This thesis explores place-based experiences of non-Indigenous persons in Australia. It examines the extent to which it is possible for non-Indigenous persons to enter deeply into Indigenous ways of seeing and/or knowing place and what the implications of this may be in terms of personal identity and belonging in Australia today. The thesis draws upon the emerging cross-disciplinary field of place studies and is embedded in the discursive space of the encounter between Western and Indigenous knowledge systems. The Indigenous concept of ganma, meaning ‘meeting place’, the meeting of saltwater and freshwater bodies, is the organising principle by which the encounter is examined. Because place-based experiences are the central focus of this study, phenomenology has been chosen as the methodological framework that can hold the complexity, multilayered meaning and ambiguity characteristic of the human experience. What informs this research is a hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry. The specific methods used to carry through such an approach involve three aspects: observations of and conversations with Aboriginal Yuin Elder Uncle Max Harrison in order to shed light on the cross cultural experience; open-ended phenomenological interviews with four participants who received land-based teachings with the Elder aimed at bringing forth the quality of their experiences; and first person phenomenological research through different forms of textual production that reflect the nature of deep engagement and dialogue with place. The discussion chapters confirm the complexities of the encounter between two cultures yet demand a rethink of the intercultural space, the ganma. A new notion of ganma is proposed where a shared sense of place between Indigenous and non-Indigenous persons is Participants in the research had a powerful and profound embodied experience of Aboriginal culture, of Aboriginal place or country. These outcomes derive not through borrowing from or wholesale appropriation of another culture, but from direct experiencing and through direct dialogue. The nexus of the interchange is revealed to be an exceedingly complex structure. First, place is no blank space - it is inscribed and saturated with meaning. Country continues to exert its influence, inform, evolve and reveal itself. The potency of country is particularly strong when that site is a sacred site. Second, the influence of the Aboriginal Elder, as mediator of the teaching sites, has considerable impact. Third, the individual’s own psychic contents are brought to bear in any relationship with place. It is posited that an unhinging takes place that allows the shift from one mode of experiencing reality, a Western way of inhabiting the world, to another mode, an Indigenous way of being in the world. The venturer into the new ganma straddles both worlds, is able to adjust to the transfer of knowledge from one cultural context to another and adopts aspects of both cultures into their new conceptual framework. This new merging of the ancient and the modern incorporates place as inscribed with ancient meanings and place with new meanings and new inscriptions. Narratives of place embody the evolving notion of switching modes of reality to switching modes of being as new ongoing forms that challenge existing cultural explanations. The integration of an Aboriginal worldview in non-Indigenous persons may be leading towards the development of a new sensitivity that connects us with place, more informed by Indigenous ways of being. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/185838 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Birrell, Carol L., University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, School of Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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