Indigenous Awakenings: Facing the challenges of education, culture, and healing in Aboriginal Australia

Abstract

Using auto-ethnography, this study recounts personal life experiences from an Aboriginal Australian and minority perspective while engaging in reflective critical analysis of learning within mainstream educational institutions. Reconstructing the story of Indigenous culture and spirituality, the study examines personal, social, and political issues with the help of analytical tools including experimental writing, poetry, and story telling. These approaches provide a narrative basis for generative healing work at personal and social levels, creating a dialogical space where aspects of autobiography (personal story) and ethnographic analysis (sociohistorical context) act to challenge dominant ways of knowing. These practices honour the context of more traditional cultural ways of knowing within an Indigenous worldview. The work seeks to reframe challenging life experiences to enable a clear knowledge of how Aboriginal spirituality and culture can be reclaimed and celebrated in today's world.