Using the Framework
There's no one way to use the Kin and Country Framework, and it doesn’t belong to any one discipline. It's been used in classrooms and field schools, in research methodologies and data analysis. People have used it to think differently about problems that feel too big to solve from a human perspective alone.
Anyone can use the Framework. But where you begin matters. Start with who you are and where you are. The rest follows from there.
Before you bring the Framework into your teaching or research, there are two questions worth sitting with.
The Framework is built from these questions, so think deeply before you answer.
Who are you?
What’s your positionality – your standpoint, your values, your cultural lineage? How does that shape the way you see the world and the way you learn and teach?
Where are you?
What Country are you on? What responsibility does that carry?
Eagle, Ant, Grandmother and Granddaughter are the Entities we have chosen. But the Framework is designed to be adapted to the local people (Kin) and local place (Country) wherever you're using it.
That means the Entities might change. On Darug Country, the macro perspective might belong to Black Snapper Fish, who holds the lessons of the waterways. On another Country, it might be Whale, teaching about migration and deep time. The Framework travels. The Entities adapt. Each Kin and Country will offer a different perspective of macro, micro, past, future.
Here are two ways into this:
If you know the story:
If you are a local knowledge-holder and you know which beings hold these perspectives on your Country, you can draw on that knowledge directly.
If you're learning the story:
Connect with people – local knowledge-holders and Elders – and resources, such as local seasonal calendars, local Indigenous organisations and associations.
The Framework has been used across a growing range of contexts – from school classrooms to research methodologies to community practice.
University educators have used it to structure classes around Country-centred learning, running field schools where students reflect through the four Entity perspectives.
Researchers have used it as a data analysis tool, replacing conventional thematic analysis with a relational approach that centres Country and deep time.
And students have used it to shift their own positionality – to move from speaking about perspectives to speaking from them.
It’s been used in health, education, planning, science, history and geography. We look forward to learning how you use it in your work.
Listen to practitioners and educators
Coming soon.