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Stories of Wonder platforms and celebrates the real impact Deakin students, alumni, researchers and staff are making in the world, right now.
Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B. TEQSA Provider ID PRV12124
This podcast
includes discussion of colonisation,
systemic racism,
genocide, and intergenerational trauma.
If you need support, a list of services
are linked in the show notes.
Al Fricker is a proud Dja Dja Wurrung man
and associate professor of
Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin.
In this episode, we explore his journey,
his mission to decolonise education
and how he's driving
real world change in classrooms and communities.
From the lands of the
Wurundjeri people,
this is Stories of Wonder.
Al Fricker, welcome to
"Stories of Wonder."
- Thank you so much for having
me. It's great to be here.
- So, you're an academic researcher
and the Associate Director
of Teaching and Learning
for Indigenous Studies
here at Deakin.
What does that mean?
- That's a big question.
So, I think, broadly speaking,
the Associate Director,
Learning and Teaching role
means that I'm ultimately
the person responsible
for all of the Indigenous Studies units
that we teach across Deakin University.
So, every year,
we'll probably work with
one to 2000 students
across all of the units that we offer.
The majority of them are
non-Indigenous students,
and they have engaged with the discipline,
because I think many of them recognise
that there's a gap in their knowledge,
and they're looking to fill that gap.
- So, they have to choose
to kind of engage with it?
It's not an automatic part.
Yeah.
- So, it depends on the course.
So, some courses will actually
have a introduction unit
as a core subject, core unit,
but we do offer it as a minor
across many arts degrees,
and so students can then opt in
to do the eight unit sequence,
and then they get a very robust
and rounded knowledge base.
- So, they try and then they can buy.
- Yeah, that's it.
We're like, "You know,
the first one's free,
and then you gotta pay for the rest."
- This one's on us?
- Yeah.
Get you hooked.
(Al and Dom laugh)
- Tell us a bit about your journey
into education and academia.
Like, what led you to Deakin,
and what you're doing now?
- Wow.
So,
when I was going through school,
I was always a fairly precocious student,
pretty smart kid,
didn't respond well to issues
of authority and compliance,
and was a bit of a ratbag
in secondary school
and got myself into a bit
of strife here and there.
- You?
- Yeah.
I know-
- That doesn't sound like you today.
- I'm as shocked as you.
I've reformed myself over the years.
And I think what was,
I think two factors that
really impacted me was,
my mom was one of the early
women in science graduates
back in the late seventies,
early eighties at Monash Uni.
So she'd gone to university
well before I was born.
My dad, who is Aboriginal, had
dropped outta school early,
done a couple of apprenticeships,
ran his own business,
and actually, he started
his university journey
when I was in my final
year of high school.
So, I actually had him modelling
what it looked like to navigate
the systems, the structures,
the challenges of higher education.
And so, yeah, on the one hand,
I had sort of a natural kind of clueness,
and I had my parents who were like,
"You should go to uni,
because it would be a
terrible waste if you didn't,"
and then had that, I suppose,
inspiration from my dad,
watching him go through that.
So, I managed to scrape into uni,
and then it was just a matter
of, I suppose, figuring out
the things that I enjoyed
and ultimately landed on education.
- What did you study first? Like, how-
- So, my first degree was actually
Ancient World Studies degree.
So, I did,
back in the old days,
it was classics and
archaeology in history,
'cause I had a real passion for the past,
passion for history.
Thoroughly enjoyed that. You
get to the end of that degree
and you're like, "Right.
Well, jobs are there."
- Yeah.
- Not many
- Ready for my job.
- Woo-hoo.
(Al and Dom laugh)
So, I ended up retraining,
going back, doing a post-grad
education qualification,
and trained as a history, humanities
and mathematics school teacher.
- Right.
- And so, the inspiration for that
came from as being a young person
playing a lot of basketball,
that was my sport of choice,
and then once my playing career
well and truly ran its course,
I had the opportunity to coach
for my local junior basketball club
that I played for as a junior as well.
- Yep.
- And interacting with those young people,
I found a real love for teaching
and a love for-
You know, I was able to
replicate a lot of things
that I enjoyed about my journey learning
and then was able to
engage with young people.
And so, I thought, "Well,
if I'm doing this for free
and I'm enjoying it,
potentially I could
become a school teacher
and get paid to do
something that I enjoy."
And so, I found myself teaching
at prep to year 12 school
for about three and a half years.
- Right.
So, it was both primary and
secondary, all in the one class?
- Yeah, yeah.
So, I was at a community
school up in the Dandenongs,
and so prep to year 12,
they usually topped out about 160 kids,
so very, very small school.
- Right.
Yeah.
- Alternative setting.
And I taught everything
from prep to year 12,
and that was quite a
significant learning curve,
you know, 'cause you
work with the little ones
and you respond to them
in particular ways,
and then immediately after,
I've got the year twelves,
and you respond to them
in a very different way.
And if you can't put one
hat on and take one hat off,
you get a lot of confused faces
from the year twelves going.
I remember one notorious class.
You know, there's a
particular clapping sequence
that you use to get the
attention of the preppies,
and then I tried that
with the year twelves,
and they all looked at me and said,
"You know, we drove to
school today, right?"
- I'm like, "Oh, sorry, everyone."
- Was it the classic?
(claps in a sequence)
- Spot on.
- Oh, wow.
- That was exactly-
- That's just a universal, you know-
- That's actually, it's like clapping 101.
They teach us that at teacher school.
- Really?
Yeah. Is there a whole unit?
- Yeah, whole unit.
- Whole semester on clapping.
- Yeah, yeah.
One, two, three, eyes on me,
you know, all those classics.
(Dom chuckles)
- Yeah, I'm imagining these, you know,
nearly 18-year-olds or
18-year-olds being like,
"Are you, like, really-"
- For real?
- Yeah, I kid you not.
- Sorry, everyone. Yeah.
To their credit though,
some of them did clap back,
which was quite lovely.
(Dom laughs)
That ingrained from prep.
- I think we've used that
in marketing meetings,
to be honest with you.
Sometimes you do need a
little bit of a, you know-
- I've seen rooms for academics
clap back, if I'm honest.
(Dom laughs)
- So, that's really interesting.
So, you've talked a bit
about your experience there.
And that's just, yeah, as you say,
like so many different ways
that you need to learn how to communicate.
Because there's a reason, right,
why most learning is separated
from, you know, primary school teacher,
or you're going to learn
how to do secondary school
so many different sort of ways,
you need to talk to those ages
and stages that they're in.
You've obviously, like, you
would've picked up a lot of that
along the way, having to do,
you know, prep to year 12.
What else did you learn
about the education system
at that time?
- So, this was,
I think this was a great
frustration for me,
because what we have in this
country is a schooling system.
And I think we often conflate
education with schooling.
And schooling is a very specific way
of doing teaching and learning,
which potentially may not
be the best way of doing it.
And so, what we have here was,
I was in the schooling system
for three and a half years,
and it's tough.
And since I've left,
it's only gotten tougher.
And one of the challenges that we have
is that within our schooling system,
it prioritises two things above all else,
that is, productivity and compliance.
And so, I found myself
navigating the schooling system
as a Dja Dja Wurrung teacher.
And finding myself in a
really challenging position,
where I was being required
to enforce those same colonial ideologies
that underpin what schooling
should look like, feel like,
whether it's quite punitive at times,
whether it can be exclusionary,
whether it can be quite the term
that some of my research touches on,
is that idea of carceral logics,
so the same ideas
that sit and underpin judicial system
are often manifesting
within a classroom as well,
so the classrooms almost feel
like a prison, in some cases.
And that didn't sit well with me,
and it certainly didn't sit well
when I was working with
Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander students as well,
and saying to the kids, "Look,
I know this isn't right,
I know this doesn't feel good,
but I have to enforce
what I'm doing here."
And that was one of the
reasons why I thought,
"You know what?
Maybe, potentially, if I
step outta the classroom,
I might be able to affect
some kind of system reform
which potentially could
support better outcomes
for not only Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander kids,
but also non-Indigenous students as well."
- And is the, kind of, tension there
that for Indigenous kids
outside of the classroom
or the education, kind of,
schooling environment, that
those kind of rules and punitive measures
and things like that,
aren't quite the same
as it is in their kind
of, you know, communities,
whereas for, I guess, you
know, most white kids,
it is a little bit more understood,
and a lot of the rest of their lives
is a little bit like that?
- I think when we talk in these terms,
we always have to be
conscious of generalisations.
- Yeah.
- Because we know that
any body of learners
are always gonna be hugely diverse
regardless of what their
cultural context are.
But I think there's a term in education,
known as cultural capital,
which essentially is a term
that measures how much your
personal characteristics,
cultural context are in alignment
with the schooling environment.
And we often see that
for groups of students that
are potentially marginalised
in the broader community,
their cultural capital often
doesn't match the environment
that they're forced to inhabit.
I think another aspect as well is that
for the better part of two centuries,
we've had a whole lot
of deficit positioning,
that is, many Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander learners
who come into the classroom
are seen to be deficient
in particular ways,
often because of this disconnect.
And I think some of my
research actually argues
that ultimately, it's not a
matter of being deficit or-
You know, and I think one
of the most insidious terms
in schooling is the
idea of learning needs.
Because if you have a need,
it implies that you are needing something
that you don't have.
- Something special, something extra.
- Something extra, something
in addition to fix you.
And what I actually argue
is that it's not need
so much as expectations,
because when we think about
our own learning experience,
what I've argued for is
that we have to recognise
that for all of our young people,
the very first teacher in
their lives is Country.
Because from the moment of birth,
the very first stimuli that
their bodies will receive
are the sensations of heat,
of mass, of touch, of light,
of sound, of all these basic
neurological experiences
that all ultimately come from Country.
And then, the moments after
we've come into this world,
we're passed into the hands
of mother, father, family.
So, if Country's first teacher,
family's then second teacher.
As we grow and develop as an infant,
we will often interact with extended kin.
So then, family, broader family,
and community becomes third teacher.
Then and only then
do we hit, say, early
childhood, for example,
where early childhood educators
will be our fourth teacher.
And then by the time we get to school,
we're under teacher number five.
- Yeah. Right.
- And so, when the young
ones get to school,
they already have quite a
fundamental understanding
of what learning should
look like, should feel like,
how it should operate.
So, they have a whole
bunch of expectations
that already exist.
And then they get into primary school
and they're like,
"Right, playtime is over.
Now you have lunch, you have
play lunch, you have literacy,
you have numeracy, you have
activities, you have discipline,
you have far more rigid routines
that you are maybe struggling
to come to terms with."
And the little ones are like,
"Well, this isn't how
learning's supposed to look like
and feel like."
And so, I think that
often where we see that
potential challenge
and the tension here
is because you have a whole
lot of unmet expectations
that then get usurped
around "This is school,
this is how school looks,
this is how it feels,
and this is what you have
to do to get through."
- Let's talk a little bit
about decolonising education.
It's a big term with
a lot of weight to it.
What does it mean to you,
and why is it important?
- Geez, that's a big question.
So, I think the things that
we have to recognise here
is that education doesn't
begin in Australia In 1788
with the arrival of Arthur
Philip in the first fleet.
Education is something that
has been occurring on Country,
on the continent and the adjacent islands
for as long as people have been here.
So we're talking 60,
70-plus thousand years.
When we think about
how we experience the bulk
of our education today,
it's overwhelmingly a schooling system
that is a colonial construct.
And this comes from a time in
Industrial Revolution Europe,
where the very first secular
mass elementary education structures
come from European nations.
And essentially what they say is,
"We're gonna take a significant
portion of the workforce,
because children are no
longer in the factories,
we're gonna put them into a school,
and we're gonna teach them their literacy
and their numeracy
so they then will become
more productive workers."
Now, the capitalist class at the time
are pretty mad about that,
because they're like,
"Well, not only have we lost
a whole lot of our workforce,
but now you're leveraging taxation on us
in order to pay for this
free public education."
And the offsets in
productivity aren't enough,
'cause they're a greedy bunch.
And so, they say,
"Well, we wanna have a
controlling stake in school.
We want schools to more
closely resemble workplaces,
and we want students who come from schools
to be the perfect workers."
So, this means that schools
prioritise, above all else,
productivity and compliance.
And so, yeah, I used
to see it all the time
when I was being a bit of a rat bag.
I'd roll into school.
Wrong college shoes.
"Fricker, outta uniform."
I'd say, "Yeah, but sir,
how does my footwear
impact my capacity to learn?"
And they'd often come at me
with the absurdity of going,
"Well, if you can't
follow the small rules,
how will you ever be expected
to follow the big rules?"
And I'd be a bit cheeky and say,
"Look, I'm not sure that's a legal defence
that would hold on me in court.
I don't think I'd be able
to turn around to the judge
and say, 'Look, you can't
charge me with murder here,
because back in the high school,
I couldn't wear the right uniform.
So, how could you expect
me to kill someone?'
Like, that's not how this works."
But it prioritises those
experiences of productivity
and compliance,
and it's coded into the
language of schooling.
You know, schoolwork,
homework, learning tasks,
these are all things
that inculcate children
into the world of work.
And then when we look at how
schooling is rationalised,
it's all about the economies.
You know, for each dollar you invest,
you get X number of dollars out.
And so, even then, schooling itself
is boiled down to an economic context.
So, when we think about
decolonising schooling,
what we're actually asking ourselves is,
"What could schooling be
if it wasn't solely focused
on the world of work?
What could schooling
look like and feel like
if we weren't prioritising
compliance and productivity
above all else?"
And this is where when we start thinking
about indigenizing education
can actually be a really important aspect.
'Cause I think there's an
underlying ideology of schooling
that says, "If I teach children literacy,
if I teach them numeracy,
if I teach them STEM, and if
I teach them the humanities,
they will achieve the capacity
to become a good person."
But if we were to flip that
and say, "Actually, if
I focus on the child
and teach them how to
be a good person first,
that actually enables them
to achieve in literacy,
in numeracy, in STEM, and in humanities."
So potentially, we want
to try to flip that.
When we think about
experiences of schooling
beyond productivity and compliance,
we then actually get to
have a proper conversation
about lifelong learning
that doesn't turn into an
experience of lifelong training.
Because when you think about
your post-school learning experiences,
it's to train into a degree
or a diploma or a certificate
or an apprenticeship,
it's to skill you to do a particular job,
and then if you said, "Well,
I want more opportunities,"
you go, you get more training,
and then you can change
industries or get promoted
or whatever it might be.
But really do we have
the opportunity to learn
for the joy of experiencing
accomplishment,
gaining knowledge and wisdom,
gaining insights,
critical thinking skills?
These are all things that are
considered to be less valuable
and less desirable,
because it can't be monetized
into a very specific economic outcome.
- It's not transactional,
like purely transactional.
- Exactly right.
And so, when we think about
decolonising education,
what my research argues
is that we're the oldest
continuous cultures in the world.
We know that culture's not innate,
we know that you are born into culture,
you're not born with it.
So, it stands to reason, therefore,
that if we're the oldest
continuous cultures,
then Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander peoples
have the oldest learning
and teaching knowledges
and pedagogies in the world.
So why wouldn't we want
that to be accessible
by all of our students
so they can gain the benefits of that too?
- So, I guess what's
the alternative to that?
What would an Indigenous education offer,
and what's sort of your vision
for how that could be kind of integrated
across all levels of education?
- Well, that's a big question.
And I think one of the
ways of looking at that
comes from insights
that we have from pre-colonial practises,
which we still know about,
'cause many of them still exist
in Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander context.
So, these are living practises
that are experienced every day.
And I think it comes down
to fundamental questions
around how do we
conceptualise our
relationship with knowledge.
Because that's the question, ultimately,
that underpins
every part of the learning
and teaching experience.
So, if we've, like in a western context,
experienced knowledge as a commodity,
something to be bought,
sold, traded, exploited,
you know, we talk about
the information, economy,
and all that sort of stuff,
we create a context where
you've gotta pay to play.
So, if you want to take,
you want to learn the knowledge,
you've gotta pay the money.
And we see that all the time.
Or alternatively, you go online
and you can get whatever
you want for free,
and it's pretty sketchy.
But when we think about knowledge
from many First Nations' perspectives,
what we're actually asking ourselves is,
"Well, if we're not gonna
treat knowledge as a commodity,
if we're gonna consider our
relationship with knowledge
and our obligations, responsibilities,
and relationality to knowledge,
then that opens up a context
where we can have things
like men's business
and women's business and elder business,
where there will be large parts of it
that will be restricted
and not allowed to be taught
to people of particular characteristics.
It means that we view
knowledge as something
that we are custodians
of and responsible for.
So, it means that
we might be teaching in
a context where we say,
"Look, it actually doesn't
matter how much money you have,
I can only teach you this thing:
If you can demonstrate your capacity
to hold it appropriately,
your capacity to apply it appropriately,
and your capacity to
only share it with others
who can hold it, apply it,
and share it appropriately as well."
Because what we have to recognise here
is that anything that we teach to anyone
that can potentially be
something to use for good,
we ultimately teach them the inverse,
because they could either do
the opposite, withdraw it,
and they could cause great harm.
It would be like if I was starting
a theoretical nuclear physics class.
Welcome to Professor Fricker's
nuclear physics class 101.
Today, I'm gonna teach you
how to build a thermonuclear device.
Here's the caveat:
Please don't build a thermonuclear device.
In the meantime, I have a
budding young super villain
up the back of the lecture theatre,
rubbing his hands with glee,
thinking, "Oh, I'm gonna build a bomb
and I'm gonna hold everybody to ransom
till I get my plans back to
my secret volcano layer."
Now, there's no checks
and balances on that.
There's nothing that
says that that person,
beyond just the hope that
they're of good character,
is going to be able to
apply that appropriately
and not cause a whole lot of harm.
So, in that sense,
when we think about what
education could look like,
we teach things to our young people
at a time in which they need to know it,
and at a period of their life
where they can hold it appropriately
and apply it appropriately.
And that shifts everything,
you know, a whole range.
It means that we centre our relationships
with a young person primarily
to build them as a good person,
and then we can look at the
discipline-specific knowledge
that they'll need to know.
It means that the learner themselves
has the right to curate and select
their learning experiences
based upon their interests,
desires, strengths,
proficiencies, whatever it might be.
And so, we give the great opportunity
to say to our young people,
"Well, look, if this is
something you're interested in,
let's nudge you into that direction
and you can explore that further."
And even something as simple
as shifting the question
from "What would you like
to do when you grow up?"
into something more like
"What kind of a person
would you like to be
when you grow up?"
And that could be an
incredibly powerful experience
for a young person
who's not really sure what
careers they wanna do.
- Yeah, it's really interesting
when you put it in that context
of so much of our schooling
is based around pumping out workers,
and it's almost the complete
inverse of that really,
like, trying to create
an efficiency of scale
of just, like, get 'em in at this age,
they all get the same,
you know, education,
and it sticks where it sticks,
and it doesn't where it doesn't,
and the rest is sort of, you know-
- You hope for the best.
- up to them.
- Exactly.
- Whereas this considers the person,
and it repositions what
education means to life
rather than-
- Exactly right. And,
I mean, the absurdity
of this schooling system
that we have today
is it's like an arbitrary 13 years.
- Yeah.
- And that was set
by a framework that said,
by the time you hit 18,
you need to be a productive
member of society,
or you need to be in future training
to become an even more
productive member of society.
And so, we have this absurdity
where we say, "Happy birthday! Up you go."
And the kids go, "But I'm not ready."
And they go, "Well, too bad.
You got 13 years. Get it done."
And then we have the
absurdity of people saying,
"Oh, too many of our
kids are falling behind."
And I'd say, "Well, who set the pace?
Why does that have to be the pace?"
They go like, "Oh, falling
through the cracks."
Well, who put them there?
Anything that exists in the system
only exists because a person put it there,
and equally, we can reform
it and we can remove it.
It's just a matter of will,
not necessarily a matter of ability.
- So, you've contributed
yourself to curriculum reform.
You were recently published
in your first textbook,
I believe.
Tell us a little bit
about your work there,
and also the process of getting
published in a textbook.
I'm sure it was, you know,
it's been an interesting
kind of thing to go through.
Definitely.
So, I think this speaks
to the frustrations I had
when I left teaching,
and I'm like, "Look,
if I'm in a classroom,
I can have an impact at a certain level.
If I move beyond the classroom,
potentially I can actually
broaden that impact."
- And so, you did three years of-
- Three and a half years.
- teaching in the classroom?
- And then I was well and truly ready
to move on to something else.
And I did my time in the
trenches, as it were.
I've got that lived experience.
I know how tough it is out there.
And I think when I think
about decolonising,
I sort of look at it in sort
of five major focus areas.
So, we look at Aboriginal education policy
as sort of a factor that
underpins everything.
Because, as a teacher,
your two justifications
for what you do in the classroom
has to be policy and evidence.
You have to say, "I'm doing this thing
because it says I should do
this thing in the policy,"
or "I'm doing this thing
because I can see clearly it's working."
And those are the things
that teachers must use
in order to justify how they're
working in the classroom.
So, we consider policy,
then we consider the pedagogies
we use in the classroom,
which, simply speaking, is
how we transmit knowledge,
which is basically a fancy way of saying
how to take what's in my head
and put it into your head.
And then we have to
think about curriculum,
so what are we teaching and why,
then we have to think about
the physical place and
space of the school.
Is this something that we can
have the flexibility around?
Have we integrated
technology appropriately?
Are there spaces
that make visible Aboriginal
and Torres Strait contexts?
You'd be amazed at the number of schools
that still have various
groupings within the school,
be they for athletics
carnivals or swing days
or whatever it might be,
that are named after old dead white men.
Still quite a common experience.
And then it's about community engagement.
So, who are we engaging with
from the local community?
Who are we engaging with
to bring into the kids or
take the kids out to see them,
and what kind of stories and knowledges
are they having the opportunity to share?
So, these are sort of
the five practical ways
that schools can think about
how they might wanna begin
decolonising their classrooms.
But in terms of my own journey
seeking to create system-wide change,
I've tried to position myself
across as many different
levels as possible.
So occasionally, I'll
have schools reach out
and say, "Hey, can you
run stuff for the kids?"
And I'm like, "Oh, yes, please."
Because one thing I miss about teaching
is interacting with the kids.
Some schools will approach me and say,
"Can you please do some
professional learning for us?"
And so, I'll come in and
work with the teachers
and the staff at the school.
I've had the absolute honour
of being able to be
working directly with VCAA,
which is the Victorian
Curriculum Authority,
and support the design of the
new Victorian Curriculum 2.0.
- Wow. Yep.
- And then working beyond that
in terms of curriculum
resource development,
which is speaking back to the textbooks
and being able to engage that and saying,
"Well, even if we have a
teacher who lacks confidence,
if they have a quality resource
that they're able to engage with,
potentially that will hopefully mean
that there's better
experiences for the kids."
You know, even if they read
it verbatim off the page,
it's something.
Because otherwise, it
could have been nothing.
And so, I think working
in that textbook space
has been a really interesting
experience for me.
I think I've been incredibly lucky,
because the organisation
that I've worked with
to create those textbooks
have been incredibly forward-thinking.
'Cause at the very start
of that sort of exchange,
I said, "Look, if you want me
to put my name to something,
you have to recognise
that I am gonna be held
responsible by community."
And if anything's put out
that doesn't sit well with community,
they're gonna reach out to
me and say, "What the hell?"
So, I said, "Look, in
terms of editorial control,
I need you to just trust
that I'm gonna put together something
that is going to be authentic, quality,
appropriate, the whole lot."
And to their credit, they said,
"Look, could we at least make
it connect to the curriculum?"
I'm like, "Oh yeah,
that's the starting point.
Of course, we'll make
it into the curriculum,
but I'm gonna be looking
to push the envelope
and put extra stuff that
I think should be in there
that isn't,
that will enhance the learning
experiences for the kids
and build their knowledge."
And they went, "You know
what? Let's do this.
We are prepared, as an organisation,
to create market-leading resources
that start to inspire
other textbook creators
to do more and do better."
And that's what we did.
And the textbook became one of
the bestsellers in Victoria,
and it's just been published
in New South Wales as well.
- Nice.
- And now we're finding
other textbook publishers
are starting to catch on
and go, "Oh, maybe we should
lift our game as well."
And so, we're seeing
broader curriculum resource
development as well.
And then, with the new
national curriculum,
you know, my primary
focus in the first edition
was the 10 civil rights content.
And we found that
we'd gone beyond what was
already in the curriculum.
And then when the new
curriculum came out by the feds,
we sort of did a bit of a comparison
and realised that
potentially we didn't have to do
a hell of a lot more into the book,
because most of it, that we'd gone beyond,
had just caught up.
And so, it was great, it was lovely
just to tick off a whole
lot of spreads and be like,
"I don't have to do anything here.
We're now pretty much on the money."
Now, I have no evidence
to suggest that there was
ever any kind of interaction
between the textbook
and then what the
curriculum designers did.
And there's a lot of
governance and oversight
and various committees and whatnot.
- Yeah.
- But it was lovely to see
where we'd push the envelope
start to be reflected in that
national curriculum offering,
and then, by extension,
to the Victorian Curriculum
offering as well.
- Yeah. That's really powerful.
And it shows the power of,
you know, there's only
so many Al Frickers,
and so much time, you know,
and so much of you to go
around physically and do this,
but the power of content and
working it into the system
and empowering teachers to
be able to, you know, go,
"You can do the work of this.
Even if you're not, you know,
yourself fully around it
or confident with it,
here's a resource."
- It's exactly right.
'Cause we have a generation of teachers
who went through their schooling
and potentially didn't
get this information.
- Yeah.
- And so, what we know is
that, from the literature,
there's often quite a powerful
phenomenon in the classroom,
which is known as teacher identity,
which is, many teachers
get drawn to the profession
because they had a good time at school,
and so, part of how they operate
is wanting to replicate those
good times for their students.
And if those good times
meant that Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander content
was absent,
potentially that can be
recreated in those classrooms.
So, by having really solid
curriculum resources,
we actually say to them,
"Look, you might feel a
bit anxious about this,
you might feel a little bit unsure,
you might not have a lot of confidence,
but you've got something
that has been produced in
partnership with community,
with First Nations voices,
which is accurate, which is authentic,
which is quite generous.
And I'm not speaking of my own,
I'm speaking more broadly
across the sector,
'cause there's a lot of mob
who are doing some wonderful work here,
making these beautiful resources.
So, lean into them,
and know that if something
doesn't quite hit the mark
or goes a bit awry,
you know, it's already been vetted,
so you don't have to worry too much about
becoming culturally unsafe,
because all the checks and
balances are already there,
you are just a person who's
reading it out in the classroom.
- Talk to me about that kind of strategy
of making this change happen
where you need to sort of
embed it into a curriculum.
I think you're potentially
doing something similar
here at Deakin as well,
making it a part of it
and almost like something
that becomes a requirement
rather than an optional,
you know, nice-to-have.
What's the power of that,
and what's the strategy behind that?
- So, I find myself occasionally
at odds with colleagues,
because I am a big fan of mandating.
And my justification to this
is looking at the concept of seat belts.
So, when I was a kid, me and my sister,
my grandma would buckle us into the car,
take us down the shops.
And she started driving in a period
where seat belts were optional.
And so, my sister and I
would watch her travel
all the way down her driveway,
all the way to the end of her street,
and then reluctantly,
she was about to turn onto the main road,
chuck on the seatbelt.
And we'd be like, "Nah, nah,
nah, nah, you gotta buckle up.
You know, it's a big deal."
And what we know from the research
is that we'd had decades of evidence
that showed the seatbelt saved lives,
and we had education campaigns.
And then the point
where it actually became
a widespread practise
was only after it became mandated,
where if you didn't buckle
up, you'd get a fine.
And then you fast forward
a couple of generations,
and if any of us were to
get into a vehicle today
and not buckle up,
everybody else in the car
would look at us and go,
"Well, what are you doing?"
And they wouldn't say 'cause
you might get a ticket,
they'd say 'cause you
might die in a car crash.
Like, buckle up. Safety first.
And so, if we take that approach
to curriculum reform, assessments,
engagement with Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander context,
I sort of say, "Look, as
wonderful as it would be
to put forward all the evidence
to show that this supports the outcomes,
all learners, everybody does better
and creates a better society.
We've known this for decades,
and it haven't really had
a huge amount of traction.
So what if we find ways to
mandate content into units
that essentially, for
lack of a better term,
force the hand of someone
who potentially may not
have thought about it,
or may not have been comfortable doing it,
or may not have wanted to do it,
and require them to have a go?"
And so, part of the Glow 8 strategy
that I put forward last year,
I was invited to present the keynote
at last year's Glow 8 symposium,
and I said, "Well, potentially,
an option that we might use here
is to recognise that we
have absolutely deadly
Aboriginal and Torres Islander
staff members at Deakin
who are more than happy
to support this work.
And maybe, what if we changed
the assessment rubrics
to require unit chairs
to get students to cite
Aboriginal and Torres Islander scholarship
as part of the research
component in their assessments?"
Because what that would then do
is essentially say, right,
well, if you're gonna ask the students
to cite First Nations researchers,
maybe you should include
some of those First Nations researchers
onto their reading list
so they actually interact with
them as part of their unit,
so that you're not just saying,
"Well, good luck to you.
Try and find the answers."
because that's not fair for the students.
And if we're gonna be including
Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander researchers
and scholarship in our reading list,
maybe we should look at
that as a weekly topic.
And that then gets us started
so that we now start to create a context,
where, in the short to medium term,
we'll have units
where they'll have potentially
one dedicated week per unit
where they engage
with Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander knowledges
through Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander
research scholarship.
And then, from that, we create a strand,
where when we ask our graduates
at the end of their programmes,
"What are some of the things
that really stucking out to you?"
They go, "Ah, I actually
can't remember a time
where I didn't have a unit
that didn't engage
with Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander content."
And potentially, as we
become more comfortable,
as we become more capable in this space,
we get the chance to say,
"Well, you've got one week.
Why not two? Why not three?"
And then we start creating
a really strong stranded
narrative through all units,
through all programmes,
and then we have that really solid basis
where our graduates can
go out into industry
and have that prerequisite
knowledge already
and start to change
the way that they work.
- Yeah.
Really pulling the thread.
- And so, you've gotta use the
policies that already exist.
- Yeah, it's interesting.
It's great you've kind of used the system
and the rules of the system
to then change the system,
but with a view to, like, with an outcome,
rather than it is, you know,
the rules are the rules
and that's that.
- Exactly right.
And it's about, I suppose,
acknowledging that
to decolonise is to feel
quite uncomfortable,
'cause it is unsettling,
it's work of the scholarship
of the likes of Frantz Fanon,
who talks about decolonial
praxis being equally as violent
as colonial praxis.
And so, we have to make the distinction
between what is physical
and non-physical violence.
So, I'm not advocating that, you know,
all the mob should get their buddies
and go out there and club a
white fellas until they leave.
- Yeah.
- What I'm saying here
is that we have to prepare
non-Indigenous staff, comrades
who want to sort of come with us
to recognise that they're gonna
feel uncomfortable at times.
And so, when we start using
those sort of policy settings
to start to encourage people to reform,
we create, I think,
potentially, far gentler ways
of being able to get
them to start engaging
than ways that immediately
get their backs up
and they start getting defensive
and start, you know, rallying against it.
And that, the psychology of decolonising
is really, really tricky
and really, really complex.
And I don't think even I
have a handle on that yet.
- Yeah.
Well, talk to me a little
bit more about that.
Is discomfort just a necessary part
of this kind of a process,
and you know, what role does it play
in, I don't know, forcing
people to really reckon with it?
And is it a distraction sometimes?
- I think it is a necessary part,
because in all the scholarship
around decolonial praxis,
the language that they
describe how it works,
they talk about it as being unsettling,
disquieting, discomforting,
things that create a
disequilibrium in people,
so they have their ways
of thinking, feeling,
and acting in the world
that potentially are quite
colonial in their application,
in their mindset. And then
when you start to say,
"Well, hang on a second,
there's some other ways
that you can think, feel,
and act in the world,
but the only way you can
access them authentically
is you actually have to be
prepared to start critiquing,
pulling apart and dismantling
some of the things
that are central to you and
what you've held as truth
and call to your being."
And I don't think it
matters whoever you are.
That's gonna be an
uncomfortable experience
to have to sort of critique question
and reflect on those aspects.
And I think what we also disregard,
and I think being Dja Dja Wurrung
and as many First Nations
people of Australia,
we get the privilege
of being at a contrast
community-wise, pre-colonial-wise,
and then neo-colonial wise.
And what we know
is that as much as decolonial praxis
has to be uncomfortable,
it also has to be intersectional.
So, what I mean by that
is that if we did a
cross-section of our community
and calculate, right, who are the groups
that get marginalised?
So we've got LGBTIQ+, we've
got people with disabilities,
we've got, you know,
women in the patriarchy,
we've got poor people, people in poverty,
you know, the list goes on.
And when we think about the fact
that women have always existed
on the Australian continent
and adjacent islands,
LGBTIQ+ people have always been here,
albeit conceptualised
in very different ways.
- Yeah.
- We've always had
people with disabilities
who've lived in Australia.
You know, as we have the oldest languages,
we also have the oldest sign
languages in the world as well.
And so, none of these characteristics
that are inherent to a
person and who they are
was an issue
until Captain Cook rolled up in 1770,
then Arthur Phillip again in 1788.
So, when we think about the
role of decolonial praxis,
we actually have to acknowledge
that all the ways that
we marginalise people
in our community
are all colonial constructs,
and it doesn't have to
be like this at all.
And so, what I sort of say
is that if we're gonna
decolonise authentically,
we have to experience the discomfort.
And some responses I've
had to those people say,
"Well, I need to get comfortable
with being uncomfortable."
I'm like, "Well, potentially not,
because the moment you become comfortable,
you're not uncomfortable anymore."
- Yeah.
- And the analogy I like to say is,
well, maybe we should use
exercise as an analogy,
in that I exercise, I feel uncomfortable,
I get breathless, hot, sweaty, tired,
and then I keep exercising.
And then when I no longer feel
like that when I exercise,
it's not having the desired effect,
I'm not getting any fitter,
I'm not getting any stronger,
I'm not getting any healthier,
I'm just maintaining.
But I don't look at exercise and think,
"God, my heart is racing, I'm
short of breath, I'm sweaty.
Am I having a heart attack?"
I'm like, "Yeah, I know that
because I'm hot and
sweaty from exercising."
So, it's about becoming
familiar with the discomfort
rather than comfortable.
It's about recognising
that it is going to happen,
it's going to come,
and leaning into that.
It's also about, I think,
navigating the challenges here,
around the context of
things like white guilt.
Because I often have well-meaning
non-Indigenous people
come up to me occasionally,
and they go, "I just feel so terrible.
I'm so sorry for what
everything had happened."
And I'm like, "Look, I appreciate that,
but with respect, the way
that you feel right now
and how guilty you feel,
in no way changes my material existence,
my experiences of racism or discrimination
or the impacts that this
has on my community."
So, potentially,
maybe rather than looking
at that feeling of guilt,
translating that into action
might be the best way forward as well.
And these are often some of the pitfalls.
So, in the initial context,
you find that people
will feel that discomfort
and they might push back and
they say, "You know what?
I would've been behind you the whole way,
but now you've made me
feel really uncomfortable,
so I don't wanna a bar of it."
And I'm like, "Well, with
respect, potentially,
I don't think you were
probably in to begin with
if the way that I've made you feel
is the factor in you opting
out of this struggle."
And then, you know, when we
get mired in that white guilt,
it's about saying,
"Look, I appreciate that
you're experiencing this
viscerally and emotionally,
but ultimately,
that doesn't necessarily
translate into action,
and I'm here to get results."
And so, I suppose the third element
is about recognising that we
need to build consciousness
around a shared liberatory struggle,
in that I want to support better outcomes
for Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander kids,
I want better outcomes
for Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander communities,
but I also want better
outcomes for everyone.
And when we think about the literature,
you know, when we estimate the
amount of time spent toiling
to cover all the basic
requirements before colonisation,
and I don't say work,
'cause work is a very specific
capitalist connotation,
but we are in an environment now
where we are smashing out 30,
40 hour weeks, if we're lucky,
and potentially barely making ends meet.
But before colonisation,
we estimate it was between 20
and 25 hours per week spent
toiling to cover, you know,
housing, food, clothing,
so on and so forth.
I would really like to
live like that again.
I would really like to be
able to live the same way
as my ancestors did.
But beyond that, I'd like
everybody to live like that
as well,
not just me, not just my community.
We should be in the ocean, eating fruit,
we should be dancing
and singing and creating
and doing the things that
are not work related,
that fill us with joy.
That's what we should be doing.
That's why we exist.
And we are stuck grinding
and barely making ends meet
and experiencing precarity
within the system,
we don't give ourselves the opportunity
to experience things for the
sake of experiencing them.
When we have a colonial mindset,
where you can't claim to be a thing
unless your skillset is
good enough to monetize,
that's incredibly limiting, yeah.
And we see that in the
classroom all the time.
You got kids go, "I can't draw."
And I say, "Can you pick up a pen?"
"Yeah."
"Can you scribble something on a page?"
"Yeah."
"Kid, you can draw."
And they go, "Yeah, but
it's not very good."
I said, "Quality doesn't matter.
That doesn't stop you from
being able to do a thing."
But we have this colonial mindset
where qualities is the defining factor
on whether you can or cannot do something.
And once you start limiting yourself,
you know, it becomes really
quite damaging in the long term.
- Such interesting points there
about how work and identity
are just so sort of one
and the same really,
whereas that's not necessarily,
that wasn't necessarily how it always was
or what it could be.
- Totally.
- Talk to me a little bit about both sides
in this kind of work.
You know, has it gotten worse recently?
Has it always been there?
And I don't know why do
you think that it is done,
it is brought up.
- So, I think the challenge that we have
from a western perspective of knowledge,
when we treat knowledge as a commodity,
is we seek to remove
its capacity for bias.
So, if we're only treating
it as a commodity,
knowledge is rendered powerless.
It has no power to influence,
it has no power to impact,
it's all about the money.
And so, you run into the risk of saying,
"Well, if we are creating
ideas of knowledge
as being apolitical,
then one of the ways that we,
you know, the two ways
we can be apolitical
is we can say, 'Right,
I'm just gonna talk about,
say, history, for example:
facts, figures, times, dates, and people.
That's it.
Just what happened.
I'm not gonna bother
asking the question why.'"
And anybody who's a history teacher knows
that the answer,
you know, the real questions
you're gonna ask about the past
is why is this stuff happening?
And so, another way of trying to maintain
an apolitical stance
is saying, "Well, I'm
gonna give you the pros,
and I'm gonna give you the cons."
And the absurdity is that we've had cases,
not in Australia specifically,
but certainly overseas,
where they're like,
"Right, we want you to list
three negatives of slavery and
three positives of slavery."
And this kind of both sides
can be incredibly problematic
because it muddies the waters.
And we're actually just allowed to say,
"You know, slavery's just bad,
just straight up, unequivocally.
We've had rules about this,
we've had numerous periods in history
where it shows that
slavery, in all its forms,
is actually just a bad thing."
- Yeah.
- And so, when it comes to higher ed,
in the units that I teach,
sometimes students sort of say,
"Well, hang on a second,
this feels kind of biassed."
I'm like, "Well, yeah.
I'm not here to try and claim
that there were good things
to come out of colonisation,
because anything you can
tell me that's a plus
could have potentially been achieved
without the genocide
that underpinned the
colonisation of Australia."
So, you know, one of the
the reductive comments
saying, "Well, you know, if we
didn't colonise this country,
then you wouldn't have shoes,
you wouldn't have cars, you
wouldn't have hot showers."
And I'm like, "Okay. Yeah. Fair.
But England has all of those things.
They weren't colonised
in the 18th century.
So, I'm not sure that is a
process that is necessary
to achieve technological advancement."
So, when we're in this space,
or when I'm in this space,
I say, "Look, I'm not going
to be apolitical here,
but I have integrity and transparency,
so I'm gonna let you know
that this is gonna be super biassed,
it's gonna be super left-wing,
it's gonna be ultra woke, super Marxist.
I'm an angry Aboriginal activist academic,
and that's where I stand.
And you can either accept that
for what it is at face value,
or you can say, 'I'm a little
uncomfortable with this,'
and then we'll try and
navigate our way through it.
But I'm not gonna sit here,
and, in good faith, in
good conscience too,
that there were good things
that came from colonisation,
'cause I unequivocally
believe that is not the case."
- Yeah.
Let's pull that thread a little bit more.
Like, what does it mean these days
to be an Indigenous
educator and researcher
in predominantly non-Indigenous spaces?
- So, this is the part that
speaks to, sometimes, the toll-
- Yeah.
- that this takes on us.
And I know I'm not unique in this place.
I know that there are a lot of other
absolutely deadly First Nation
scholars across higher ed,
secondary teaching, primary
teaching, early childhood,
you know, the whole system,
who are doing it tough.
And if I think about my own journey,
I think about who I am and
what I would love to do,
and the fact is anybody who knows me
knows that I love a laugh, I love a joke,
I love having a good yarn,
telling, you know, spinning a good story,
hanging out, just enjoying the
interaction and the comfort
that comes from feeling
like you belong with others.
And that's what I want to
create in the classroom
when I'm teaching.
But I have to acknowledge
that whether I like it or not,
I can't be just that teacher,
or just that storyteller,
or just the person who seeks
to impart wisdom and insight.
Every day, I have to strap
on my cultural armour,
because I know I'm walking
into a colonised space
with people who may not necessarily
be acting in good faith,
who may have been stuck in
that Western onto-epistemology,
where they're like, "This
is the way the world works,
and anything is unscientific
and has no value."
And so, I can't separate that,
so I have to strap on the armour
and I have to be prepared to
sit across tables from people,
firing bullets, holding people to account,
calling out racism, all of
the things that take the toll.
And my experience as a school teacher,
you know, I taught maths
for a couple of years,
and I still have vivid
memories of the kids going,
you know, I'd walk into a maths class
and they go, "I hate maths,"
and I go, "You know what?
That's no skin off my nose, kiddo.
If you don't like it, that's fine.
It's not everybody's cup of tea.
I just gotta make sure
that you're functionally
numerate at the end of this
so that when you have to
do maths in your future,
like things like budgeting,
bank loans, whatever,
you have enough to know
you're not getting screwed over basically,
you're not having your stuff stolen."
But when I walk into a class
and I have students go, "I
hate Indigenous studies,"
not that that's ever happened,
but there's occasional
pushback, occasional.
You know, they're never so open as that.
I can't separate myself
from that discipline.
- Yeah.
- It is a part of me,
it's a part of who I am,
it's a part of who our team is.
And to have that rejection
of the discipline,
whether we like it or not,
is a rejection of us as well,
and that takes a particular toll.
When we cover a lot of our content,
you know, we don't shy away
from the darkness of Australia's history,
we don't shy away from the
genocide, the massacres,
you know, releasing smallpox
and all the terrible things
that happen from that,
and that too takes a toll,
because you can't help but feel sad
teaching about that stuff.
And so, we've gotta put on our armour
and we've gotta roll in and be prepared
to endure the cut and thrust
of teaching and learning in higher ed.
And at the same time, I
think we're incredibly lucky,
because we are here by
virtue of our communities
who support us 110%,
who've made it very clear
that higher education is a
place where we need to be,
where our young people need to be,
and we have a responsibility
as custodians,
because I'm not the first person
who's been the associate director
of learning and teaching,
I am just in that chair for now,
I'm a custodian of what
this position represents,
and it's my job to keep
everything ticking over,
and potentially, whoever comes afterwards
will hopefully have a
bit of an easier time
with systems and structures
and all that sort of stuff.
And so, I have to be constantly aware
that I am responsible to the
expectations of the community
as well,
and that I have to honour all the students
and all the knowledge and
all the learning that happens
so we all benefit from that as well.
- You've spoken about it a
little bit here or there.
How do you maintain
authenticity and resilience,
and how long can you kind of do that for
in a role like this?
- I mean, authenticity's
not necessarily something
I've ever had an issue with.
- It doesn't, yeah.
- You should probably tell-
- I'm sure our viewers at
home (Al and Dom laughing)
picked up on that.
- I think it's helpful
in terms of authenticity,
because occasionally
I will be involved with
various initiatives, projects
around the state,
and it doesn't matter often
how reasonable, how measured,
how considered, how
much evidence there is,
there's a portion of the community
who will try and call me out,
saying that I'm a cultural
Marxist, and I'm ultra woke,
and I'm terrible
and trying to, you know,
brainwash the young generation.
And my philosophy is like, "Well,
if I'm gonna cop that anyway,
I may as well lean into it and go,
'Well, I could be quite
conservative in my outlook,
I could be quite
conservative in my projects.
I'm gonna cop the blowback anyway,
so I may as well get my
money's worth, as it were,'
and lean into that."
So, that's why I try to
be as authentic as I can.
And coming from a largely
working class background,
from an Aboriginal Torres
Strait Islander background,
I think I have an opportunity
to really challenge
some of the expectations
and experiences of higher education,
and I may or may not drop
the occasional swear word into a classroom
when I'm feeling particularly
fired up and passionate.
- Goodness.
- And I often get
feedback from the students
going, "You are unlike any
of our other instructors."
And I go, "Oh, I'm so sorry."
And they're like, "No, no, this is great.
We really like it."
And so, I think that
authenticity helps to ensure
that we actually have really positive
and impactful learning
experiences as well.
So, I'm not just here,
just following through,
going through willy-nilly, and not-
You know, if the students are prepared
to honour me with their presence,
I wanna honour them
by giving them the best and
the most that I can give them
in the short time that I have them for.
In terms of resilience,
I mean that's a big question,
and I'm not sure I'm very good at that,
'cause it does take its toll.
I think being proactive
in terms of accessing
mental health support
is something that's really
helped me along this journey.
I think having a really wonderful,
supportive team at NIKERI,
full of mob and non-Indigenous
comrades who get it,
means that some days,
after just a particularly harrowing class,
I can just come in, let it all out,
and just be myself, and
be authentically myself,
and know that that's not gonna come back
with any sort of negative repercussions.
And as I sort of alluded to earlier,
I think knowing that you've got community,
knowing that you have their support
and honouring them
means that you are never far away
from the answer to the
question, "Why am I here?"
"Why am I doing this?"
because you have community who say,
"We can see you are a success,
we can see you're working so hard,
and we know that our
young people will benefit
from accessing higher education,
from accessing NIKERI,
or any other university,
and being able to
succeed in these places."
And that heartens me a lot,
and that's something that I
really cherish very deeply.
And I'm also kind of
nervous about it as well,
'cause I don't wanna screw it up.
(Al and Dom laughing)
- Pressure's on.
The expectation's there.
- That's it.
That's it.
- And so, how long can you do this for,
or do you want to do this for?
And what would be next, I guess,
to keep, you know, if you want
to continue the same mission,
which I'm sure you do,
but in a different way?
- Well, at the end of the day,
I have no desire to leave,
'cause at this stage in my career,
I'm not sure what I'd do
if I wasn't doing this.
I think I'd be a bit lost.
There's a lot of work to be done,
and there will continue to
be a lot of work to be done
into the future.
I mean, we have a
phenomenon in this country,
where the first university
was established in the 1850s.
It took us until the late 1950s
to get our very first Aboriginal
graduate from a university.
So, we've got over a
hundred years of inertia,
just in higher education alone,
forget about the rest of
colonisation for a moment,
that we have to overcome.
And I think, you know, there's a proverb:
The master's tools
will never be able to
dismantle the master's house.
I don't necessarily ascribe to that,
because if that were the case,
there would've been no reason
to exclude us from higher
education for a hundred years
before we got into it.
Like, knowledge is power. Let's be real.
'Cause it's not the
master's tool that matter,
it's whose hands are
wielding them in the moment.
And so,
I have every desire to stay where I am
and to see this
continue to reach out to community
to build the number
of successful Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander students
who we work with
to recognise that we
are not just supporting
and holding young people,
and of course, many mature
age students as well
who are coming into the university,
but by extension, we're
holding communities as well,
because they come in,
they do some learning,
they achieve some qualifications,
and then they immediately
go into the community
and they're building communities,
they're supporting the young people there,
they're creating positive spirals
that build the numbers of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander students
accessing higher education,
they're building an Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander
entrepreneurial middle class,
they're allowing us to be successful
within the systems that
we're forced to endure,
but at the same time,
ensure that we're able to maintain
our authentic cultural selves
and the principles that underpin those.
And that is a great responsibility,
and that is something
that I'm gonna be more than
happy to continue to do
until such time as someone
might tap me on my shoulders
and say, "I think it's
time to move on now,"
and I'll go, "Okay. Fair enough."
And maybe, I don't know, I'll
go stack shelves at Woollies
or something like that.
(Al and Dom laughing)
- Look out for Al at Woollies.
(Al laughs)
We're near the end of this,
but just a couple of quick
fire questions to wrap up.
Who's someone you look up to?
- Oh, gosh.
I mean,
(Al sighs)
I think it would be weird
if I didn't say my dad.
And I think one of the things I love
is that he works with me at NIKERI,
and he actually was here first,
and he was one of the big reasons
why I came to Deakin and to NIKERI,
because he's like, "This place is great.
Come along. Everyone's amazing.
You know, you'll be
great. You'll be amazing."
And the time that I've been here,
I've had such wonderful success,
and it's been just a wonderful,
an exhausting journey,
but a wonderful one.
I think that there are key
elders in the community
that are too numerous to name,
who, at various times of my life
in moments of concern or crisis,
have kind of taken me under their wings
and really supported me on my own journey,
my own cultural identity,
you know, my experiences of authenticity.
I think all the deadly young people
that I get to interact with,
be they primary school
kids, secondary kids,
students who I've engaged with
or who are engaging in
the university journey,
and they're such a deadly mob
and they are so driven
and they are such
wonderful, wonderful people
who are gonna go out and
do the most amazing things,
and to be just a small
part of that journey
and to try and help them as much as I can,
and, you know, honour the
help that I've received
from all those elders who've
looked after me as well.
And I think, you know,
thinking about Country as well
and recognising that, you
know, colonisation meant
that my family had to leave Country,
and I was grown up on Wurundjeri Country,
and I was nourished by Wurundjeri Country,
and I was looked after by
the plants and the animals,
and the dreaming and
everything was part of that,
and I wanna make sure
that I work to instil those same values
and reinforce them in all
the students who I work with.
And I suppose, finally, as well,
you know, the leadership
that we have here at Deakin,
you know, the absolutely deadly mob
who are inhabiting those top spots,
who are in the big chairs,
who are advocating day in and day out,
and many of whom who've been
in this sector for decades,
who have had such impact
for such a long time,
and who definitely broke the ground,
blazed all the trails,
and who are the reason
why I am here today,
doing what I'm doing,
and I just hope that I can
live up to their expectations
and honour them and their
efforts by doing my part.
But yeah.
Yeah.
So, I got a bit emotional
there, goodness. (laughs)
- It's welcome. It's welcome.
Well, what do you do to unwind?
Let's loosen this up a little bit.
(Al laughs)
- Oh, look,
I enjoy spending time with family.
I have a nephew and a gaggle of nieces
who I just absolutely adore,
and I love just connecting with them.
Wherever possible,
I try and get up onto
Dja Dja Wurrung Country
and, you know, sort of take
my shoes off and go for walks
and just take a moment to really listen
and think and feel and reflect.
You know, I probably play
too many video games,
if I'm honest.
- What are you playing at the moment?
- I just recently bought
myself a PlayStation 5,
so I've got a couple
of PlayStation 5 games
that I'm sort of getting into.
Mostly, first-person
shooters and strategy games
and things like that.
It just helps me switch off for a while.
And then, wherever I can,
I try and sort of exercise,
and do that as well.
- Yeah. I think you might
have answered it there,
but do you have a favourite place?
- Oh, Country.
Definitely Country.
Anywhere in the sort of
Central Goldfields region
of Victoria.
You know, as soon as I get onto Country,
I feel like a weight just comes off.
Hearing the animals, the birds,
feeling the wind,
touching the trees, the earth, the soil,
there's nothing quite like it.
And having the opportunity to feel held
by the ancestors in that space
is something that I definitely cherish,
and it means a lot.
- I'm glad to hear that.
Al Fricker, thank you so much
for being on "Stories of Wonder."
- Thank you so much for having
me. It's been a delight.