This presentation gives an overview of the Indigenous Acknowledgment canvas page template. It provides teaching teams with
- descriptions of the Indigenous Acknowledgement page elements
- course and unit examples
- links to further resources.
To access these resources, you will need to enroll into the Embracing Indigenous Learning and Teaching canvas space, where you will find Indigenous Acknowledgment page template, elements and examples.
Indigenous Acknowledgment Page Elements
- A Welcome to Country by Dr Andrew Peters
- Course Team and Unit Convenor Acknowledgment of Country
- If relevant, a Unit Statement explaining why the unit of study includes Indigenous issues, Indigenous Knowledges and Indigenous contributions to scholarship and registration requirements and expectations for graduates to be professionally confident and culturally capable
- link to Moondani Toombadool Centre's Indigenous Student Services
- link to the Indigenous Cultural Competency module,
- link to library databases
- the Cultural Warning notice
In this Welcome to Country, Dr Andrew Peters shares with students his Swinburne journey. A descendant of the Wurundjeri and Yorta Yorta people, Andrew completed his undergraduate business degree in marketing and tourism in 1998, and in 2017 completed his PhD examining contemporary Indigenous culture, identity and education. The video is in the Acknowledgement Page template.
* Pathways and transitions for Indigenous students and the roles and responsibilities of Indigenous staff.
Swinburne's Acknowledgment of Country
Staff and students begin important and everyday Swinburne events by Acknowledging Country.
We respectfully acknowledge the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation, who are the Traditional Owners of the land on which Swinburne’s Australian campuses are located in Melbourne’s east and outer-east, and pay our respect to their Elders past, present and emerging.
The above citation is acceptable for staff and students to use when teaching. However, Acknowledgments do not necessarily ‘orientate everyone present’ to the importance of thinking with Country 'beyond the start'. Its useful for academic staff to know the complete statement, and the implications the statement has for learning and teaching.
- We are honoured to recognise our connection to Wurundjeri Country, history, culture and spirituality through these locations, and strive to ensure that we operate in a manner that respects and honours the Elders and Ancestors of these lands.
- We also respectfully acknowledge Swinburne’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff, students, alumni, partners and visitors.
- We also acknowledge and respect the Traditional Owners of lands across Australia, their Elders, Ancestors, cultures and heritage, and recognise the continuing sovereignties of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nations.
Course teams are encouraged to add a further statement to the University's Acknowledgment of Country. Speaking at a Course level, this statement could acknowledge
- Explicit and Implicit Indigenous Course Learning Outcomes
- Local and global Indigenous nations that students and staff teach and learn on, and communities we work with, and live in.
- The historical and contemporary legacies of settler colonialism, tracing how North/South logic informed the Australian university's relationships with First Nations, and the disciplinary organisation of its learning and teaching
- Professional obligations and responsibilities to reconcile the integrity of this learning and teaching with Indigenous Knowledges and decolonizing standpoints
Bachelor of Nursing Course Statement - An example
Throughout the Bachelor of Nursing you have participated in learning about culturally safe healthcare practice. Cultural safety in healthcare is the ability of healthcare professionals to understand how their worldview impacts their practice. “Cultural safety is the recipient’s own experience and cannot be defined by the caregiver” (CATSINaM 2014). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples have experienced poor health outcomes as a result of healthcare organisations and professions' practices in mainstream healthcare. Students will develop a deep understanding of how health inequities that arise from political, societal, historical and economic injustices such as colonisation and racism impact health outcomes. Providing culturally safe healthcare can result in respectful and equitable mainstream healthcare. This learning process requires commitment to a lifelong journey of critical self-reflection that enables understanding of one’s own and the collective worldview and how this impacts people who are engaging with healthcare services. Culturally safe practice will also promote health equity for the diverse groups of peoples engaging with mainstream healthcare in Australia. This practice is central to the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, Registered Nurse Standards for Practice and the Victorian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural safety framework.
If relevant, the Indigenous Acknowledgment page should include a Unit Statement that provides students with a summary of the implicit and explicit Indigenous learning outcomes. This brief statement would describe where in the teaching, learning and assessment
- Indigenous peoples’ histories, cultures worldviews and standpoints are included
- Indigenous Knowledges and Indigenous contributions to scholarship are foregrounded
- students are being and becoming professionally confident and culturally capable to work with First Nation diversity, demonstrating Industry bodies’ registration requirements and expectations
CRI30010 Young People in Youth Justice Unit Statement
This unit examines a specific aspect of the criminal justice system: young people in youth justice. While this unit offers students an opportunity for close analytical engagement with the laws, theories, practices, it works to foreground Indigenous knowledges pertaining to young people who offend. The unit will challenge students to consider how laws are shaped in way that we witness the over-representation of Aboriginal young people in Youth Justice. As students become familiar with various statutory regimes that mediate youth contact across the states of Australia and also with the theoretical explanations and methodologies to understand and engage in response to this category of crime, they will be asked to critically consider the Western and colonial foundations of the criminal justice and how institutions can be more culturally aware and responsive.
DET60004: Nutrition Practice in Diverse Communities Unit Statement
This unit is a foundational unit in dietetics which prepares dietetics students to see the world beyond their own perspective, experiences and attitudes. During this unit you will be learning about systems and structures of power and privilege and how they relate to healthcare and education. During this unit you will also learn directly from peoples of diverse backgrounds, sharing their lived experience along with their educational wisdom, to shape the way you see the world and see your role as a dietitian working for health equity. It is within this context that this unit explores nutrition practices and approaches in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Aligned with the National Competency Standards for Dietitians, this development in your understanding of the social, historical and political landscape of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples lives and health is essential. Your learning will be facilitated through a selection of learning and reflecting activities:
- Self-guided online learning materials
- Incorporated examples relevant to public health nutrition practice in Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander communities
- Workshops and seminars with Indigenous specialists in healthcare and justice systems
- Assessment; critical appraisal of nutrition promotion projects in Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander communities
- Opportunities throughout the unit to select Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander communities as a priority community to focus while developing public health nutrition skills
NUR30001: End of Life Care Unit Statement
This unit prepares nursing students to work with people who have life-limiting conditions and their families. You will further explore cultural safety in relation to palliative and end of life care. The Australian mainstream palliative care model that is dominated by Western traditions and the biomedical model need to integrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples traditions, values and cultural practices to ensure equitable healthcare. You will consider the diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, that is there are many different traditions, values and cultural practices for different groups of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, therefore acknowledge the specific needs for the individual, their family and community. You will work through a case study to consider how you can practice in a culturally safe way. You will also explore your worldview and reflect on how this impacts your nursing practice through online, tutorial and simulation activities. To complete this unit, you will independently review a case study (assessment one) and explain how you can work towards providing culturally safe, equitable healthcare.
PSY30001 Psychology of Health Unit Statement
This unit will introduce you to interrelationships between behavioural, psychological, social, and biological components of health. In this unit, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing, including Indigenous models of social and emotional wellbeing and definitions of health, are discussed alongside Western conceptualisations. Content on health inequalities is woven throughout this unit, and you will consider the ways in which the ongoing effects colonisation and prioritisation of Western ways of thinking about health contribute to health disparities. You will be challenged to reflect on these factors and to learn about resilience and strengths-based perspectives. Articles authored by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and other resources (e.g., interviews) that present voices of Indigenous people are included in the required and supplemental learning materials. Exploring these topics will help prepare you to enter the workforce more culturally aware and capable of thinking about the ways in which historical and contemporary factors affect the health of Australia’s First Peoples.
The template includes a Moondani Toombadool Centre Student Service statement. Centering Indigenous services as part of the general on-boarding student experience (especially in the First Year/First Semester) "ensure students’ education and training experience is positive, culturally inclusive and successful".
The Indigenous Student Services team provides services to Indigenous students, including on-campus, online and community learners. Students receive assistance with pre-enrollment, subject selection, orientation and graduation as well as plans for life after studying. This assistance includes one-to-one tutoring through the Indigenous Academic Success program."
Tutoring programs live with a history of 'deficit' and we need to challenge this logic. Culturally informed and strength-based, Indigenous services at MTC build upon students' ancestral deadliness, their connections and commitments to kin and Country.
Swinburne provides for all students, the Student Indigenous Cultural Competency module in Canvas, which is especially recommended in the first year of studies at Swinburne. The unit provides students with an overview
- the diversity of Aboriginal Australia, using maps and other resources to locate local cultural and language groups and Creator Spirits.
- the history of the Wurundjeri, and our struggles and successes in staying connected to Country
- the issues faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in their higher education studies
- ways to be and become allies for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students
This 1 hour canvas space cannot be 'all things Indigenous'. Currently revising existing ICC student module for 2022 delivery, allowing student to generate certificate, and teaching staff access to 'view' content.
The Indigenous Acknowledgement template includes a Library Statement and is linked to Indigenous resources
"The Swinburne library has curated Useful Resources for Indigenous Studies that bring together interdisciplinary databases, journals, videos and ebooks. This is a valuable resource and is recommended for your use throughout your studies."
Library staff can assist teaching teams in 'wading through' the resources available to find Indigenous 'content' relating to disciplinary and professional discussions. Locating and embedded academic and grey (Blak) "literature" and "content" centers Indigenous scholarship, and the Indigenous ways of storying this contribution.
The Indigenous Acknowledgement templates includes this Cultural Warning
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander users are warned that this material may contain images and voices of deceased persons, and images of places that could cause sorrow. Some images, text, terms and annotations used in content and assessment will reflect the period in which the item was produced and may be considered inappropriate today in some circumstances.
The Cultural Warning statement is a way to respectfully warn Indigenous students that learning, teaching and assessment material may cause sorrow.
The Warning serves as a reminder for both staff and students that dialogue about "data", "theory" and "practice" stories also the violent erasure of Indigenous minds, bodies and territories. Tuck and Yang (2014) write that the university ‘is very much about the generation and swapping of stories’ (p. 229), and there are some stories promoting the ‘portrayals of dysfunction and pain’ as ‘specific representations of power and oppression’ (p. 229).
Teaching staff and students should be mindful of 'demonstrating' harm in order to make claims that reparations are deserved.
Further Resources
Canvas Embracing Indigenous Teaching and Learning modules
Yammer Embracing Indigenous Learning and Teaching Community
Course Teams- Workshops
mjakobi@swin.edu.au