Abstract
This digital story project aims to demonstrate the capacity of digital storytelling to generate the insights, understandings, and ways of knowing that are frequently associated with transformational learning. An illustrative digital story is shared alongside snapshots of a storymaking journey from poem to digital story. At its deepest level, this undertaking raises the question: “Is there a space for ‘soul-work’ in the house of long-life learning?” As scholars and practitioners working with an expanding range of arts and technology-based approaches to supporting learning, we must demonstrate a commitment to cultivating corresponding levels of personal engagement. This project is offered as an example of a practitioner-scholar stepping into the creative realm of making and sharing. Drawing on the transformative learning (TL)” approaches which influenced the development and implementation of the Indigenous Community Management and Development Program (ICMDP) and the emerging Indigenous” ontologies of transformation, we describe how Indigenous knowledges (IK)” and practices have helped to transform individual, community, and broader social and political realities. Evidence of transformative possibilities and the enactment of the discourse of empowerment and self-determination are provided through ICMDP graduate voices and experiences of incorporating Indigenous terms of reference (ITR) and navigating the cultural interface to improve their own and their family and community lives. It draws on Roz Walker’s (RW’s) PhD dissertation, titled Transformative Strategies in Indigenous Education: Decolonization and Positive Social Change (2004), documenting her reflections and experience in this highly innovative and emancipatory curriculum development project, and Rob McPhee’s (RM’s) experience and reflections of his transformative journey as a student (1995–1997), teacher and program coordinator (1998–2007), and their theoretical observations of and actions in navigating the social and political context of Indigenous education within Australia.
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Walker, R., McPhee, R. (2022). Transforming First Nations Individual and Community Realities: Reflections on a Decolonizing Higher Education Project. In: Nicolaides, A., Eschenbacher, S., Buergelt, P.T., Gilpin-Jackson, Y., Welch, M., Misawa, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Learning for Transformation. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84694-7_15
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