Truth-telling and the Ancient University: Healing the Wound of Colonisation in Nauiyu, Daly River

This book shares a strength-based truth-telling model, which reveals the trauma associated with the experience of colonisation and the traditional healing practices specific to the Nauiyu Nambiyu community in Australia. It explores the significance of community placed on developing the 'Ancient University', an Aboriginal-based, stand-alone healing centre that incorporates traditional healing practices. This book outlines the truth-telling model, which was developed by the Nauiyu community to address a community need. This unique approach represents a deliberate shift from decolonial scholarship, which merely captures Indigenous voice speaking back to the colonisers. This book explores Indigenous critical pedagogies to investigate theoretical frameworks with implications for planning, learning and teaching which are culturally responsive in a variety of contexts. It is the first of its kind that utilises an Indigenous research methodology on the country and with the people to which it belongs.

Table of Contents:
The context.- The Nauiyu experience of colonisation: Truth-telling as historical waves.- Nauiyu’s cultural colonisation: Truth-telling with Dadirri.- Nauiyu empowerment: Intergenerational voices and stories.- Nauiyu empowerment: Owning our solutions.- Truth-telling and the Ancient University.- Postlude: Mermaid dreaming, murals, moving forward.

About the Author :
Dr. Gavin Morris is a lecturer at Charles Darwin University, Darwin and school principal at Yipirinya School in Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia. He recently completed a Ph.D. examining Aboriginal trauma, the impact of colonisation and traditional healing practices of the Nauiyu Nambiyu community, a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory. The research design of this Ph.D. has been recognised as an exemplar model for relationship building and the co-creation of knowledge within Aboriginal communities. Gavin’s work is now focused on teaching and research in education and Aboriginal health projects across numerous Aboriginal communities across the Northern Territory in Australia. Dr. Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann is a member of the Ngangiwumirri language group and speaks four other local languages. Despite never attending secondary school, she became the Northern Territory's first Indigenous school teacher and the principal of St Francis Xavier school in her home community. Ungunmerr-Baumann is admired throughout the Northern Territory in Australia for the leadership and commitment she has shown, promoting education within Aboriginal communities and ensuring that Aboriginal people have the opportunity to become qualified teachers and manage their own schools. In 1998, she was appointed a member of the Order of Australia, for her services to Aboriginal education and art. In 2002, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Northern Territory University in recognition of her leadership and example in the fields of Aboriginal education and the visual arts and for her contribution to the general community in the Northern Territory. Emeritus Professor Judy Atkinson is a Jiman—Aboriginal Australian (from Central west Queensland) / Bundjalung (Northern New South Wales, Australia) woman, who also has Anglo-Celtic, and German heritage. She holds a B.A. from the University of Canberra and a Ph.D. from QueenslandUniversity of Technology. She is also a graduate of the Harvard University course, Program for Refugee Trauma—Global Mental Health Trauma and Recovery. Judith's primary academic and research focus has been in the area of violence, with its relational trauma, and healing or recovery for Indigenous, and indeed all peoples. She co-authored the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on Violence Report, for the Queensland government. Judith is a member of the Harvard Global Mental Health Scientific Research Alliance. Dr Emma L Schuberg is an educator, interdisciplinary artist and social researcher based in Mparntwe/Alice Springs, Australia. Her scholarship interrogates the intersections of human-nonhuman entanglements, and her recent Ph.D. engaged performative ethnography to tell stories of multispecies knowing and doing amongst the digital transformation era. The focus of her current work explores co-creating with communities shared experiential, multimodal learning that champions decolonised emergent futures. This praxis is grounded in the gritty realities of lived gaps in local economies, health, housing and holistic alternate pedagogies that centre wellbeing.