Page 371 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

346 L. Carter and N. Walker

Secondly, in western land systems, the general position is that to have property
in something is to be possessed of a set of rights and interests in relation to a thing
owned. The mere assertion of ownership is insufficient – the proprietary or interest
claimed must be both identifiable (i.e., evidenced by physical possession or legal
title – a dichotomy of control/recognition) and enforceable (either actually or
legally). The prerequisite enforceability leads the law to speak of property as a legally
endorsed concentration of powers or rights over things and resources – termed
rights in rem (meaning in Latin: in a thing). Owners are deemed to have, at a mini-
mum, a right to exclude others; but regularly encompass others, such as the right
to use of the property, the right to dispose of or transfer the interest, and the right to
benefits flowing from control (Cohen 1954). Importantly, these rights are thought,
in almost all circumstances, to extinguish prior rights of others – whence the
Eurocentric notion of absolute beneficial ownership. But as Foley’s (2001) example
above shows, none of these western legal property rights hold for the Gai-mariagal
peoples’ views of their sacred places. Rather, an awareness of TEK and border
theory suggests that indigenous understandings of space are far more intuitively
inclusive of the hybridity and interconnectedness:
Indigenous peoples do not view their heritage in terms of property…but in terms of com-
munity and individual responsibility. Possessing a song or medical knowledge carries with
it certain responsibilities to show respect to and maintain a reciprocal relationship with the
human beings, animals, plants and places with which the song, story or medicine is con-
cerned. (Daes 1993)
This reciprocal relationship is a sacred one, which means for Sutton (2003), that
Aboriginal rights in rem flow ultimately from rights in animam (from the Latin: in
spiritual things).
In Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) (Hugo
1831/1993), when faced with the demise of the old ways by the rising power of the
Church, Archdeacon Frollo asks himself: Ceci tuera cela? (Will this murder that?).
Foley’s (2001) response to the same question regarding the position of European
Catholic and Protestant institutions built over Aboriginal burial grounds is a
resounding negative: “The shadows of the stone are the footprints of the spirits;
the raindrops and the streams are the tears and the blood of the land. We are alive, the
land is alive. No colonial power can ever rob us of this” (p. 118).

Implications for Science Education

Many feet now walk our shores, people of all lands of many races. Let us hope that we can
walk in this land and respect it as one – if we do, we call this “yennibu” (to be as one).
(Foley 2001, p. 119)
Our main purpose here has been to draw attention to the need for a more compli-
cated view of borders, border zones and border thinking that better reflect the intricate
interconnections within contemporaneity, and are hence, necessary to address science
education’s theoretical shortcomings that have seen borders typically represented