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The aim of this chapter is to critically analyse multiple stakeholders’ self-perceptions of the value, nature, success and impact of core Aboriginal Studies subjects in primary teacher education university courses.

Participants were drawn from two universities in New South Wales which taught a core Aboriginal Studies subject as part of their primary teacher education degree. The methodology was informed by Yin’s (2003) multiple-case study replication design. This replication presents a picture of the perceptions and events which have impacted on the participants in the study.

The findings have important implications for theory, research and practice. The results of this study demonstrate that core Aboriginal Studies subjects in primary teacher education courses can make a positive difference in changing the perceptions of many pre-service teachers about Aboriginal people.

The purpose of this study was to assemble an evidence-based rationale, which includes the voices of multiple stakeholders, to test the extent to which core Aboriginal Studies subjects in primary teacher education courses are vital to improving educational outcomes for Aboriginal children, advancing reconciliation and creating a more socially just Australian society.

Undertaking professional training through a core Aboriginal Studies subject builds pre-service teachers’ self-concepts, attitudes, commitment, knowledge and skills, and ability and understandings to teach Aboriginal Studies, incorporate Aboriginal perspectives and to be committed to effectively teaching Aboriginal students.

The study supports the need for the inclusion of core Aboriginal Studies subjects in all universities with teacher education courses.

Research on Indigenous students has mostly adopted a deficiency model. In contrast, this study takes an explicitly positive perspective on Indigenous student success by focusing on the active psychological ingredients that facilitate successful learning.

Aboriginal people across Australia have diverse practices, beliefs and knowledges based on thousands of generations of managing and protecting their lands (Country). The intimate relationship Aboriginal people have with their Country is explored in this chapter because such knowledge is important for building insight into the relationship between social and ecological systems. Often in research Aboriginal views have been marginalised from discussions focused on their lands to the detriment of ecosystems and human health. This chapter aims to understand if such marginalisation is evident in Western human–nature relationship discourses.

This chapter provides a critical literature review which examines whether Aboriginal people’s diverse understanding of their ecosystems have been incorporated into human–nature theories using the biophilia hypothesis as a starting point. Other concepts explored include solastalgia, topophilia and place.

Critiques of these terminologies in the context of Aboriginal people’s connection to Country are limited but such incorporation is viewed in the chapter as a possible mechanism for better understanding human’s connection to nature. The review identified that Aboriginal people’s relationship to Country seems to be underrepresented in the human–nature theory literature.

This chapter emphasises that the integration of Aboriginal perspectives into research, ecological management and policy can provide better insight into the interrelationships between social and ecological systems.

In partnership with the University of Western Australia (UWA), the strengths-based National Empowerment Project (NEP) brought together researchers from across Australia and began to address issues surrounding Aboriginal wellbeing and, in particular, the high rates of Aboriginal deaths by suicide. The NEP utilised participatory action research (PAR) and was concerned with promoting positive cultural, social, and emotional wellbeing (CSEWB) and building capacity and resilience within Aboriginal communities. Throughout the NEP, consultations with 11 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities led to the development of a CSEWB program. The program seeks to increase self-determination and empowerment, developing participants’ awareness of a variety of issues relevant to wellbeing. This enables participants to gain a greater understanding of the holistic nature of CSEWB and the complex influences on Aboriginal wellbeing at individual, family, and community levels. This chapter is concerned with the development and delivery of the CSEWB program within three community sites in Perth, Western Australia. Shared philosophical approaches of the CSEWB program, between UWA and Aboriginal communities were human rights and social justice, community ownership, community capacity building, a strong focus on resilience, empowerment and partnerships, respect for local knowledge, and the delivery of community consultations. Investigation into the impacts of the program are based in an anti-colonial space, employing Indigenous Standpoint Theory and PAR approaches. This chapter demonstrates the success of the CSEWB program, links this success to the vital importance of Indigenous research ethics, and positions the research within an empowering and capacity-building context.

Teacher assistants and support staff play a critical role in the educational outcomes of Indigenous students. Small steps are being made in ‘Closing the Gap’ in Australia between Indigenous and non-Indigenous educational outcomes (Australian Government, 2013), and the trends are similar throughout other Indigenous populations. However, there is still much that needs to be done. This chapter will describe the role of teacher assistants and other support staff, and share pedagogy and practices that have been successful in engaging Indigenous students within an inclusive and responsive curriculum. The chapter will conclude with a summary of key concepts and recommendations for further research.

Country and cultural heritage are inextricably linked for First Nations peoples. This chapter explores those relationships in the context of repatriating cultural heritage materials back to Country and conceptualising a place for its ‘awakening’ for the Ngadjuri community of Mid-North South Australia. These materials in the context of this book ‘interpreted’ as a form of data curation, requiring potentially unique information systems designs to achieve accessibility, recoverability, and durability in remote communities with limited internet and mobile phone coverage. On the other hand, it is critically important to note, that the processes, challenges and repatriation of culturally sensitive materials and remains, are dependant here on the limitations of language. The reference to the notion of ‘data’ as a descriptor, and an inadequate term on some level, does not, and is not intended to, diminish any of their cultural significance and gravity. These are challenges that are worth the intellectual and technological investment to realise a return to Country for generationally displaced peoples and their cultural property that also needs to make it home.

The Beagle Bay Immersion Program is a Christian Service-Learning experience, which facilitates opportunities for secondary school students to experience unique expressions of cultural diversity found in remote Aboriginal communities of Western Australia. Through engagement in the program, students undergo a process of experiential learning, identifying core social justice issues present in a broader Australian social context, and helping to address identified community needs. This immersion program is conducted as part of the Christian Service-Learning Program at a Perth-based Catholic Secondary College in Western Australia. The Beagle Bay Immersion Program serves as an opportunity for students to engage in acts of discipleship, modeling values of social and cultural inclusivity as a means of enriching their own communities. Underpinned by core Gospel values, the program aims to actively promote a “spirit of solidarity and service to others” (Prendiville, 2016, p. 42) both among the immediate participants and the wider school community. Presented in this chapter is an examination of the values which guide the College’s Service-Learning Program and the ways in which the Beagle Bay Immersion Program facilitates attitudes of inclusivity by exposing students to diverse populations. Christian Service-Learning can serve as a means through which students can circumvent barriers that preclude exposure to diversity. The Beagle Bay Immersion Program seeks to build relationships through service, which benefit both the College and Beagle Bay Communities, providing students opportunities for personal, spiritual, and academic growth while fostering a culture of inclusion.

This chapter is concerned with the question that is indigeneity, and its situation within literary and juridical imaginaries. As a persistently unsettling presence, indigeneity appears outside the law, before the law and beyond the law – indeed, in Derrida's terms, as an evocation of the unconditional. Whereas the law determines indigeneity to recognise it, I propose that its expression in Indigenous literature evokes a Derridean unconditional to which the law must perpetually, if momentarily, respond. This chapter elaborates a conception of indigeneity, as expressed in Indigenous literature, as disruptive and deconstructive of non-Indigenous law, opening its narratives to transformation.