Connecting Our Stories: Writing an Indigenous Studies Textbook

This chapter outlines the rationale embedded in the teaching of Indigenous Studies through the Faculty of Arts and Design (FAD) at the University of Canberra (UC), Australia. Our collective works collaboratively across our teaching and research through the First Nations Collaborative Research Web (the Web). The units in Indigenous Studies offer a progressive set of learning encounters via units named: Connections to Country, Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Indigenous Cultures and Digital Contexts and Culture: Voicing the Living Archive. When teaching, we draw on our lived experience, academic backgrounds, and share a little of our knowledge of our Countries (the places we hold ancestral connections to). To do this we talk about research we have done on Country and sometimes tell stories linked to Country or speak the words that have been passed down through family. A key aim is to help students to understand diversity and that each Country produces distinct ways of knowing, being and doing. By compiling some of our anti-colonial teaching practices, research approaches and materials into an open access textbook, we aim to share our stories and learnings to support the learning of students in our units and inspire others to enact anti-colonial teaching and research practices.