Storying as Repair: Indigenous-led Geography Education on Wiradjuri Country

Abstract

Geography education seeks to encourage an appreciation of the diverse ways people relate to, value and understand place. Indigenous-led geography education offers multiple ways of relating to and learning about place that centres care and repair. Storytelling, in its diverse narrative and creative forms, is a core element of Indigenous ways of knowing and a powerful mode of learning. This commentary introduces, and offers reflections on, an ongoing project aiming to develop Country-led pedagogy in a highly valued water place within settler colonial Australia. Country-led pedagogy is a form of Indigenous-led geography education which invites people, in this case high school classes and a youth group, to learn from being on Country. While curriculum objectives are accommodated in the process, learning from Country is the priority, via storying and approaching repair in water places. As a collaboration between Country, local Aboriginal people, young people, natural resource managers, educators and researchers, we document how Indigenous-led geography education can contribute to transitions to more sustainable futures.

Highlights:

• Country is an active teacher that shapes how students think, feel and learn.
• Repairing relationships with Country occurs through relational and care-oriented, storying.
• Students engage with a culturally significant water place under threat via reflective storying
• Students cultivate more hopeful, caring and reparative relationships with Country.
• On-Country Learning is grounded in respectful partnerships with Aboriginal communities.

Contribution to the Special Issue Topics: This work contributes to the Special Issue themes of decolonising geography education and pedagogies of complexity. By centring Indigenous ways of knowing and Country-led pedagogies, we bring relational epistemologies into place-based learning. Our approach to storying and repairing a highly valued but contested water place demonstrates how Indigenous-led education can support more caring and sustainable futures in settler colonial contexts.