Yuntuwarrin - Learning together on country

Abstract

In 2013/2014 the David Unaipon College of Indigenous Education and Research (DUCIER), and the School of Art, Architecture and Design (AAD) developed a collaborative learning project that includes members of the Ngarrindjeri Community at Raukkan, Camp Coorong, and Masters of Sustainable Design Students. An open brief pedagogy forms the foundation of an experiential methodology embedded in a culturally-mediated embodied experience and Indigenous content offers opportunities for experiencing relationships to land and waters and ways of knowing associated with Ngarrindjeri worldviews. In particular, a critical ecological methodology offers a range of perspectives that underpin the learning experience and includes the acknowledging of differing ontologies and world views, aspects of the creative process (left/right hemispheres of the brain), critical eclecticism, sustainable design thinking and the significance of respectful enduring relationships with the natural world. An approach that offers spaces for ontological and epistemological standpoints such as Indigenous and ecological worldviews, and challenges modernist and postmodern positions which largely privilege rationalism as the only verifiable source of knowledges available to human societies.