ABSTRACT
Opportunities for learning through Indigenous epistemological traditions within Australia’s formal education systems are rare. Indigenous communities have repeatedly fought against the systemic marginalisation of their own languages and knowledge traditions within their own local schools as an enduring colonial dynamic between the Anglocentrism of Australia’s formal education system and the holders of Australia’s rich Indigenous knowledge traditions has worked to normalise the values and perspectives of the Transatlantic metropole. In this chapter, I explore the work of the Warlpiri educator, artist and scholar, Steven Wantarri Jampijinpa Patrick, also known as Wanta, in his development and application of Indigenous educational philosophies in the contexts of his hometown, Lajamanu, in the remote Tanami Desert in Australia’s Northern Territory, and our collaborative design and teaching of the course, Indigenous Music and Media, at the Australian National University. I demonstrate the roots of Wanta’s educational philosophy in Warlpiri tradition through his adaptation of Warlpiri public ceremony for use in new educational contexts, and examine how his approach aims to ensure the survival of Warlpiri ways of being and knowing while simultaneously championing their legitimacy as a means of learning that can hold intrinsic value and beneficial outcomes for all.
