Practitioner Spotlight
Waranara (library) Indigenous resource repository
The context
We are a team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous academics and librarians at Macquarie University.
We came together to solve the problem of why academics weren’t using the Indigenous resource list the library had created. Academics are wanting to embed Indigenous perspectives and knowledges in teaching, and the library was providing resources to assist this. The problem was, the usage data on the list kept declining and, as librarians, we kept trying to find a technical solution to solve this. We asked ourselves, what’s missing? Why aren’t they using it? That’s when we joined with our Indigenous colleagues across the university to approach the problem from a different angle.
We used the Framework to design our workshops (data collection) and data analysis.
We ran online workshops with academics from across the university and created a scenario about developing a new Indigenous resource repository. We divided the participants into four online breakout rooms (Eagle, Ant, Grandmother and Granddaughter) where we recorded the discussions and took notes. We then split the group into two kin-pair breakout rooms to share and co-create ideas again.
The engagement we got from participants was amazing, even though it was technically nuanced to run the workshop online. After the workshops, we used the Kin and Country Framework as a data analysis tool where we sat together, relationally, to find the key themes.
The Framework reiterated that the solutions need to be grounded in Country and relationships.
The Indigenous resource repository is a living entity that will keep growing.
Key Learnings
The Kin and Country Framework lent itself to this puzzle because we could ask academics to think outside their immediate response and deeply think from different perspectives.
The most surprising part was the kin-pairs coming back together. Through the kin-pairs we were moving through tensions and contradictions that spoke to the nuance of the problem we were addressing. It showed that we need to stop isolating, homogenising variables as we had done that previously and that approach didn’t work.
Through the Framework we had to bring the variables together and face our difficulties and frustrations to move forward.