Page 370 - Cultural Studies of Science Education
P. 370
29 Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Border Theory and Justice 345
Fulbright Scholar and Endeavour Fellow who successfully inhabits the interstitial
spaces of western academia and Aboriginality. His academic interests cross several
disciplines to include indigenous business practices and entrepreneurship, as well as
indigenous epistemology, literature, history, and education. He is also a visual artist.
Dennis Foley wrote the story of his family and his people of whom he is now one of
the few remaining custodians, as many believe there are no surviving Aboriginal
descendents in what is modern day Sydney. While others have written of the region,
Foley (2001) claims that “there is no literature that tells our story from our mouths
or is accurate in its presentation of our people from our perspective” (p. 1).
Within Repossession of Our Spirit, Foley (2001) arranges the content by geographi-
cal place. Under each “localised” heading, his text weaves together history, indigenous
ecological practice, law and spiritual messages, as well as some strong political
commentary on the current status-quo. This approach fits with Snively and Corsiglia’s
(2001) definition of TEK described above. More significantly though, Foley’s (2001)
content organisation attempts a “walking journey” and as such, to replicate an
indigenous knowledge transmission system of “walking country, story and song” or
the walking through a landscape to reveal information at certain sites for purposes
of learning and sharing. It does this within the highly ritualised western knowledge
transmission system of the book form, which in itself, is a bordered object, held
between covers with margins on pages and organised in section and chapters (Rodgers
2008). Hence, Repossession of Our Spirit is, as well as occupies, a liminal space or
border zone where the discrepant codes of the adjacent systems of the western textual
tradition and indigenous walking story converge and attempt to make new meaning.
We have selected one of Foley’s (2001) descriptions of the physical interface
between modern landmarks and TEK places of significance to his people for further
exploration. This extract features the Rookwood Cemetery not far from the 2000
Sydney Olympics Site at Homebush, and Sydney Grammar School and St. Joseph’s
Convent both found in the city of North Sydney:
Rookwood Cemetery covers a traditional burial land.… Most of the early churches and
cemeteries were built on (Aboriginal) sacred land. The power of spirituality within these
Christian enclaves is not that of the conquering colonialist, I would suggest that it is rather
the sedentary and dominant power of the traditional owner’s beliefs that makes these places
so powerful. St Joseph’s Convent and the Sydney Church of England Grammar School …
are examples of Catholic and Protestant institutions located on prime real estate that is also
a sacred site of spiritual enrichment thousands of years before our European brothers sanc-
tified it. (Foley 2001, p. 19)
This passage is interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, we see how colonisa-
tion works to create hybrid spaces, where there exists a “layering” of knowledge
and spiritual practices that are simultaneously enacted on the same geographic
space. This “layering” of histories generates the liminal or interstitial spaces as
described above where the potentially contradictory discourses of western and
Aboriginal spirituality overlap and all types of paradoxes, incommensurabilities,
incoherencies and contradictions can be tolerated or held in tension (Shields 2006).
Given the morphology of the landscape with prominent ridges and rocky outcrops,
it is perhaps not surprising that both knowledges selected these significant spaces
for their important sacred practices.