19 Narrative Knowledge
Cat Kutay
This is an exercise in sustainable and holistic knowledge creation and sharing. It’s about students making their own learning journey with a focus on the whole picture.
We start with looking at how Aboriginal narratives or Dreaming stories develop as the child grows:
- At first they explain natural features and animal behaviours
This helps the child find their way back home. The simple Dreaming stories that are shared with those outside the culture are for those who are not aware yet of our knowledge system, who are like children. So we help people enter our social knowledge system with the most basic aspect, of knowing Country.
- Relationship between people in the community – eg kinship
Next our stories assist people to work together and understand our complex relationships that tie us together and ensure we work for each other, with responsibility to each other and the community.
- Relationships between community and environment – eg moiety
As people become adults in our culture they need to work with community and the whole environment in a sustainable way. So the stories expand to explain how all the components relate and the indicators at each significant part of Country show how well the Country is.
- Spiritual understanding of complex patterns in the environment – knowledge that is too complex or intuitive to express
It is only when people become expert in knowledge that they are able to understand the deepest knowledge of Country intuitively, using long experience to manage complex situations. This knowledge is shared in the sacred stories.
Audio narrative exercise
Provide an audio reflection (recorded)
- What is your country you are most affiliated to – area of land. This is “your Country”
- What is a food item there you know about – this is “your totem”
- What can you tell about that food, how to increase it, where to get it, how to prepare it
- Tell a story to teach others about living on your Country
Use this information to develop your narrative about learning:
- What can you share about your story of learning, living on the Country within your University/TAFE/College/School?
Now start the story with a moral approach:
- What are your values? Introduce your story with these
Example story on Teamwork
The animals gathered around the local spring to admire the reflection of the sky and trees. The birds flew down to admire their own reflection, and the trees quietly dropped their leaves to disturb these images as they were tired of the noise.
When the Lyrebird enters the circle beside the spring the other animals are confused, they understand a little of what he was talking about: respect, space, others, but together the words do not make sense. They struggle to engage with the story.
It was a soaring Wedgetail Eagle who described the unified scene she saw that inspired the gathering to consider how to see themselves as a group, as having some ideas in common, while some are different, but the process of change can be planned with all them in mind.
It was only the Common Myna who could not accept this collaboration and made it difficult for them to assign tasks to each clan, as the Myna did not think the process should be divided up that way.
It was the Lyrebird that suggested that while they would do separate tasks, they needed to understand each others’ contribution to the process to maintain their cohesion. The Myna could accept this approach.
Narrative Indicators
As students continue through their studies, provide material to develop the story. To develop these stories, teachers can deconstruct the narrative for deeper learning at each significant indicator in the story. Those with more experience and knowledge in each aspect can provide a narrative on what they know.
The students can fit this into the larger narrative if each new story is linked back to a point in the large narrative. This may be a location in the story, or a deeper explanation of what a character in the story did at some point.
Building Narrative
The students will construct their own version of the narrative around their discipline and projects. They will start to incorporate the significant features of their learning into their own story that they can tell, which is about what they know and have verified with other experts around them.
If the students work as a community this will be based on the one story, which will have extra material each student can share, as an expression of their expertise. It will be a story that repects all students’ experiences but provides a common thread on how to navigate learning, how to deal with the important aspects, and how to gain a deep knowledge of learning.
Example of narrative
An example story is one told of the Ngunnhu – the fish traps at Brewarrina – created by Baiame, the serpent spirit who created the rivers.
Note: We warn that the speaker in this video has passed away.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=7uYKg1M6PRk%3Fsi%3D_GSAFpuchS_BGd_y
Recorded by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. Licensed for adaption and re-use under CC BY-NC 4.0.
This video records a story told to children, but there are clear points in the story where more detail could be added as the children grow. A description of the countryside created by Biaime provides a way for children to find their way home. The way the traps form a net is described as a way to perceive the layout of the traps; the black fish that Biaime hunted may refer to fish that lay their eggs in the bank and were collected by Aboriginal people and distributed to other areas of the river; the ceremony when the dust is kicked up into a high cloud links to the techniques of cloud seeding used now.
References
Sveiby, K-E. & Skuthorpe, T. (2006). Treading Lightly. Allen and Unwin.
