On (urban) Country learning through field schools and storymaps
by Professor Kate Lloyd & Helga Simon
Fieldwork is a foundational component of geographic education, supporting students to develop key skills in relationship-building, ethical engagement, participant observation, and research co-design, implementation and communication. Nonetheless, ‘the field’ is a contested concept because it is not an abstract space ‘out there’, it is our world we all live in and have relationships to. And in Australia, wherever we are, we are always on Indigenous Country.
For the past two years Macquarie University's Geography and Planning Field School has worked closely with Indigenous knowledge holders at Murama Healing Space in Sydney Olympic Park on Dharug Ngurra (Dharug Country). In this course, second-year undergraduate students engage with urban Country, with Indigenous knowledge holders, and conduct ‘fieldwork’ through ethical engagement principles, collaborative research processes, critical self-reflection, and the careful communication of research findings through the digital tool StoryMap. Most students who take this unit are enrolled in Bachelor of Planning or Bachelor of Education degrees and are keen to get out of the classroom and into ‘the field’ – Dharug Ngurra.
Greater Western Sydney on Dharug Ngurra is today home to one of Australia’s largest populations of Indigenous people. Many of Western Sydney’s Aboriginal residents have heritages and traditional connections to many different Indigenous Countries throughout Australia. The Murama Healing Space officially opened in June 2019 in response to a lack of dedicated public spaces where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth from Western Sydney and beyond can connect with Country and learn culture and language. You can read more about Murama and Sydney Olympic Park Authority's unique Indigenous-led engagement of this public space here.
What does urban Country mean
In Aboriginal worldviews, everywhere and everything is Country, “a living entity with a yesterday, today and tomorrow, with a consciousness, and a will toward life … Country is not a generalised or undifferentiated type of place,” something ‘over there’ to be drawn or operated on. Rather, it is a concept in which the “values of life are pre-given …” (Rose, 1996, p.7). There is increasing recognition that Country encompasses not only more remote or regional places – Australian cities, too, are located on Indigenous Country.
In recent years, Dharug scholars have highlighted how Sydney is Dharug Ngurra (see Dharug Ngurra et al 2019, 2021, 2023, 2024 by the Dharug-led Yanama Budyari Gumada collective, as well as publications by Dharug scholar Dr Jo Rey: https://dharugcountryxcity.com.au/about/). Terms such as ‘urban Country’ and ‘city-as-Country' are making their way into public discourse, and highlight how connecting to Country does not require “wilderness”, “the Outback”, or “the countryside” – connecting to Country is possible everywhere.
Murama Healing Space is an important place for thinking about connections to urban Country. As a site with heavy colonial, industrial, toxic and military legacies, visitors to the Space are nonetheless invited to connect with Country. This public space is a site of adaptive re-use that has been environmentally rehabilitated and which also seeks to reaffirm diverse Aboriginal presences and heritages on Dharug Ngurra. It is also a place open to all – Indigenous and non-Indigenous - who wish to learn to connect with Country in the city.
On urban Country learning
In 2024, we wanted students to use the field school as an opportunity to engage urban Country.
We posed the questions:
- How does Murama Healing Space demonstrate a Country-centred approach?
- How does it align with the Connecting with Country framework?
- How can a Country-centred approach to creating public space lead to increased wellbeing for kin and Country?
Students were introduced to two Indigenous frameworks that have been designed to facilitate learning on and from Country:
The Kin & Country Framework (Bishop & Tynan, 2022), devised by two Ab(Original) women, Gamilaroi scholar Michelle Bishop and Pairrebeenne Trawlwoolway scholar Lauren Tynan, responds to the recognition that there are historical, cultural and personal challenges facing non-Indigenous teachers when incorporating Indigenous ways of knowing into classroom settings. The Framework invokes more-than-human agencies as they share teachings and relational perspectives through four entities that represent four unique perspectives: Eagle, Ant, Grandmother, and Granddaughter. Each perspective performs a different way of knowing and seeing.
The Connecting with Country framework (GANSW, 2023) is a guide for built environment professionals to learn and practice what the framework calls “a Country-centred approach”. It sets out “practices for enabling a new approach” fundamental to seeing/thinking/doing planning through Indigenous lenses, providing guidance in shifting from human-centred to Country-centred approaches. International planning consultancy GHD’s Indigenous Engagement Team spoke with the students about the framework and the various ways it is employed across NSW, including at the Western Sydney Aerotropolis.
Source: Connecting with Country framework, page 33 (GANSW, 2023).
Rather than teaching students about specific Indigenous knowledges or directly teaching them about Country, these frameworks offer students a way of learning about how knowledge is understood, the processes for knowledge generation, and the priority of learning from, with and as Country.
Developing and maintaining strong relationships is foundational to the field school and underpinned all learning. Culturally safe knowledge transmission relies on authentic and trusting relationships between non-Indigenous and Indigenous educators. Before taking the field school to Murama Healing Space, our teaching team developed a strong working relationship with Dr John Hunter, co-founder of the Murama Healing Space. Likewise, our team worked closely over several years with Dr Lauren Tynan, co-author of the Kin & Country framework. As such, we were able to model the ways in which relationships with Indigenous knowledge holders is a fundamental part of any Country-centred approach.
Uncle John and Ayoola Shognule from Murama facilitated the students’ site visits and cultural learning. Lauren introduced the students to the Kin & Country framework. Students were encouraged to ask questions and learn directly from Indigenous knowledge holders. The sharing and learning from both Uncle John and Lauren are generous and generative opportunities for students to develop their learning of and with Country but they are also important for truth-telling and as an act of reconciliation (Rey, Simons).
Photo: Helga Simon
The experience of being on Country is not simply between ‘you’ and ‘Country.’ This would imply that there is a separation between the two. The reality is, it is not actually ‘between’ anything, rather it is connecting with more-than-human (and/or human) kin – much like being part of a family. Through this unit and attending the Murama Healing Space, I have become more acquainted with the concept of connecting and experiencing Country as more than simply the entity in which I exist upon. There is no ‘you’ and ‘Country’ – as really, we too, are Country.
2024 student reflection
Field school storymaps – what did they do?
Students worked in groups to develop digital StoryMaps about Murama Healing Space. StoryMaps are interactive digital storybooks that combine maps, text, images, and multimedia content to tell a compelling story. This form of storying and reflection can be a great way to enhance Student learning and reflection. Students were able to use StoryMaps to reflect on and communicate the complex nature of Dharug Ngurra at Murama, and the ways that diverse heritages, histories, stories, values and senses of place are represented in and through the Space.
Each student group developed a StoryMap to communicate different aspects of these stories to specific audiences - e.g. to planners, teachers, school children, and the general public. The StoryMaps aimed to enable readers to become more familiar with the practices of sensing, learning, and being on Country. Students engaged the Connecting with Country and/or Kin and Country frameworks to reflect on the different ways of seeing/thinking/doing, and to trial different methods of storytelling, data collection, and critical analysis.
On completion of the field school, students reflected upon their learning. Their reflections and their final StoryMaps indicated that being out of the classroom and on-Country, hearing from Uncle John, and reflecting carefully on the Kin and Country Framework were the three most powerful elements that helped them to understand the concept of Country and to engage in developing Country-centred approaches.
Given many of the students will go on to be the planners and educators of the future, students reported feeling better equipped to engage Indigenous knowledges and knowledge-holders in their professional careers. At a personal level, we hope the unit gives students some understanding and first-hand experiences of connecting with (urban) Country.
Explore student storymaps
Murama Healing Space: Engaging with country through sensory methods
Our storymap is designed with five multisensory aspects: sound, sight, thinking, touch, and smell. Every sensory aspect is essential to engage with and interconnect with, and although these are different, they identify with and connect with the Country.
Teaching Teachers: a Country-Centred Framework
Through reflective content and exercises this storymap will endeavour to help teachers convey to their students the essence of Indigenous philosophies, in a manner that we intend will help students critically reflect on and deepen their perceptions and understanding of Indigenous perspectives and philosophies.
Entangled Life: Finding Identity through More-Than-Human Kin - an educators guide
Stage Three children experience multiple developmental changes as they age and subsequently experience impacts on their self-esteem due to the physical and emotional changes happening during puberty. In response to these factors, we created an educator's guide that aims to use place as a pathway to fostering well-being and a stronger sense of identity.
Healing at Sydney Olympic Park - Murama Healing Space
An interactive storymap that connects with Country and encourages healing through listening to its teachings and engaging with culture.
Rethinking Public Spaces - a digital field trip for Planners
This field trip focuses on the co-design of the public spaces in Sydney Olympic Park. It contains questions and reflections for planners about how we can respond to Country using initiatives such as the Connecting with Country Framework, and how we can activate cultural and spiritual aspects of Indigenous Country.
Sydney Olympic Park - a digital field trip for primary school children
This digital field trip is aimed at primary school children and encourages them to consider the historical, ecological and innovative spaces within Sydney Olympic Park. Students will be asked to observe, ask questions and collect information as they make their way through the story map.
An avian guide to Sydney Olympic Park parkland ecology
This storymap integrates cartographic features and points of interest of the local area onto the map's user-interface, requiring viewer/human navigation (zooming in by clicking and panning by dragging with each slide) to fully experience the bird's-eye perspective of our Eastern Curlew narrator.
Header image: detail from Healing at Sydney Park StoryMap
Bishop, M., & Tynan, L. (2022). Finding perspective through our more-than-human kin. In The Routledge Handbook of Global Development (pp. 593-604). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003017653-57
Bishop, M., & Tynan, L. (2024). Incorporating Indigenous perspectives through the Kin and Country Framework. mETAphor(3).
Dharug Ngurra with Dadd L, Glass P, Scott R, Graham M, & Suchet-Pearson S (2019) Yanama budyari gumada: reframing the urban to care as Dharug Country in western Sydney. Australian Geographer. 50(3): 279-293 https://doi.org/10.1080/00049182.2019.1601150
Dharug Ngurra including Dadd L, Norman C, Graham M, Suchet-Pearson S, Lemire J, Scott S and Narwal H (2021) Buran Murrira. An Indigenous-led Model of Cross-cultural Engagement for Walking with Good Spirit on Darug Ngurra. AlterNative. An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 17(3): 357-367 https://doi.org/10.1177/11771801211023210
Dharug Ngurra with Dadd L, Norman C, Possum V, Graham M, Suchet-Pearson S, Narwal H, Scott R, Lemire J, & Suchet-Pearson R (2024) Gurung Dharug Ngurrawa (Kids on Dharug Country) Gurung Dharug Ngurrawa (kids on Dharug Country)–centring children’s experiences of Indigenous-led tourism: Tourism Geographies, 26(6), 970–992 https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2024.2305877
Dharug Ngurra with Dadd L, Norman-Dadd C, Narwal H, Glass P, Suchet-Pearson S, O’Gorman E, Houston D, Graham M, Scott R, & Lemire J (2023) Legal Pluralism on Dyarubbin: Country-as-Lore/Law in Western Sydney, Australia. GeoHumanities, 9(2), 355–379 https://doi.org/10.1080/2373566X.2023.2182699
GANSW, The Government Architect NSW (2023). Connecting with Country framework. Retrieved from https://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/government-architect-nsw/policies-and-frameworks/connecting-with-country
Porter, L. (2018). From an urban country to urban Country: confronting the cult of denial in Australian cities. Australian Geographer, 49(2), 239-246. https://doi.org/10.1080/00049182.2018.1456301
Rey, J. A. (2019). Dharug Custodial Leadership: Uncovering Country in the City. WINHEC: International Journal of Indigenous Education Scholarship, 1, 56-66. https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/winhec/article/view/18941
Rose, D. B. (1996). Nourishing terrains: Australian Aboriginal views of landscape and wilderness / Deborah Bird Rose. Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission.
