Balayanhi Wiradyuri Garingundhi. We are sovereign my granddaughter. Embodying Wiradyuri women’s sovereignty through Wiradyuri knowing, being and doing.

Jessica Russ-Smith

Research output: ThesisDoctoral Thesis

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Abstract

Balayanhi Wiradyuri Garingundhi explores how I as a Wiradyuri Wambuul woman embody sovereignty. Dominant literature and discourse regarding Indigenous sovereignty frames sovereignty through a Western legal lens and colonial logics (Moreton-Robinson 2004). This thesis explores sovereignty outside of this understanding, and instead centres sovereignty as embodied within Wiradyuri ways of knowing, being, and doing. Through a Wiradyuri Wambuul woman's place-based and immersive methodology, understandings of the embodiment of sovereignty are examined and guided by Wiradyuri cosmology and the sacred Wiradyuri relationship of grandmothers and granddaughters. Indigenous knowledges are sacred and have been exploited and disrespected by colonisation, colonial legacies and colonial institutions. The academy, its Whiteness and its power as a source of knowledge production has hierarchically positioned scientific and epistemic knowledge, in turn endangering Indigenous knowledges and their importance (Apffel-Marglin 1996: 32). This research challenges these colonial norms through the centring of Wiradyuri culture and ways of knowing. The data collection process is relational and is undertaken through the author writing stories and poems to their granddaughter and through sharing stories told to them by their grandmother. The poems and stories are analysed using wayamiilbuwawanha, the Wiradyuri process of deep self-reflective practice. Through Wiradyuri sovereign research and ways of knowing, the body and resistance are explored as core ways in which the author embodies her sovereignty. This research is a sovereign Wiradyuri ceremony that honours the importance of grandmothers, granddaughters, and unceded Wiradyuri sovereignty.
Original languageEnglish
QualificationDoctor of Philosophy
Awarding Institution
  • Charles Sturt University
Supervisors/Advisors
  • Green, Sue, Principal Supervisor
  • Orchard, Christopher, Co-Supervisor
Place of PublicationAustralia
Publisher
Publication statusPublished - 2023

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