‘Hearing the Country’: Reflexivity as an Intimate Journey into Epistemological Liminalities

Abstract

In this article I discuss the way Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and reflexivity is employed in a university environment to address the question of how we can most successfully transfer knowledge about the presumed Other into our own cultural space without reducing, fragmenting, and exoticising complex knowledge systems. My goal is to stimulate in students an awareness of, and empathic engagement with, Indigenous epistemologies and Indigenous perspectives on environment, other species, moral ecology and cultural and commercial activities undertaken on Country. In this article I focus on one particular course in which I use ethnographic scenarios as learning triggers for weekly workshops to provide a multi-sensorial and experiential style of learning. Topics range from the construction of ethnoclassificatory systems to the construction of kinship as an expression of moral ontological frameworks. The process draws on over 30 years experience working with the Yanyuwa families of the southwest Gulf of Carpentaria in the Northern Territory. Central to the success of the course are the li-Yanyuwa li-Wirdiwalangu (Yanyuwa knowledge holders), a core group of senior men and women who play an active daily role in the maintenance and dissemination of Yanyuwa knowledge systems, increasingly a site of their own empowerment. In consultation with Bradley, they have selected and annotated core ethnographic information which I have then developed into PBL triggers for the course.