Making Indigenous studies relevant in the academy

Indigenous Studies has undergone radical change in the Academy over the last 30 years. Overwhelmingly, Indigenous Studies is taken up by Indigenous students in Indigenous programs while the exposure of Australian undergraduates to Indigenous perspectives and knowledges has experienced declining enrolment. Other emerging disciplines have drawn on Indigenous perspectives, but the disciplinary status and relevance of Indigenous studies in the Academy continues to be unclear.

Recently, two new university wide trans disciplinary elective subjects were developed by the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning Academic Unit; 'Reconciliation Studies' and 'Representations of Aboriginal People, History and Place'.

In developing these subjects the author has experimented with a diverse range of teaching and assessment practices that have opened up new perspectives on the disciplinary nature of Indigenous studies and place of Indigenous perspectives and knowledge in the Academy.

These developments can be understood in terms of new thinking in the area of the 'scholarship of teaching' and the contribution that Indigenous perspectives can make to this discussion.