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Soon, the grounds of the Queensland University of Technology will be a place where Indigenous knowledge and culture is not only celebrated, but given an intellectual space that supports black excellence and innovation.
The new Faculty of Indigenous Knowledges and Culture, announced this week, will operate as a stand-alone faculty, and will deliver academic programs and conduct research.
Angela Barney-Leitch, QUT’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Indigenous Australians, tells NITV that the faculty could influence other academic disciplines.
“The idea for us now is to focus on what Indigenous knowledges means to all knowledge in the university and what difference it can make to the way people at university look at different issues and problems and perspectives. ... It's going to be like a whole Indigenous learning community through, from schools and other areas right through to people undertaking PhDs. And the good thing about it for all Australians is that non-Indigenous students and staff can be part of this, but it will be Indigenous led.”
The faculty, which will launch next year and enrol students in programs from 2025, will be the first of its kind in the country. Professor Chelsea Watego, QUT’s Carumba Institute Executive Director, says that the new faculty will be a welcoming space that counters colonial narratives.
“That faculty that we will offer here will provide so many of our blackfullas with the kind of environment to know who they are, where they come from, to enter into an institution that affirms who they are, affirms their place, that contests the violent knowledges that have been produced about us, that hold systems accountable, that should be doing better. It's a faculty, it's a family but it's also the training ground for an intellectual army that is committed to the survival of our people.”
While the faculty is a learning space for all, there’s a central focus to double current QUT numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders students over the next 5 years.
There are currently just under a thousand First Nations students at QUT – the fourth highest population enrolled in university across the country.
Margaret Sheil is Vice-chancellor of the Queensland University of Technology.
“I think I'm hoping it'll bring the best people, both academics and students, and and create an environment where we really are able to educate, celebrate Black excellence, but also just, you know, we'll see re-engagement I think of many of our outstanding alumni. And so they will want to come and give back. Angela's already talked about the engagement with the community. I think it'll make us a point of difference."
Over the next 12 months, courses under the faculty will be developed in partnership with community organisations in the areas of arts, health, education, justice, business, media, and sport.
Professor Watego also hopes it will help produce more well-informed individuals.
"I think the exciting part for non-Indigenous students is when your foreground Indigenous intellectual sovereignty there's a whole different understanding of humanity and what I find when we bring non-Indigenous people along into these spaces, is the way in which they reconfigure themselves in their relationship to this place, but also what it means to be human."
By centring Indigenous knowledges, Professor Watego believes other areas of learning can see radical change.
"There are really exciting transformative possibilities of rethinking what it means to be a nurse, an engineer, or teacher or social worker when you operate on an Indigenous terms of reference. I think this is the exciting thing, when you get mob together and you give access to education on our terms, you can't even begin to imagine the transformative possibilities and that's the exciting thing for me to be a part of, is to see what our people can do with the tools of these institutions for the betterment of our mob."
