australian studies.

Disturbances and Dislocations: Understanding Teaching and Learning Experiences in Australian Aboriginal Music

One of the biggest debates in Australian Indigenous education today revolves around the many contested and competing ways of knowing by and about Indigenous cultures and the representation of Indigenous knowledges. Using Bakhtins theories of dialogue and voice, my concern in this paper is to explore the polyphonic nature of power relations, performance roles and pedagogical texts in the context of teaching and learning Indigenous Australian womens music and dance. In this discussion, I will focus on my experiences as a lecturer in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland and my involvement in this educational setting with contemporary Indigenous performer Samantha Chalmers.

Music for dreaming: Aboriginal lullabies in the Yanyuwa community at Borroloola, Northern Territory

The lullaby is a type of song sung the world over to calm a crying child and gently lull babies into the arms of sleep. Amongst the Yanyuwa Aboriginal community in the remote town of Borroloola in the Northern Territory of Australia, lullaby songs are broadly referred to by the generic term kurdakurdamanthawu and the content of lullabies is drawn from both restricted and unrestricted forms of Yanyuwa performance. As I have suggested elsewhere (Mackinlay 2000:73), the terms “restricted” and “unrestricted” “delineate who can access the knowledge and information contained within performance “. The term “restricted” refers to those performances which limit the participants and their access to the meaning of the ritual textual elements and associated information on the basis of gender, age and/or kinship affiliation. In contrast, the term “unrestricted” denotes performance that does not place limitations on who may participate and who may access the knowledge contained within the performance. In this article I...

Engaging with Theories of Dialogue and Voice: Using Bakhtin as a Framework to Understand Teaching and Learning Indigenous Australian Women's Performance

In this paper I explore the Indigenous Australian womens performance classroom (hereafter ANTH2120) as a dialectic and discursive space where the location of possibility is opened for female Indigenous performers to enter into a dialogue from and between both non-Indigenous and Indigenous voices. The work of Bakhtin on dialogue serves as a useful standpoint for understanding the multiple speaking positions and texts in the ANTH2120 context. Bakhtin emphasizes performance, history, actuality and the openness of dialogue to provide an important framework for analysing multiple speaking positions and ways of making meaning through dialogue between shifting and differing subjectivities. I begin by briefly critiquing Bakhtins “dialogic imagination” and consider the application and usefulness of concepts such as dialogism, heteroglossia and the utterance to understanding the ANTH2120 classroom as a polyphonic and discursive space. I then turn to an analysis of dialogue in the ANTH2120 classroom and primarily situate my gaze on an examination of the interactions that took place between the voices of myself as family/teacher/student and senior Yanyuwa women from the r e m o t e N o r t h e r n T e r r i t o r y A b o r i g i n a l c o m m u n i t y o f B o r r o l o o l a as family/performers/teachers. The 2000 and 2001 Yanyuwa womens performance workshops will be used as examples of the way power is constantly shifting in this dialogue to allow particular voices to speak with authority, and for others to remain silent as roles and relationships between myself and the Yanyuwa women change. Conclusions will be drawn regarding how my subject positions and white race privilege affect who speaks, who listens and on whose terms, and further, the efficacy of this pedagogical platform for opening up the location of possibility for Indigenous Australian women to play a powerful part in the construction of knowledges about womens performance traditions.

Singing maternity through autoethnography: making visible the musical world of myself as a mother

There is perhaps no image more maternal and musical than that of a young mother cradling a child to her breast as she softly sings a sweet lullaby. Yet the way that a mother experiences, relates to and renders meaningful the social and musical moment of singing to her children remains silent and hidden in popular and academic discourse. In this paper, I will explore how music becomes mothering; that is, the way that women sing maternity and use music to mother; what music brings to their thoughts, feelings and identities as mothers; and, what kinds of interactions and interrelationships are created with their children through music as play and performance of mothering. Through auto‐ethnographic processes of reflection and research about my own experiences as the mother of two sons, and engagement with a wide array of discourses about mothering; the voices and perspectives of women take centre stage in this paper. My main concern is to make visible the musical worlds of mothers and children and make known the power of maternal song in creating places of excitement, empowerment, love and peace in the home for mothers and children.