Claiming the space,creating the future

Abstract

Abstract

Academia is a world based on individualism and competitiveness, which for Indigenous peoples, and particularly Indigenous women, is culturally unsafe. Furthermore, whilst the academy is rushing forward to be inclusive of Indigenous peoples, cultures and knowledges, it does so whilst still maintaining its structures of white, patriarchal privilege. Hence, the academy is a place that frequently leaves Indigenous women feeling isolated and patronised and questioning if there is a place for them. However, despite the barriers and the obstacles of academia, Indigenous women continue to enter and carve out a place for themselves and for other Indigenous women. This article, through the words of each of the three women, will explore their experiences as an Associate Professor and two PhD students on their journeys of claiming their places within the academia as Indigenous women. In the recent past, each of these women has separately and together worked to create and claim their places within the academy. This article will conclude with advice for the upcoming generations of Indigenous women academics on how to stand strong and, most importantly, in solidarity with one another.

Sue’s Story

Yuwindhu Dyan Galari Wiradyuri yinaa. My name is Sue and I am a Galari Wiradyuri woman. I have lived in many different First Nations country throughout my life. My family has experienced generations of removals, including myself. However, we keep finding our way back home. I have been employed at the University of NSW for 19 years, first as the Director of Nura Gili and for almost a decade as Associate Professor of Social Work. As this article is being written, I am preparing to move to Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, to take up the position of Professor of Indigenous Studies and the Coordinator of the Graduate Certificate of Wiradjuri Language, Culture and Heritage. My PhD was titled The History of Aboriginal Welfare in the Colony of NSW 1788–1856 and examined how welfare has been used as a tool of colonisation which in turned welfarised Aboriginal people.

My academic journey started as a homeless, single mother of three. I just wanted to do something to ensure that my children’s life was better than mine. I commenced university without much idea of what I was in for. In fact, I had these fantasies about university being a place of fairness, equity and great intellectual pursuit. Sadly, my greatest battle besides my poor educational achievement was to create fairness and equity within an institution that was built upon race and class privilege and that continues to maintain those structures that create and reinforce that privilege. I have found many allies who have walked beside me on my journey and my battle. I have also found many others who seek to maintain the structure and sadly, they are not always those who profit the most from the structures but rather, are seeking to cement their place and so not only will not rock the boat, but will also seek to discredit and destroy those who do.

For me, university has been a place of extremes (Owens Patton, 2010). On one hand, it has been a place of empowerment and allowed me to become financially and emotionally independent. It has shown me that I have ability, that I am not stupid and that I can achieve. On the other hand, it has been a place that has also hurt and damaged me in many ways as illustrated by Tuck and McKenzie (2015) and Morgan (2003), I am constantly fighting for the right to claim my space and to not have my knowledge and work appropriated. The constant questioning about whether you really deserve to be an Associate Professor or the statements about whether your work is your own or done by someone else and, of course, the assertions that you wouldn’t be where you are if you were not an Aboriginal and how ‘the rest of us had to work much harder than you to get here’ continues to ‘feed’ our imposter syndrome. Then, there is the patronising behaviour – ‘well, you are so articulate’, ‘you have done well for yourself’, ‘what a role model you must be for other Aboriginal people’. Add to it, ‘well you’re not all Aboriginal, are you?’, ‘Do you have any connection to your community?’, ‘Do you know anything about where you are from?’. Then topping it off at a Sorry Day celebration where I had just spoken about my experiences, I had a person from the senior management team of a university say to me: ‘Do you have any ideas about how your people can do something to help themselves, like others have in other countries?’. My response was not measured and I pointed out to this man of great privilege that maybe the problem for my people rested with people like him and asking when was he going to give up his privilege? I know that I am forever sitting on the margins, like a ‘guest in someone else’s house’ (Turner, 1994). The wounds of academia are deep and numerous. I look around me and I see so many Aboriginal academics who have been battered and wounded as well and, yet, we keep persisting. Why?

Universities are places that can and do provide us with sources of empowerment. It was through my own education at university that I discovered ways of knowing and developing an understanding of what was happening and why, not only within my own life but also within the general community. It was like my eyes had been opened for the first time. I became hungry for more information and for more knowledge. I wanted to know and understand where we are and how we got here. I wanted to use what I knew to create a better world for my children and grandchildren. No one can take from me the knowledge that I have gained and no one can stop me from passing that on to others.

I have also made many great friends and allies in the battles within universities. My PhD supervisors, Eileen Baldry and Michael Wearing, whilst not Aboriginal, were open and nurturing. They walked the journey with me and provided support but did not try to get me to fit into a rigid structure of what a PhD should be. They provided guidance in what I needed to do to meet the criteria in order for my work to pass, but they allowed me the time to sit and reflect, the time to shape and form my own way of doing the research and how to analyse what I had found. They understood the painful journey of researching my own history, the history of colonisation in this country and the impact that the colonisation has had on me. They also understood that as an Aboriginal person, I lived an Aboriginal life and that being in academia did not magically make all those problems disappear. Eileen and Michael have been very influential in what I saw and still see as being what an academic is and how to be a supervisor to Higher Degree Research Students. I have also had the pleasure of working with both Eileen and Michael as colleagues over many years and greatly appreciate all the support and love they have given me.

One of the greatest experiences I have had at university is being a supervisor to Higher Degree Research Students. In working with the students, my own thinking and knowledge is pushed to greater levels. I learn much more from them that I can ever imagine I teach them. It is just so wonderful to be able to sit with other Indigenous women scholars and to discuss and debate theories and topics that inform and impact upon our work. I look at these young women and I am overcome with pride at their achievements. Both my co-authors have prestigious scholarship which they have thoroughly earned. I have also had the honour of walking with them on their journey and supervising their Honours (Jessica) and Masters (Lauren) degrees. I watch them decolonise methodologies and knowledges as they tackle the hard work of a PhD. I am overcome with joy as I watch them weave culture and our knowledges throughout their work. I know my struggles have not been in vain and that the next generation stepping up behind us are strong warrior women.

I am also furiously protective. I know first-hand the battles and the abuse that comes within the competitive nature of universities. I have seen my work taken more than once by more powerful ‘white’ academics and I have had colleagues discredit me. I have been exploited many times because of my willingness to put other Aboriginal peoples, communities and students’ interests ahead of my own. I know the university environment is one that takes and takes until you have no more to give and then it will discard you. I want to protect both Jessica and Lauren from the pitfalls in universities. However, I know I cannot. We are fighting a battle, not only a battle to claim our space in the knowledge reproduction that occurs in universities, but also to take control of the knowledges that are produced and reproduced about who we are. We must ensure that as universities move forward and incorporate Indigenous knowledges there is ‘respect, relevance, reciprocity and responsibility’ in their processes and practices (Kirkness & Barnhardt, 1991, p. 1). The next generation of academics will advance the reclaiming of our sovereignty and maybe, just maybe, I might be here to see our rightful place as sovereign peoples recognised. These young warrior women are our future.

Jessica’s story

Yuwindhu Dyidyaga Wiradyuri Wambuul yinaa. My name is Jessica and I am Wiradyuri woman from the Macquarie river. I have grown up and been guided by strong women. On my father’s side, I am a stolen generation descendent and on my mother’s side, I am a descendent of Second World War and Holocaust survivors, including my grandmother who migrated from Holland in the 1940s. I am currently a Scientia PhD student at the University of New South Wales, where I also completed my Bachelor of Social Work with Honours.

My research focuses around Wiradyuri ways of being, knowing and doing, as well as the embodiment of sovereignty by Indigenous peoples. I am honoured to be guided and work in solidarity with fellow Wiradyuri and Indigenous women within the academy. These women are the living encapsulation of yindyamarra. Yindyamarra is a Wiradyuri concept which means deep respect and to do with honour (Grant & Rudder, 2010). Yindyamarra is a way of being that enhances the wellbeing of self, others and Country. Yindyamarra is my anchor in the world of academia; it is what keeps me grounded; it keeps the fire burning to claim space that is rightfully ours. Yindyamarra also reminds me of the Indigenous women from the past and present, whose legacies and sacrifices have enabled me to be where I am today. Finally, Yindyamarra is a reminder of my responsibility to ensure that I am creating space for future generations of Indigenous women in academia.

My experience within the academy has been incredibly challenging and culturally unsafe. The academy continues to be a primary force of colonisation through its bureaucratic and individualistic systems that exploit Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous academics in tokenistic and oppressive ways (Owens Patton, 2010). Fortunately, I have been honoured to be supported and guided by a fellow Wiradyuri yinaa, Associate Professor Sue Green, as my mentor, PhD supervisor, colleague and most importantly, cultural support. In Wiradyuri, we believe that all things, living and non-living, are equal and exist within a network of relationships. The state of these relationships is core in the wellbeing of all living and non-living things. The academy functions not as a community, but as a space of colonial legacies regarding knowledge production, ownership and Aboriginal deficit. Therefore, relationships and solidarity with fellow Indigenous women are invaluable.

As an Indigenous PhD student, I am approached constantly and offered ‘opportunities’. As early career researchers, we are encouraged to take these opportunities to increase our profile, experience and professional development. However, many of these opportunities are in fact tokenistic gestures enabling a group, School or Faculty to tick a box regarding cultural inclusivity. These situations include subjecting the Indigenous student to culturally unsafe and exploitative spaces. Too often, we are asked to perform our Indigeneity in a manner that white ideologies of academia deem palatable and appropriate (Harris, 2002). Too often, the academy masks its true intentions under false claims of ‘opportunity’. Too often, our refusal as sovereign warriors is met with resistance attacks of white fragility and white possessiveness (Moreton-Robinson, 2015) of the academic space. Too often, we are expected to acknowledge without question the ‘opportunities’ or ‘saving’ of white academics.

Working in solidarity with Indigenous women in the academy is an experience that is difficult to justly describe in writing. There is something deeply powerful about being in the presence of Indigenous women and their knowledges. As one of the youngest within our support network, listening to the knowledges and stories of those with more experience is something I do with deep respect. These knowledges create sacred insights to my learning and allow for actions of sovereignty within the academy to be transformed. This transformation is evident in the space claimed by myself and other Indigenous academics so far. These transformations and expressions of sovereignty are frequently met with resistance and reactions of white fragility. White fragility is when those people who enjoy the privileges of whiteness, claim suffering or victimhood when Indigenous people speak out against oppression. Our solidarity and sovereignty is disruptive to the status quo of universities, specifically within the university’s categorisation of Indigenous academics as a display of the university’s attempts to save Indigenous peoples and achievements of social justice. When Indigenous academics sway from the academy’s essentialist definitions of what an Indigenous academic is, how they should act and, how they should not act, aggressive and oppressive reactions come about.

The academy claims that Indigenous voices are important to its identity and that the absence of our voices is an injustice. However, when we, as Indigenous academics, raise concerns of culturally inappropriate practice, we are met with patronising and dismissive responses. It is here that colonial legacies are evident, as the academy aims to keep Indigenous academics and their knowledges separate from the white base line of knowledge hierarchy. We are not part of the academy. Rather, we are additions that tick a box of ‘equity’ and ‘equality’. It is during this constant questioning and oppression of Indigenous ways of knowing and being that connection and solidarity are most important.

Non-Indigenous academics may argue that their actions are with the best of intentions; however, this highlights the absence of and ignorance to the development of critical consciousness and reflective capacity. Indigenous academics are frequently bombarded with non-Indigenous academics expressions of concern for the ways Indigenous culture is disrespected. Within this lies a deep hypocrisy because many of these encounters embody imbalanced power relations, sympathy and ‘white saviour’ mentality. One of the greatest challenges is trying to explain how their behaviour and thoughts are racist whilst they cry about the wounds to their white fragility. All of sudden, we become the deficit body, offender and slave to white fragility.

This experience is culturally, emotionally and physically wounding. White saviourism and fragility is thrust upon us with entitlement and force, which is intoxicating and suffocating. Fortunately, my past and present is filled with sovereign warriors whose love and fight heal these wounds and strengthen my power to claim space in the academy.

I am a Wiradyuri yinaa and a member of the community first, before my role as a PhD candidate or researcher within a university. The needs and strengths of my community, teachers and Elders are what guides my research practice. Working alongside inspiring Indigenous women in academia continues cultural ways of knowing and doing that places priority on the wellbeing of all things, and respect for process that is guided by our epistemologies and ontologies.

One of the most valuable lessons I have learnt in my experience within the academy is that I have the right to say no and to call out racist practices. Navigating the reactions to sovereign actions, alongside developing an academic career and profile is challenging and requires connecting always to cultural values and ways of being. This connection is sustained and nurtured through the relationships I have with fellow Wiradyuri and Indigenous women within the academy. As a network of relationships, we are enacting our responsibilities as sovereign warriors within a space that holds colonial power.

Lauren’s story

My name is Lauren and I grew up on Awabakal and Worimi lands in Newcastle, New South Wales, and belong to my ancestral homelands in Northern Tasmania, the lands of my ancestors Mannalargenna, Woretermoeteyenner, Dalrymple Briggs and a vast line of grandmothers. My grandmothers also connect me to ancestors of white privilege who travelled to Australia from England and Ireland and contributed to the colonisation and dispossession of Aboriginal lands. My ancestors bind me to speak from this multiplicity. I am a University of New South Wales’ Scientia PhD Scholar in the School of Social Sciences with a research focus on decolonising development practices.

After completion of an undergraduate degree in International Studies and working five years in the not-for-profit sector, in 2016, I commenced a Masters of Development Studies fuelled by my experiences of colonial violence in the ‘Indigenous Affairs Industry’. I returned to the academy seeking justice, answers and refuge in the re-affirming scholarship of Indigenous academics. I sought to understand why ‘Aboriginal programs’ are – still – governed and funded by regimes of patriarchal whiteness, and why the foundational scholarship on race and whiteness studies is being wilfully ignored by those who claim to ‘know us’. However, now, as I begin my PhD, I feel myself sitting in a place of contradictions as I know the academy to be a site of ongoing colonial violence where ‘there remains both real work, and a real war to be waged’ (Bond, 2018, para. 20), yet I also experience it as a place of empowerment as well as home to a community of strong Indigenous scholars who connect our knowledges to the messages of our Old People – for Country, community and futurities. The academy becomes a place where I am able to draw on ancient knowledges which unleashes a momentum of change through teaching and contribution to scholarship that names, calls out and disrupts settler colonialism. To keep whiteness accountable in this way is empowering to me after experiences of being silenced by the brutal colonial hierarchies of the ‘Indigenous Affairs Industry’. My story, therefore, takes a stance of emboldened respect, referencing the women who hold my position in the academy in place and speaking through their messages towards a future of respectful, relational and strong Aboriginal scholarship.

As an Aboriginal woman, early career researcher, educator and PhD candidate, my short time in the academy has been bolstered by the tenacious words and ways of warrior women scholars – Indigenous women who assert a warrior scholarship through their research and roles within the academy (Alfred, 2004). The foundational and instructive scholarship of warrior scholars from across Australia and our extended family in Aotearoa, Turtle Island (North America) and Hawai’i (see Aluli-Meyer, 2008; Martin, 2008; Moreton-Robinson, 2015; Smith, 2012; Tuck & Yang, 2012) has provided a safe place for me and my research in the academy and this safety is enhanced by an assertive and future-focused stance by the warrior women of the academy. The work of these warrior women is grounded in a past and future resolve, a purposeful fight in the quotidian for a long-term protection of the place of Aboriginal women and the generations to come. I wish to share in this article my deepest respect for the work achieved by these warrior women but acknowledge that this is not enough. To truly heed their words and ways, I also want to articulate my responsibilities and obligations. I endeavour to go a step further than simply standing on the shoulders of giants, as I also need to connect my own feet to the ground, the Mother, who reminds us of our reciprocal relationships to one another.

One of the most important messages I have learnt about the academy so far is that claiming a space and creating a future for Aboriginal peoples can only be achieved by drawing on the distinct and powerful processes of our ontological relationships to Peoples, Places, living and non-living entities (Martin, 2008). Living through the violent tremors of the consumer capitalist economy, academic institutions sit on a precipice of innovation and co-optation and the hunger for new resources has spilled into the knowledge economy where our stories have become ‘recast as academic data [by the] colonial collector of knowledge’, the university (Tuck & Yang, 2014, p. 813). As a postgraduate student, I am reminded by Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012) that, as Indigenous peoples, our work in the academy is twofold. On the one hand, we read and learn the set texts written largely by non-Indigenous scholars. On the other hand, we return to our own First Peoples literatures, stories and critical scholarship to interpret and re-codify the set, dominant research as emanating from an imperial centre that seeks to measure, classify and know us. It is here that I have a respect to the warrior women who, through their scholarship, have revealed the university to be a ‘dangerous and frightening place’ for Aboriginal researchers (Bunda, Zipin, & Brennan, 2012, p. 946).

I occupy a relatively privileged position in the academy as an early-career researcher, who follows in the footsteps of warrior scholars who have fought for the legitimacy of Aboriginal peoples and knowledges. This legitimacy is founded on the intractable relationship that our knowledges have with this ancient place and the ancestors who have carried our stories across thousands of generations. Warrior scholars continue this tradition today by writing our stories into scholarship. However, warrior scholars also recognise that our relationships to family, community and Country are our stories and must therefore remain our first and most important responsibility. For this, I have a responsibility back to my Elders in – and outside of – the academy to listen to their stories, heed their cautions and build upon their foundational work to extend our research into a futurity based on land and Lore/Law.

My position as a PhD candidate and scholarship holder is the result of warrior scholarship that occurred behind closed doors – warrior women who fought not just for my ‘place’ within the academy but fought for a culturally safe and supportive place. The relative safety I enjoy as a PhD student comes from the notion of being held by those who have preceded me, including my supervisor and mentor, Sue Green who is a warrior woman creating robust scholarship that is matched by a resolute stance of protection for the younger generations of Indigenous women to come through the academy. However, as Sue and others have shown me, this protection comes with responsibilities. Warrior scholarship emboldens us, as Indigenous researchers, to ‘walk our talk’, to critique with purpose and to carry the strength of our ancestral knowledges and responsibilities into research – for Country, not commodity. I heed this message very seriously to pay respect to the older generations by ensuring my own research and practices are founded on ethical and relational processes of cultural integrity and modelling this for the younger generations who follow.

In paying homage and respects to our warrior women scholars, I carry the question as to what my role is as an Aboriginal woman and early-career researcher newly entering the academy. In order to answer this question, I look to all our warrior women – my mother, grandmother, aunties and sisters. Whilst not ‘within’ the academy, they undertake warriorship ‘without’ the academy. These warrior women give me strength, story and purpose for my role ‘within’ the academy and remind me of my responsibilities beyond academic scholarship. Herein lies my responsibility to all warrior women who have come before me: To heed their cautions of the academy as a site ‘which has constructed all the rules by which the indigenous world has been theorized’ (Smith, 2012, p. 30) and, therefore, to draw on ‘our Aboriginal axiology (way of doing), ontology (way of being) and epistemology (way of knowing) [to] shape the knowledge production work that we do within the academy’ (Moreton-Robinson, 2011, p. 413). My role, then, becomes grounded in a stance of refusal against the settler-colonial research agenda, a commitment to and extension of our communitarian ways in academia, and a future-focus for the next generations.

As a scholarship holder with access to social and financial capital, I take tentative steps through an institution adorned with the colonial trappings of shiny, stolen wealth. I carefully watch Indigenous students encounter the ‘opportunities’ presented by the university – prestigious events, keynote invitations and requests to be the ‘posterchild’ of Aboriginal success (Bishop & Tynan, 2018). Here, the younger generations must truly listen to, not simply quote the words of our warrior scholars. Our elder scholars warn of younger generations ‘selling out’ their communities (Vine Deloria Jr as cited in Justice (2004, p. 114)) in pursuit of assimilationist ‘success’ (Bunda et al., 2012, p. 948). Tuck and Yang (2014, p. 812) warn younger Indigenous scholars not to trade in our communities’ stories of deficit, poverty and dispossession, but to articulate a stance of refusal against the academy’s ‘unquestioned right to know’. I find the safeguards for such temptations can be found in the work of warrior women and our extended families’ communitarian processes that keep us grounded in Aboriginal world views and community aspirations (Bunda et al., 2012, p. 948). I foreground our ontological relationships to land and kin (Martin, 2008; Shillingsworth, Martin, & Yunkaporta, 2011), and maintain an unwavering and critical orientation to decolonising practices (Smith, 2012; Tuck & Yang, 2012; Waziyatawin & Yellow Bird, 2012).

Warrior women scholars don’t just hold the younger generation accountable to future-focused, ethical research, but they remind us that we, as women, hold that future ourselves. My relationships to Country, Peoples, Story, Lore/Law and our non-living relatives situate me in a state of relatedness that demands respect for those who precede me and obligation to share their message with the next generation. The strength that has been passed to me from warrior women scholars emanates from a research agenda that demands action in terms of a disruption of white patriarchal sovereignty in the academy (Moreton-Robinson, 2015) and a reorientation to our ontological responsibilities. In the words of Cree scholar Sharon Venne (2018, n.p.), ‘we don’t have that right to give up’; we hold ‘a remembrance of those obligations and responsibilities’ to our old people and our grandchildren’s grandchildren who are yet to come.