The sand through my fingers : Finding Aboriginal cultural voice, identity and agency on country

Concerns about supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learners to reach their potential endure in contemporary Australian education and society. Moreover, supporting these Aboriginal learners to have a sense of self-worth, selfawareness and personal identity that enables them to manage their emotional, mental, cultural, spiritual and physical wellbeing was identified as a key goal of the “Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration”. This declaration sets out the national vision for education and the commitment of Australian Governments to improve educational outcomes for Aboriginal peoples across Australia (Commonwealth of Australia, 2019). This is a critical responsibility for the practices of Australian educators, policymakers and researchers alike. This chapter presents a unique on-Country approach to research with young Aboriginal people seeking to understand what a world worth living in means to them as individuals and for the communities they live in. The approach involved multimodal research methods that included poetry composition and photography, as media that revealed their Aboriginal youth voices, cultural sensitivities, identity and agency. For these young Aboriginal people, sitting on their own Country with sand from their Wiradjuri land sifting through their fingers, their words and images emerged as powerful resources for connecting to culture and to self as their Aboriginal identities flourished despite previously being demeaned by racism, ignorance, injustice and inequity. The poetry and photographs produced by these young Aboriginal males serve as a window into how cultural voice and vision expose ways identity and agency are socially-culturally-politically configured—both in their production and deployment. Their words and images demonstrate the kind of resilience needed for these Aboriginal youth to take their place in the world—one that they, too, see as worth living in.

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