Bagaraybang – Restoring the “public good”

Research and its position within the academy are often framed as needing to contribute to the common, greater, or “public good”. The common, greater and “public good” may signify that the impact of research benefits all peoples, equally. However, the bodies, views and ideologies that constitute the “public” are not all peoples and are not treated “equally”. The “public good” can be argued to relate to white bodies and western epistemologies that continue to dominate understandings and production of knowledge within the academy and research. This action fuels a struggle for intellectual sovereignty within the academy (Moreton-Robinson, 2022), especially for First Nations PhD students. Universities are implicated within the rights movement of First Nations sovereignty, and this importantly relates to sovereign research and its rightful place to lead, guide and exist, without being forcibly moulded to align with a white “public good” agenda. Sovereign research resists and challenges dominant Western epistemologies that reassert possessive and colonial logics of knowledge that are used in research to perpetuate systems of injustice in the public. Sovereign research creates a “public good” and future that is bagaraybang – healthy, restored, and healthier (Grant Snr and Rudder, 2010). When we embody our sovereign research as First Nations peoples and PhD students, we transform the power and knowledge relationship from a “public good” that privileges whiteness and Western epistemologies, to a relationship that cares for knowledge in the ways our ancestors guide us to.