Place-based learning and student critical reflection at the Man From Snowy River Bush Festival: a model for embedding Indigenous perspectives in non-specialist subjects

Abstract

ABSTRACT Students develop diversity-relevant graduate attributes over time. First steps to cross-cultural competency include learning to recognise and respectfully engage with competing interpretations of history and disparate positionalities, including Indigenous diversity. To learn such skills, students need multiple non-threatening opportunities to encounter difference during their degree. This article examines a place-based subject that fosters a pluralist learning culture by holding divergent views in productive tension whilst undertaking immersive site visits, including to The Man From Snowy River Bush Festival. Participants who engaged in critical self-reflection and social ‘perspective taking’ were found to have enhanced capacity to recognise and negotiate competing epistemologies. Acknowledging disparate standpoints appears to be crucial to non-binary engagement with Indigenous perspectives. These findings hold implications for university approaches to the inclusion of Indigenous views and voices in non-specialist subjects.