Decolonisation through Poetry: Building First Nations’ Voice and Promoting Truth-Telling

Abstract

The impetus to decolonise high schools and universities has been gaining momentum in Southern locations such as South Africa and Australia. In this article, we use a polyvocal approach, juxtaposing different creative and scholarly voices, to argue that poetry offers a range of generative possibilities for the decolonisation of high school and university curricula. Australian First Nations’ poetry has been at the forefront of the Indigenous political protest movement for land rights, recognition, justice and Treaty since the British settlement/invasion. Poetry has provided Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples with a powerful vehicle for speaking back to colonial power. In this article, a team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers argue that poetry can be a powerful vehicle for Indigenous voices and Knowledges. We suggest that poetry can create spaces for deep listening (dadirri), and that listening with the heart can promote truth-telling and build connections between First Nations and white settler communities. These decolonising efforts underpin the “Wandiny (gathering together)—Listen with the Heart: Uniting Nations through Poetry” research that we discuss in this article. We model our call-and-response methodology by including the poetry of our co-author and Aboriginal Elder of the Kungarakan people in the Northern Territory, Aunty Sue Stanton, with poetic responses by some of her co-authors.

First In Family, First For Family: Indigenous academic women's legacy motivation

“…Therefore, poetic transcription, which collates responses from various respondents, was used to present this data. As Manathunga et al (2020) note, "poetry can be a powerful vehicle for Indigenous voices and knowledges" (p. 2). Poetic transcription was designed after identifying commonalities and significant patterns through an inductive process.…”

“…The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education decolonising work within educational settings (Manathunga et al, 2020). After each of two themed poetic transcriptions provided, thematic analysis and discussion are supplied in integrated reflections.…”

Decolonising the school experience through poetry to foreground truth-telling and cognitive justice

“…We suggest that poetry can create spaces for deep listening (dadirri -Ungunmerr-Baumann, 2002), and that listening with the heart can promote truth-telling and build connections between First Nations and White settler communities. These decolonising efforts underpin the Wandiny (Gathering Together) -Listen With the Heart: Uniting Nations Through Poetry research that we discuss in this article (Manathunga et al, 2020). In these ways, we argue that decolonised curricula and experiences can create the conditions for cognitive justice in schooling and learning that is an important precursor to other forms of social justice, such as equality, diversity and inclusion (de Sousa Santos, 2014.…”

“…Our team designed and implemented the first online Wandiny (Gathering Together) -Listen With the Heart: Uniting Nations Through Poetry event in August 2020 (Manathunga et al, 2020). Wandiny is a Kabi Kabi (Sunshine Coast) word meaning 'gathering together' that the team was given permission to use by Aunty Hope O'Chin, a Kabi Kabi Elder and co-author of this article.…”

True Justice through deep listening on Country: decolonising legal education in Australia

“…Country teaches to and in its own way for participants and this emerges with deep listening practice. Deep listening is an intrinsic part of many Australian First Nations’ methods of knowledge transmission (Andrew & Hibberd, 2022; Harney, 2022; Haynes et al, 2022; Manathunga et al, 2020). In the Daly region of the Northern Territory, deep listening is referred to as “Dadirri” (Ungunmerr-Baumann et al, 2022, p. 94).…”