This is a collaborative teaching, learning and research project between local Aboriginal community based educators, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal lecturers and researchers who live and work on Gadigal land. Country is an Aboriginal Australian term denoting Aboriginal peoples relational connections to lands, ecologies, cultures, histories and experiences. Grounded in the knowledge that sovereignty was never ceded by Aboriginal people and that we all live on Aboriginal Country, this project centres Indigenous knowledges and Aboriginal lived experiences in an Australian curriculum narrative based on truth-telling, healing and reconciliation.

In this project Learning from Country (LFC) occurs when students get out of the classroom and onto Country to listen to and walk with Elders and Aboriginal community educators to learn from the living communities that are Country. In Sydney’s densely populated areas it might not be immediately obvious that, “all places in Australia, whether urban or otherwise, are Indigenous places. Every inch of glass, steel, concrete and tarmac is dug into and bolted onto Country” (Porter, 2018, p. 239). As Porter (2018) identifies “because most of us live in towns and cities – we appear unable and unwilling to grasp that this urban country is also urban Country” (p.239).

The urban landscape at the centre of these LFC experiences occur at Australia’s initial site of invasion and this shapes the localised nature of experience. It includes a series of guided learning experiences about pre-invasion life around inner-city of Sydney, university grounds, and post-invasion experiences of political activism and resilience through significant resistance sites and Stolen Generation survivor narratives. These experiences provide students with thought-provoking ways of engaging with and learning from Country, and from Aboriginal people’s and communities.

Please get in touch if you would like to know more about our project. Katrina.Thorpe@uts.edu.au