Signposts and Messagesticks: An Ethnographic Study of Non-Indigenous Drama Teachers’ Engagement with an Indigenous Drama Text Mark Eckersley Master of Education (University of Melbourne, Australia), Graduate Diploma of Education (Deakin University, Australia), Bachelor of Arts (QUT, Australia) A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Education, October 2019. School of Education Faculty of Education and Arts, Australian Catholic University Research Service Locked Bag 4115, Fitzroy, Victoria 3065, Australia. SIGNPOSTS AND MESSAGE STICKS Declaration This thesis contains no material that has been extracted in whole or in part from a thesis that I have submitted towards the award of any other degree or diploma in any other tertiary institution. No other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgment in the main text of the thesis. All research procedures reported in the thesis received the approval of the relevant Ethics/Safety Committees. Mark Eckersley ii SIGNPOSTS AND MESSAGE STICKS Acknowledgements The completion of this thesis is due to the assistance of many individuals. Without their guidance and support and expertise, I would not have been able to embark on this research and complete this thesis. Firstly, I would like to express my deepest thanks to Professor Brendan Bartlett, my principal supervisor, for his great guidance, help and patience during the supervision of this thesis. His supervision, insightfulness, enthusiasm and diverse research interests truly helped to shape this study and guide me through to completion. I am also grateful to Dr Joanna Barbousas who acted as my initial principal supervisor who helped in the initial refinement of my research at the start of the research process. Secondly, thanks also must go to my various co-supervisors including Dr Terri Seddon and Associate Prof Clarence Ng. Special thanks and gratitude goes to my Indigenous Australian Associate Supervisors Dr Nerida Blair and Dr Harry Van Issum who gave invaluable insights during my research and writing processes. I also thank international colleagues and friends working in this for their advice and insights especially Dr Laila Boisselle. Thirdly, I wish to thank the many other Indigenous Australian knowledge holders including Uncle Bob Maza, Uncle Jack Davis, Aunty Maureen Watson, Uncle Trevor Gallagher and my friends on the Indigenous Australian Facebook Forums ‘Boomerang Justice Returns 2’ and ‘Australia has a Black History – Stand Up and be Counted’. All these people and groups over the years have taken the time and care to share their stories and knowledges with me. Their generosity has been boundless. Finally, I would like to acknowledge and thank my family: Fiona, Jade, Tasman and my deceased mother, Vilma. Any doctorate is a long process that requires the patient support iii SIGNPOSTS AND MESSAGE STICKS of family who deal daily with the time and energy that one has to put into research over a number of years. Without their support, this research would not have been possible. iv SIGNPOSTS AND MESSAGE STICKS Prologue I wish to preface this research by introducing myself and my story. This is not only because Indigenous protocols advocate this, but because without my story, it could be considered presumptuous for me to tread in this field of research. This prologue was first sent as an ‘offer’ of my story to one of my Indigenous Australian co-supervisors. It is a sketch of my journey prior to this study, a journey into an unknown landscape. Telling my story helped to open up Indigenous guidance from Indigenous knowledge holders. I do not seek to claim authority with this prologue since that would be disrespectful and reinforce white privilege. Rather, this prologue seeks to open up reconciliation and understandings by showing a personal journey of growth in understanding while attempting to balance out the injustices of the past. I hope that like the description by a Wik woman of John Danalis in the Preface to his book Riding the Black Cockatoo (Danalis, 2010, p. iv), that this Prologue shows a ‘whitefella who’s learned to listen’. I wish to forewarn Indigenous Australian readers that the names of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have passed away may be mentioned in my story and research. In this work, I start with four questions that seem to me to underpin my engagement as a non-Indigenous Australian in a space where Indigenous Australians are the custodians of much of the landscape, its traditions and its ‘ways of Knowing’ I ask myself: ‘Where is my place? What is my landscape? What is my story? How do I tread with soft padded feet?’ These questions were posed by Indigenous Australian knowledge bearers who I was lucky enough to have contact with throughout my life. The first two questions were the first words the great Australian actor, writer, director, activist and proud Indigenous man of Murray Islander and Yidinjdi heritage, Bob Maza. He asked me these questions when we met in 1987. These questions were asked as part of simple introductions and inquiries at our first meeting, v SIGNPOSTS AND MESSAGE STICKS yet to me and others these were and are profound questions that require continuous self- reflection. The third question is the first that Ernie Dingo, the enigmatic and vivacious Indigenous Australian actor, comedian, personality and teacher from the Yamatji people, asked when we met in 1987. The answer to this question is always circular, changeable and developing. The last question was posed to me and others by Maureen Watson, a woman from Kungulu country who was an Indigenous Australian elder, actor, writer, singer, storyteller and activist. Her question came at the end of a story she told in 1989 when we worked on the Mairwair Project, a performance project involving over 80 Indigenous Australian performers and more than 1,200 differently-abled, non-Indigenous Australian performers that told the story of Mairwair (the Brisbane River). This is a question, a reminder and a promise intertwined, like fingers in contemplation or prayer. In her book Privileging Australian Indigenous Knowledge – Sweet Potatoes, Spiders, Waterlilys and Brick Walls (2015), Nerida Blair (an Indigenous Australian academic who acted as Associate Supervisor for this research) emphasised the importance of introducing oneself, and connections to honour the lessons one has learnt (Blair 2015, p. xv). While this may seem to be a more Indigenous way of introducing one’s perspective and story, since my study explores how non-Indigenous secondary drama teachers engage with Indigenous culture and knowledges (and as a non-Indigenous drama teacher who has been privileged to have had some level of contact and engagement with Indigenous peoples, communities and stories), it seems to me that I should attempt to tell the story of my own engagement with Indigenous Australian people, cultures and ‘ways of Knowing’. I lived my childhood on what I respectfully acknowledge as the homelands and nations of the Turrbal and Jagera peoples who cared for these lands passing on the stories of Country continuously until the 1820s non-Indigenous soldiers, convicts and settlers arrived, taking the land and languages and imposing names that had no connections to the places they colonised. vi SIGNPOSTS AND MESSAGE STICKS I grew up in an Australia where most Australians always celebrated Australia Day and flew the Australian flag—a flag dominated by a sea of deep blue with the Commonwealth star and the stars of the Southern Cross and depicting the British Union Jack floating in the canton as if it yearned to sail back to its British home. Every morning at school we sang ‘God Save the Queen’, although I think the irony of this did not escape me even then. In 1995, government institutions and schools began to fly the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags in addition to the Australian flag. In 2002, warnings and protocols for public broadcasts that referenced deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were adopted. In 2008, Welcome to Country and Acknowledgement of Country protocols were adopted in schools and public institutions. Perhaps these are mere tokens, or perhaps they are conceivably part of a larger and slower acknowledgement by non-Indigenous Australians that Australia was never Terra Nullius. It is possible that non-Indigenous Australians are coming to understand that Australia always was and always will be a diverse collection of peoples and nations. Conceivably, these steps may be part of a greater acknowledgement, valuing and perhaps even privileging of Australian Indigenous peoples, who make up a rich tapestry of over 250 strong nations with more than 150 languages still surviving, and who have lived in Australia for over 50,000 years. Sometime around 1967, my mother and I traversed King George Square in the city of Brisbane to join a rally to support the 1967 Referendum to ‘… alter the Constitution so as to omit certain words relating to the People of the Aboriginal Race in any State and so that Aboriginals are to be counted in reckoning the Population’. When it was explained to me what this meant, I remember asking my mother why Aboriginal people were not already counted in the population since they lived in Australia and had lived here for longer than other people. In 1970, my mother took me to a poetry reading by Oodgeroo Noonuccal of the Noonuccal people from the island of Minjerriba (known to most people as North Stradbroke vii SIGNPOSTS AND MESSAGE STICKS Island), who read from her collection We Are Going in a backroom of the Brisbane City Hall. I believe that this was soon after Oodgeroo Noonuccal won the Mary Gilmore Medal. On that day, the melancholic but beautiful words of Oodgeroo Noonuccal echoed in Brisbane City Hall’s backroom.