News Archive

Six hundred UWA undergraduate students are enrolled in the School of Indigenous Studies’ Aboriginal Encounters: Strangers in our Backyard unit this semester, an increase of 140 per cent from the previous year.

The unit, which examines contested Australian history from Indigenous perspectives, has been running for six years and continues to increase in popularity.

Course Coordinator Assistant Professor Melville Thomas feels the broadening unit’s use of Aboriginal literature, oral history and film to explore encounters between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples is of particular interest to students.

‘The unit not only extends worldview through Indigenous Knowledge, but introduces students to innovative teaching techniques.’

In addition to the traditional-style lectures at the Octagon, students interact within a shared online teaching and learning space, and tutorials groups of 25 gather in tutorial rooms or outside among the trees to positively and respectfully explore literature on Aboriginal perspectives of land and spirituality.

Students this semester also went to the Berndt Museum to study the Yirrkala Drawings , an exhibition of 1940s and beyond Yolngu stories told through crayon drawings on brown paper, bark paintings and sculptures.

It is the first year Mr Brett Farmer has lectured in the unit. ‘As an Aboriginal academic, I think the increasingly large number of students enrolling in this unit is indicative of a broader trend, and that is that today’s students want to learn more about the true history of Indigenous, non-Indigenous relations since settlement. Very pleasing to be involved.’

The students are from diverse disciplines including Commerce, Science, Zoology and Humanities. A significant number have indicated an interest in enrolling in the School’s other Indigenous Knowledge, History and Heritage major units. For the first time, the unit is also available to students from the Albany Campus.

Media references

Assistant Professor Melville Thomas (UWA School of Indigenous Studies)  (+61 8) 6488 2973

David Stacey (UWA Media Manager)   (+61 8) 6488 3229 / (+61 4) 32 637 716