Keywords

We all need belonging. To thrive and contribute meaningfully, belonging is particularly emphasised in First Nations Cultures, and in these cultures, it supports the physiological needs of individuals through individual and collective responsibility. Before you are even dreamed up you belong.

In the colonial context here in what is now named Australia, the concept of belonging is underpinned by constructs that deter experiences of a deeper belonging and is often void of responsibility to the wider community, country and kin (Moreton-Robinson, 2015). Dr. Aileen Moreton-Robinson describes this sense of belonging as one conflated with possession and premised by the greatest lie told in the history of Australia (Terra Nullius 2015). This sense of belonging is in direct opposition with the belonging of First Nations peoples and continues to displace, dispossess and disenfranchise.

Belonging with country is continuous and the strongest point of reference of belonging that is on offer here to all in Australia. Country and its associated teachings centred around respect, humility and responsibility can act as an anchor point of belonging for all who now call Australia home. It can act as a constant in the lives of students if educational institutions can look beyond voyeurism and the consumption of ancient knowledge and better integrate First Nations epistemology and ontology into axiology-based practice. Having a relational epistemology supported by a relational ontology keeps us focused on interrelatedness and interdependence with each other and country (Thayer-Bacon, 2017). Relationality with self, each other and country forms the basis of belonging. Moreton-Robinson explains this relationality as ‘one experiences the self as part of others and [those] others are part of the self; this is learnt through reciprocity, obligation, shared experiences, coexistence, cooperation and social memory’ (Moreton-Robinson, 2000, p. 16).

In a learning context Laurie describes belonging as a ‘profoundly embodied experience that mediates all other aspects of learning, including confidence and trust in one’s abilities, and the capacity to feel empowered through learning as a collective experience’ (Laurie, 2023, p.x). This rings true and is the cornerstone of the approach taken by Aboriginal Cultures for knowledge transference. Identity, kinship and responsibility that form the basis of belonging act as anchor points for attaching and building knowledge.

Educational institutions and approaches today are attempting to foster and centre belonging through content and pedagogical theoretical frameworks and creating ‘safe spaces’ on campuses, however they miss opportunities to foster healthy relationships with country among its faculty and students. Housing Indigenous knowledge is superficial when it is not transferred in the environments in which it belongs. Methodologies used in higher educational instructions in research to collect our knowledges and inform their treatment have been exceptionally problematic. Housing it and being able to pick it up and honour it in the context by which it is meant are two very different things. It’s attached to a values system that is intrinsic with country. When experienced and understood in its respective local context, Indigenous sovereignty can be a vehicle of a deep belonging for all who call Australia home.

This chapter responds to and reinforces the importance of the role of belonging and unbelonging in societal and educational contexts in Australia and builds on understanding Moreton-Robinson’s work and reference to Indigenous sovereignty through a First Nations lens. It also poses the idea that epistemology and ontology without a consideration of practice maintain a superficial approach to education.

Belonging Through a Birrbay and Dhanggati Lens

Before I am birthed into country, my countries, Birrbay and Dhanggati countries, I am dreamed/sung up bilagabirang ngurrabaaguba, from the rivers of the dreaming, my spirit is called into being, this is also where it will return. As I grow in my mother’s womb, I take on the information, I take on belonging of thousands of generations before me in my blood memory. Each ancestor, like me, was entered into relationship with country and kin and their belonging was reinforced through these identities, through relationality and responsibility.

When I was birthed into these countries, my little body was passed through smoke and my feet were placed into the soil and water of my countries, my body collected the microbial DNA from country that I will carry around inside of me for the rest of my life (Gonzalez et al., 2011). Not only am I spiritually connected to my countries through these ceremonies, but I am physically connected, country recognises and belongs to me just as much as I recognise and belong to my country. It is literally inside my body. This relationship is nurtured through ongoing practice and ceremony. When I was birthed, I was given a childhood totem, Dawan, which is the pied butchers bird: I am in kinship with this animal where I am responsible for it and it is responsible for me—we belong to each other. I also inherited through my bloodlines Guula, the koala, and Makurr, the bass. My namesake and women’s totem is Gulwanyang, the black swan. Guyiwan, the grey nurse shark, Gurrigyn, the praying mantis, and Biluun, the stingray, are my nation and clan totems. I know where these kin belong on my country, I know their story as I also belong to these parts of country and their story is country’s story. It is my story. They form part of my belonging.

The knowledge of these kin and my countries belongs to me in that I am responsible for imparting layers of it to others for purpose. I am a custodian of this knowledge. I am gifted this knowledge in layers—as I grow and acquire more knowledge, I am gifted another layer to make sense from. This sense making only comes with reflection and the practical application of this knowledge in the cultural context in which it is intended.

Indigenous sovereignty through my cultures is not only my country and kin but the governance, caretaking and justice systems associated with them as well as the practice of language and knowledge systems that are tied to them. Indigenous sovereignty incorporates environmental justice, anti-racism, social equity and justice, the Rights of Mother Earth, opposition to the commodification and consumption of nature including the desecration of sacred sites and destruction and assaults on lands and waters, and protecting and nurturing tribal sovereignty (Indigenous Environmental Network, 2020). It is not just a spiritual notion that it has often been reduced to in recent political campaigns (Uluru Statement from the Heart, 2017), it is tangible and practical in every sense.

My belonging can never be taken from me when it is through nature I inherit this belonging through my ancestral lineage, but it is often interrupted in a nurture sense. Where Guula once thrived, there is significant housing development; where Guyiwan breeds on our country, we see their numbers dropping each year, and these kin of mine are now considered endangered. Accessing Guula’s specific country for ceremony and practice like cultural burning practices, for example, is particularly tricky in developed areas. Accessing people’s land to our Guyiwan site for ceremony to sing them up through their dreaming/creation/breeding cycles is impossible without attracting accusations of trespassing on our own countries, yet another example of Moreton-Robinson’s white possessive (2015) and the ongoing denial of our sovereignty. Ongoing colonialism poses a significant risk to the loss of knowledge, loss of connection, loss of an ability to uphold responsibility, which translates as a loss of belonging.

I feel this deeply every day and it is tied to my wellbeing.

Unbelonging

Unbelonging is just as important as belonging to reinforce connection and responsibility in our cultures. To be forced into a state of unbelonging from the collective is seen as one of the most severe punishments in customary law. Often, being outcast by your peoples from your country is viewed as more severe than death. There is also an unbelonging that is experienced when navigating other people’s countries or parts of country we are not given permission to, for example, a men’s rite site when being a woman, or parts of someone else’s country that are sacred only to those that carry the bloodline of that country. Prickly goosebumps might form on the body, a sickly feeling in the gut, or a near miss with a deadly snake; a sixth sense is developed when navigating unfamiliar country. It has always been important for us to be welcomed, to knock on the door, so to speak, and wait to be met by neighbouring groups for a sharing of story, of a songline, to reinforce our relationality and receive detailed information on safe passage through their country. Unbelonging is also used in the form of shame in a teaching and learning practice context. Read any dreaming story and you will find elements of fear or shame to communicate values and morals. Shame and fear are used as an important teaching and learning tool in many Indigenous cultures across the world. Once the learning has taken place, it is quickly followed up by love and a reinforcement of belonging.

Unbelonging in the colonial context is weaponised and legislated through genocidal practices like segregation, assimilation and formal policy like that of the White Australia policy (Moreton-Robinson, 2015). My peoples continue to be othered and severed from their belonging, however the modalities by which this occurs are now less overt, such as the taking, possessing and developing, and the locking out of our peoples, from lands and waters. This unbelonging will not be rectified through legislated recognition or assimilative practices of inclusion into existing colonial structures designed to keep us in a state of unbelonging (Uluru Statement from the Heart, 2017), but rather through land back and proper self-determination.

Unbelonging is also experienced at a high rate in Australia by the general community, reflected by high suicide rates, disengaged youth, high incarceration rates and generally poor mental health. The Australian Unity Wellbeing Index created to track wellbeing among Australians over the last 20 years identifies a decline of connection to community as one of the causal factors (Australian Unity, 2020). An Indigenous specific lens would likely argue it also reflects a lack of a healthy connection to self-identity and country (Queensland Health, 2021).

As more truth telling occurs about Australian history, unveiling the lack of stability underpinning a settler sense of belonging that Moreton-Robinson names as a ‘feeling of attachment … to a racialized social status that confers certain privileges’ (2015, p. 4), it gives rise to the thought that unsettling the settlers is not enough. Creating unbelonging is not enough alone. Until relationship is brought back into balance through the repatriation of land and genuine recognition of Indigenous sovereignty, then there is no postcolonialism, and space for fostering belonging among the general community anchored in Indigenous sovereignty may continue to be a pipe dream for First Nations peoples in Australia and their respective allies. Moreton-Robinson’s (2015) concept of The White Possessive is not just a theory, but it is a practice reinforced in laws, actions, psyches of the Australian social, political and legal landscapes.

Walking the Talk: Moving from Theory to Practice

Laurie asserts that ‘A classroom that can navigate the complex interplay of belonging and unbelonging may be better equipped to support difficult scholarly conversations around identity and inequality’ (Laurie, 2023, p. x). It is my view after delivering Cultural Capability training to learners for over ten years that experiencing any unbelonging when interacting with ideas, feeling isolated from others or experiencing a lack of self-trust in educational institutions can significantly impact the wellness and willingness of the learner to take on new information, to move through cognitive dissonance. When posing new ideas or unpacking potentially contentious content, it is essential that practices factor in the importance of maintaining humility and respect in the learning environment.

Learners thrive in environments where they belong. In Aboriginal Cultures belonging is not only reinforced in the epistemology or ontology but also in practice. Strengths-based approaches to learning, an acceptance of others and common-ground approaches highlight the importance of the maintenance of humility and respect. The experience of unbelonging or rather shame is only used in strategic ways when needed to humble ego and is used only when a significant amount of unpacking and support is provided afterwards. Children are nurtured in their belonging, and adolescents are directed through rites of passage that reinforce their belonging at critical points of their development.

It has been asserted that Australian children no longer feel a sense of belonging. A report provided by the Australian Council for Educational Research shows a significant decline in a sense of belonging since 2003 (Allen et al., 2018). The research highlights the links between this decline and increased mental illness among children and adolescence.

Belonging relates to higher levels of student emotional wellbeing and better academic performance and achievement. It also reduces the likelihood of mental health problems, promotes resilience when mental health difficulties are experienced and reduces suicidal thoughts and behaviour. (Allen et al., 2018)

Upon a person’s first interaction with formal education system in Australia, there is an attempt to foster belonging through the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia (Department of Education and Training, 2019). Belonging, Being and Becoming scaffold the outcomes of the framework, and there is mention of connection to community, people and country being important to outcomes:

Children’s connectedness and different ways of belonging with people, country and communities helps them to learn ways of being which reflect the values, traditions and practices of their families and communities. Over time this learning transforms the ways they interact with others. (Department of Education and Training, 2019, p. 28)

If facilitated well in the early years by Early Education providers in partnership with local custodians of country, a strong foundation of belonging can be fostered and nurtured, setting the littlest learners on the path to a healthy relationship with self, others and their environments. The appetite for this, however, would vary significantly among service settings.

Moving into primary and secondary education the idea of fostering belonging is often reduced to the inclusion of the word into vision and mission statements (Allen et al., 2018). Education systems continue to commission research reports on the importance of belonging, and articles facilitate hot tips on how to ‘boost students’ sense of belonging’ (Allen, 2019), but the practical application of these statements and resources is yet to translate to outcomes (Allen et al., 2018).

Many attempts have been made to foster and centre the concept of belonging within an education context, whether it be the higher education approaches in the 1990s (Wilson et al., 2018) that informed strategies of diversity and inclusion in whole of institution approaches to belonging (Morieson et al., 2013) or the theoretical frameworks mentioned at the early years and schooling levels of education. These attempts often do not explore or capture the experience of belonging with country or kin and can sometimes reflect little respect for difference, social justice and inequality, power and privilege and risk inflicting racialized harm (Souto-Manning, 2021, p. 22).

Aboriginal Cultures are well positioned to enact this belonging as these respects already exist within the teachings of country. This reinforces the need for educational institutions first and foremost to belong with the country they are on. A mere slapping of an acknowledgement on a podium or building does not indicate a healthy relationship with country. Retrofitted ‘embedding of Indigenous perspectives into the curriculum’, a brief mention of eight ways pedagogy, or throwing a few Aboriginal slang words into content design or delivery does not indicate a healthy relationship with these knowledge systems.

Besides a small bush tucker garden, how is the institution giving back to country the space that it has now taken? What spaces have been incorporated on these campuses that highlight the importance of country and caring for it? How is this institution treating and sharing knowledges of country and kin in non-voyeuristic, healthy ways within a local and culturally relevant context? How are they working with the custodians of that knowledge of country? How is knowing and being translated into practice? How do these institutions help support and facilitate belonging between students and the country they are on? This could be embedded throughout the institution and not othered as a belonging unit, space, or segregated to a garden area.

All Our Belonging

So, what about Indigenous sovereignty, rather than the Australian nation-state, as the ground of belonging? What if you were birthed into country as I was? What if as a non-Indigenous person in Australia you connected with the country in which you work and live in a meaningful way? What if country gave you identity, connection and responsibility? What if you learnt the language of country and how to be in relationship with it? What if no matter where you moved on that country you felt you belonged, and this sense of belonging was facilitated through ongoing practice with country and people who also belong to that country? Sure, your belonging with country would be a nurture-based rather than a nature-based relationship that has a bloodline, but this belonging is hard for another to take from you when it is authentic.

Maybe a relationship with Indigenous sovereignty locally will have you understanding the importance of Wakulda, meaning to be in oneness and take responsibility of yourself and to others, maybe you will learn of Ngukalil, the concept of I give, you give and reciprocity with all living things or maybe you will learn Maa-bularrbabu, the next seven, that we should always act with the next seven generations in mind. Maybe you will learn these at the right time when they are most relevant, on country in practical ways. Maybe deeper learning can happen around these and with it a deeper sense of belonging. Maybe you could gain this belonging through connecting with country and custodians as you grow, and it is reinforced in formal education systems.

Conclusion

There is no after belonging for me as I always belong when I think about my sense of belonging with people and country. I am acutely aware of the environments that are designed to reinforce my unbelonging in Australia as a Birrbay and Dhanggati woman. Wellness and belonging for each person who resides in Australia could be better strengthened through Indigenous sovereignty, through a facilitation of connection to country from birth. A staying always in belonging with a constant like country and its teachings even when engaging with temporary experiences of unbelonging keeps people grounded and connected. Educational institutions could play a significant role in helping to facilitate and reinforce this relationship by working with local custodians of country and walking the talk of moving beyond theoretical approaches and applying these into practice by actively contributing towards the strengthening and maintenance of Indigenous sovereignty.