Introduction : issues in (re)contesting Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous studies

Abstract

The formalised naming and positioning of Indigenous Australian standpoint within the academy is relatively new and borrows from feminist traditions (Nakata, 2002; Rigney, 1997). Articulating one’s own standpoint is recognition of one’s subject position and proponents of standpoint contend that one’s own identity and subject position is implicated in one’s practice within the academy.

The ready acceptance of Indigenous Australian standpoint is testimony to the discontent experienced by Indigenous Australians and Indigenous peoples from other places in relation to the disciplines that formerly held principal authority in relation to knowledge-building about Indigenous peoples, chief amongst these is of course anthropology and other social sciences.

Off the back of this, Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous Studies are gaining traction, incremental change is revolution without the “r”, and today’s academics who are Indigenous have got the space to centre Indigenous knowledge in our work within the academy. Academics who are non-Indigenous to Australia and other places have also got the opportunity to consolidate their position within the academy on shifted ground.

This special supplementary edition of The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education offers a significant new contribution to this shifted ground and is guest edited by Sandra Phillips, Jean Phillips, Sue Whatman and Juliana McLaughlin of the Oodgeroo Unit of the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The edition is the published outcome from the inaugural (Re)Contesting Indigenous Knowledges and Indigenous Studies Conference hosted by the Oodgeroo Unit in 2006, and the papers bound in this supplementary edition have been blind-refereed and revised for publication. Authors for this Volume submitted from across Australia, South Africa, Norway, Thailand and Canada. This 2006 conference was the first of a series of international conferences planned around the themes of Indigenous studies and Indigenous knowledge. The second conference is being hosted by Jumbunna House of Learning, University of Technology Sydney, in July, 2007, with a third slated for 2008.