Introduction to Indigenous knowledges and decolonial futures

This workshop aims to develop understanding and knowledge of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, history and culture, worldviews and perspectives and how these compare and contrast with Western cultures.  

We will commence with an introduction, background and context, followed by a historical and contemporary overview of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and politics, then an exploration of cultural difference and First Peoples perspectives, concluding with practical decolonial actions that flow from these perspectives.  The format will include presentations, interactive exercises in small breakout groups and facilitated general questions and discussion.

There will be a one hour break for lunch.

The workshop will be facilitated by Yin Paradies, an Aboriginal-Asian-Anglo Australian of the Wakaya people from the Gulf of Carpentaria. He is Professor of Race Relations at Deakin university where he conducts research on the health, social and economic effects of racism as well as anti-racism theory, policy and practice across diverse settings, including online, in workplaces, schools, universities, housing, the arts, and health. He also teaches and undertakes research in Indigenous knowledges. Yin is a climate and ecological activist who is deeply committed to understanding and interrupting the devastating impacts of modernity, including the need to relinquish debt, property, institutions and nation states. He instead seeks meaningful mutuality of becoming and embodied kinship with all life through transformed ways of knowing, being and doing that are grounded in wisdom, humility, respect and generosity. He is a current Moora Moora resident, who moved to the mountain in 2020 in order to be in community, cultivate a closer connection to Country, and engage in an ethos of down-shifted collective sufficiency, voluntary simplicity, frugality, direct democracy and radical localisation.

Image used with permission of Bawaka Country, from the "Intercultural communication handbook".