Singing up Country in academia: teacher education academics and preservice teachers’ experience with Yuin Country

Aboriginal knowledge in this dissertation has been intentionally argued as a living entity that moves and shifts like any living entity, such as wind, trees, people, water and sand, because the traditional Aboriginal knowledge system are these entities. Ever since Aboriginal knowledge has come into contact with Western knowledge, Aboriginal knowledge has moved in a form of relationality as it is placed into our epistemological, ontological and pedagogical pattern thinking and feeling. Through a process of colonisation, Western knowledge attempted to remove this relatedness (Martin 2008) of oneness and responsibility of taking care of Country. This study examines the movement of Yuin traditional knowledge and Western knowledge within six teacher education academics and twenty preservice education students. This knowledge was shared through a cultural experience called Mingadhuga Mingayung - My Mother Your Mother. The Mingadhuga Mingayung approach was designed to engage the participants in a Yuin education structure and setting to start experiencing ‘tripartation’, a spiritual passageway between Yuin and the participants’ own Western knowledge. Further to this intent was to research how this relationship developed to encourage respectful behaviour and appropriate educational/personal practice to reculturalise Aboriginal perspective in their teaching curriculum.