“Being at Home in the World”: Philosophical Reflections with Aboriginal Teachers

Abstract

The possibility of building an interface between indigenous concepts, ways of thinking, and practices with mainstream or culturally “dominant” traditions presents a challenge to many societies. In the Australian context, the proposed project shares with other nations a number of historically common features, including a history of the dispossession of the original inhabitants, a lengthy period of colonial control, and massive cultural disruption. As a philosopher working with students of Aboriginal background in a teacher education program over many years, I have been concerned with questions about what constitutes knowledge, being, reality, and other themes, which while familiar to the Western philosophical tradition are now critically assessed by a different paradigm. A useful conceptual peg is that of “being at home in the world” a cluster of ideas generated over many years in class discussions and student journal writing, providing opportunities to articulate crucial conceptions of “country” and “place” central to Aboriginal thinking. Utilizing philosophical and social sciences literature from the mainstream that foreground notions of place and belonging, opportunities are thus afforded for exploration of differences in worldview. Recalling some earlier attempts to explore a possible indigenous/nonindigenous interface, I am reminded of the pitfalls encountered in trying to explain one culture in terms of another.