Being ourselves, naming ourselves, writing ourselves: Indigenous Australian women disrupting what it is to be academic within the academy

Authors

Bronwyn Fredericks, University of Queensland
Nereda White, Australian Catholic Unversity
Sandra Phillips, University of Technology Sydney
Tracey Bunda, University of Southern Queensland
Marlene Longbottom, University of WollongongFollow
Debbie Bargallie, Griffith University

RIS ID

135370

Publication Details

B. Fredericks, N. White, S. Phillips, T. Bunda, M. Longbottom & D. Bargallie, "Being ourselves, naming ourselves, writing ourselves: Indigenous Australian women disrupting what it is to be academic within the academy", in Academic writing and identity constructions: Performativity, space and territory in academic workplaces (eds A. B. Reinersten & L. M. Thomas), (Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, Switzerland, 2019) 75-96.

Abstract

This chapter shares the experience of a group of Indigenous women with academic writing. In our stories, we discuss the professional and personal challenges we face as Indigenous people, as women and as academics, and most specifically as academic writers. Paramount is the difficulty of being in institutions that do not value our cultural knowledges, our ways of being, and our specific expertise. In its institutional form, the university remains largely assimilationist that denies other ways of thinking, being and writing. For us, our writing is about being resistant to that assimilation, and provides an avenue to have our voices heard, while staying strong and true to our Indigenous cultures and heritage.