This course engages in in-depth considerations of Indigenous perspectives and the ways in which metropolitan planning strategies and design emphasise the relation of Indigenous communities to Australia’s cities. 

Australian cities are Indigenous places; they remain not only sacred sites, but also home to many Indigenous Australians. In 2016, almost 80 per cent of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Island people lived in an urban area, and that number is increasing. In 2021 statistics, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Census population of the City of Melbourne in 2021 was 769, while that of Greater Melbourne was 32,952. Terms such as ‘urban Country’ and ‘city-as-Country' are making their way into public discourse and highlight how connecting to Country does not require ‘wilderness’, ‘the Outback’, or ‘the countryside’. Connecting to Country is possible everywhere.

The course begins by interrogating the use the term ‘country’ and ways of seeing 'country':

colonial, postcolonial, decolonial and Indigenous. People live their lives in cities, villages, townships, and across homelands, and make powerful attachments to place as country, home, or threat, a place of substance or transience. The course asks how we tell stories of these encounters, and how do we find our own ethnographic voice. Country, places, landscapes and seascapes - real or imagined - encode and express identity. They are also locations for conflict and contestation, often submerged behind lost stories of settler-colonialism, institutional and structural violence, abuse and racism. 

In this course, we will engage with local Indigenous sites, places and commemorations where you also develop critical self-reflexivity that interrogates your own understanding, engagement and representation. The course will also facilitate your engagement with place-based case studies and discussions of each case study, providing you with important insights and a more-in-depth understanding of fieldwork as a lived experience that ultimately shapes not only your own disciplinary practice, but also your understanding of global development in significant ways.