Please join us for this hybrid seminar, in person or via zoom.
Zoom details https://anu.zoom.us/j/85258552139?pwd=a0ZTQWt1K1d6dzVJaytGQmYwRUg1dz09

Meeting ID: 852 5855 2139 Password: 454964

The Teaching for Country Research Project was conceived in late 2019 and aimed to facilitate the meaningful enactment of Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing in teacher preparation courses at the University of Canberra. The work aligns with the strategic objective of the university to ‘Indigenise the curriculum’ and to help create a ‘place-based university’ with strong roots in the local community that enable positive and sustainable relationships both nationally and internationally (University of Canberra Strategic Plan 2018). From the Indigenous standpoint of the co-Chief Investigators (who are also the lead authors on this paper) such an undertaking is also an opportunity to enact our cultural obligations – to know and care for the places we live and to encourage others to do the same. The work described in this paper contributes to a broader educational vision where students in the ACT and beyond are taught to learn about, know, love, and care for the places they inhabit (Bawaka Country et al, 2016; Callaghan & Gordon, 2014; Gruenwald, 2003; Johnson, 2012).

Bio Associate Professor Benny Wilson: I belong to Jagera country, around the southern suburbs of Meanjin (Brisbane). I am obligated to take care of that place, and am also strongly connected and obligated to the lands of the Central Coast of NSW and Brewarrina. I am Wagan (Crow) and Dhinawan (Emu). I have worked in the university sector since 2015, participating in various Indigenous education and Indigenous health projects, and my current research explores place-based narrative as an Aboriginal epistemology and its application for modern education systems. Before becoming an academic, I was a teacher and consultant in education, working across the country in many remote, rural, and urban Indigenous communities. My brother Spilly (Dave Spillman) and I have come to Canberra to refocus education on Aboriginal ways of knowing, being, and doing. We are passionate about our work and believe that the solutions to some of modern society’s most wicked challenges can be found by turning to the wisdom of the world’s oldest people.