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Australian Universities have struggled to achieve higher education outcomes for Indigenous students. Rates of retention, attrition and withdrawal characterize the Indigenous higher education participation profile. An emerging Indigenous leadership within the academy provides universities with access to Indigenous standpoints. This chapter promotes the necessity of Indigenous standpoints if universities are to achieve transformation in Indigenous higher education outcomes.

The opportunities available to Indigenous Australians to enjoy a quality of life commensurate to non-Indigenous Australians are hampered by disproportionate rates of poor health, education and employment. A higher education qualification positions Indigenous people to access sustainable employment. Improving rates of Indigenous retention, decreasing attrition and increasing the number of graduates can transform current Indigenous experiences of disadvantage. Accessing Indigenous standpoints is integral to universities achieving these results.

While the concept of Indigenous standpoints has been proposed by other Indigenous scholars, these discussions have not contextualized the operations of this standpoint specifically within the milieu of university administration, management and governance. The intrinsic value of Indigenous standpoints has not gained traction within university executive management and is not readily understood in strategic planning or academic corporate cultures.

In this chapter, I suggest that institutional guidelines and principles for conducting ethical research within Indigenous and cross-cultural contexts (see for example, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Guidelines for Ethical Research in Indigenous Studies, 2012) may not, in themselves be enough to promote the ethical practices nor lead to innovative outcomes if the fundamental premises of Western research in Indigenous contexts remain the same. Alternatively, valuing and applying Indigenous conceptions of Being, relationality and knowing when engaging with Indigenous participants and also, within actual procedures of research may lead to greater ethical know-how and a deeper understanding of how Indigenous modes of knowledge production can extend the frontiers of knowledge to solve real world problems. Such possibilities are predicated on recognising the limitations of our own epistemologies and ontologies and addressing the question of how we might refigure the role and positioning of ‘outsider’ researchers in ways that imbed, more self-reflexive and culturally appropriate modes of engagement and the application of Indigenous notions of Being, knowing and doing into research procedures to enhance the impact and benefits of research both within and beyond Indigenous communities.

Latin America offers a unique opportunity to reimagine educational leadership through its complex and intersectional frameworks where rematriation movements and liberatory pedagogies are the driving forces for “postponing the end of the world,” as proposed by Ailton Krenak (2020). While currently Latin American democracies are less than ideal as environmental and Indigenous initiatives have been directly attacked by ultraconservative politics, there are consistent foundations that deepen in each context by leading the way to a hopeful future. These foundations are the loud voices in the Latin American continent and they are multilingually expressed in Quechua, Guarani, Aymara, and more, as is also immersed in critical literacies; in processes of conscientização; experienced in the arts and the theater of the Oppressed; and loudly coming from the slums and the lungs of women like Mercedes Sosa, and many more. These are the absolute breakthroughs of hope we will continue to listen, follow, work with, and feel. Such breakthroughs are the pedagogies and the educational leadership of hope across Latin America, a region which has pushed to center on Indigenous mobilization and guidance.

Decolonizing involves dismantling deeply entrenched colonial systems of knowledge and power by disrupting colonial patterns of thought, questioning how teaching and learning occurs, and critiquing the colonial practices that are merged into the fabric of higher and adult education. Within this process, scholars and practitioners engage in interrogating teaching and learning approaches and developing a critical consciousness regarding what knowledge is valued and how this value is acquired. Within higher and adult education, limited research has explicitly considered the ways in which conceptions of andragogy and its accompanying instructional approaches might be deconstructed within the context of decolonization. The purpose of this chapter is to deconstruct and decolonize foundational higher and adult learning conceptual and theoretical frameworks that are routinely embedded within courses and programs. The conceptual and theoretical frameworks selected and analyzed include self-directed learning, transformative learning, and action learning as conventional examples of individual and collective instructional approaches employed within higher and adult learning settings. Maōri scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith's (2012) nine characteristics of theory that contribute to colonizing discourses and 25 Indigenous projects/principles are employed as the lenses that frame this analysis. These lenses include social science and methodological approaches and strategies that decolonize populations and promote Indigenous epistemologies.

Research in critical disaster studies stresses the urgency to explore alternative ontological framings (Gaillard and Raju, 2022) that encourages researchers and practitioners, especially Indigenous communities, to nurture spaces where Indigenous voices are well represented. It is imperative that research in the Pacific should be guided by Pacific research methodologies to maximize positive outcomes (Ponton, 2018) and break free from limited Eurocentric ideologies that are often ill-suited in Pacific contexts. Hazards in the South Pacific region have become more frequent and volatile. This has created a growing interest in the study of disasters in the region. However, current disaster studies in the Pacific are often problematic as they often fail to challenge the implicit coloniality of the discipline.

This paper will expand on these arguments, suggesting ways to overcome the limits of common Eurocentric research frameworks in disaster studies and to illustrate the significance and relevance of Pacific methodologies.

It is pertinent that critical disaster studies encapsulate Pacific worldviews and knowledge as valued and valid to reconstruct Pacific research. Decolonizing disaster research will ultimately liberate the discipline from limitations of its colonial past and allow for truly engaging and critical research practices.

This paper will illustrate and articulate how Talanoa, a pan-Pacific concept, could offer a more culturally appropriate research methodology to disasters, seen through a Samoan lens. Talanoa is an informal conversation that is widely shared among Pacific communities based on pure, authentic and real conversations which are crucial elements in building relationships with Pacific communities (Vaioleti, 2006).

The purpose of this paper is to provide an account of the author's negotiation of a methodological and personal crisis that emerged in the course of his PhD research. It provides a description of the research project and how, in its implementation, questions emerged for the author regarding the likely “indigenous credibility” of the work, and the repercussions of this for him as an indigenous researcher.

The author provides a narrative account of the events and responses, identifying critical issues, courses of action and subsequent outcomes. Opportunity is also provided for the reader to consider their own response to the issues identified.

The author discovered that the initial misgivings regarding the research project were misguided following a broader reading of the literature regarding Indigenous Standpoint Theory and Causal Layered Analysis. Indeed, as well as allaying the initial anxieties, a number of aspirational congruities between the approaches became evident which, in the opinion of the author, will lead to a differently rendered layering of the arena of indigenous mental health. The author also discovered that a source of his initial misgivings were related to his own essentialised constructions of what constitutes credible indigenous research.

The paper has implications for those indigenous researchers who may be grappling with methodological issues related to their research, particularly those considerations regarding Indigenous Standpoint and other nominally indigenous theories/methodologies.

The paper presents a novel attempt to compare and contrast methodologies specifically identified as indigenous, with those that could be utilised as complementary to them. Such attempts at collaboration serve to challenge essentialised expectations about what can constitute meaningful research by, and for indigenous Australian people.

Senior Indigenous leadership positions across the Australian higher education sector has increased over the past decade. Despite this advancement, there is limited understanding in terms of how to best integrate Indigenous leadership into existing governance structures of Australian universities. In 2018 the Walan Mayiny: Indigenous Leadership in Higher Education project commenced, aimed at establishing a model of best practice for the inclusivity of Indigenous leadership in higher education governance structures. This article presents key findings from the project, namely, a model of senior Indigenous leadership within the Australian universities based on the perceptions of a group of Indigenous academics.

Through qualitative semi-structured interviews with Indigenous academic staff, the perceived value, characteristics and challenges of senior Indigenous leadership were examined. The varying opinions held by Indigenous academics in relation to the qualifications and experience required to fulfil a senior Indigenous leadership position were also highlighted. In doing so, a model of senior Indigenous leadership within the Australian higher education system is presented. The model of best practice presented in this article is underpinned by Indigenous Institutional Theory (Coates et al., 2022), a theoretical framework developed from the Walan Mayiny study.

The research findings highlight the diverse opinions of Indigenous academics in relation to the qualifications and experience required to fulfil a senior Indigenous leadership position. The six essential components are built upon the core characteristics, values and behaviours that senior Indigenous leaders need to have according to Indigenous academics, in order to advance Indigenous success within the academy.

Given Australian universities are being called upon to ensure that senior Indigenous leaders are in the best position possible to forge institutional change, senior Indigenous leaders within the academy may find the contextual Indigenous leadership model beneficial. The model allows one to uphold cultural integrity and fulfil the responsibilities and obligations of their higher education institution, while being able to serve their Indigenous colleagues and communities, leading to the advancement of Indigenous higher education outcomes. Importantly, the model can be adapted to suit all First Nations Peoples globally, who also find themselves working within the shackles of Western institutions.

Indigenous Australians are often referred to as ‘the First Peoples’ of Australia, and the inclusion of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags in being recognised as official national flags in 1995 by the Keating Federal Government, alongside the Australian flag, embues First Peoples with national recognition. The national discussion and consultation to reform Australia's Constitution has failed to progress a proposal to enshrine Australia's First Peoples recognition in the preamble of the constitution. The Australian Federal Government also dismissed the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which calls for a national Indigenous voice to parliament and the concept of a Makarrata, to facilitate the truth-telling about Australia's violent history. This great southern continent experiences long periods of drought, intense fires and periodic intense flooding across Australia. However, Australian society has barely engaged with First Peoples and their unique knowledge of this land, whether traditional or revitalised, including their exemplary sustainable management through ‘Caring for Country’. This chapter examines the benefits of Indigenous people's knowledge exercised through their laws, customs, practices and polity, and analyses the significant impact resulting from generations of settler Australians ignoring Indigenous ontology and knowledge.