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In the distressing midst of global extinction and environmental crises, changes to the ways that places are managed and cared for are vital and urgent. We offer here an Indigenous-led model of cross-cultural collaboration based on lessons shared by Darug custodians in Sydney, Australia, embedded in the making of buran nalgarra (stringybark rope). The Buran Nalgarra model of collaboration is not a simple cut-and-paste model nor panacea for effective collaboration. Rather, embedded deeply in Darug Ngurra (Darug Country), we share what we have learnt and value through our Caring-as-Darug-Ngurra project in the hope that others will find our guiding principles and processes useful, and perhaps adapt our learning to their own places. We strive for strength and learning through togetherness.

Sydney is an Indigenous place – Indigenous Country – infused with Indigenous stories and lore/Law. Yet as the original site of British colonisation in 1788, Sydney today is also a deeply-colonised place. Long-held narratives of Sydney as a colonial city have worked hard to erasure Indigenous peoples’ presences and to silence Indigenous stories of this place (Rey and Harrison, 2018). In recent years, however, Indigenous-led tours on Country are emerging in the Greater Sydney region, whereby Indigenous guides share with visitors stories of place, history, culture, language and connection. We write together as Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers, in conversation with four Indigenous tour operators in the Greater Sydney region to reflect on their experiences of conducting Indigenous tours in this Indigenous-yet-deeply-colonised place. We document the kinds of ‘deep-colonising’ (Rose, 1996) narratives and assumptions the operators encounter during their tours and within the tourism industry, and highlight how Indigenous tour operators facilitate many non-Indigenous peoples in taking their first steps towards meaningful interactions with Indigenous Sydney-siders. We conclude that Indigenous tour operators undertake incredibly complex, confronting and challenging emotional labours trying to change the pervasive and deep-colonising narratives and assumptions about Indigenous peoples in the Greater Sydney region. In a world where the histories of thousands of cities ‘lie in dispossession and genocide of Indigenous peoples’ (Porter, 2020: 15), we argue for further and careful analytical attention on Indigenous tourism encounters in Indigenous – yet deeply-colonised – places.

New learning and teaching methods such as 'blended learning' are increasingly promoted within higher education institutions. Such methods – especially those which replace slow scholarship and/or people with digital technologies – run the risk of reinforcing neoliberal learning spaces and perpetuating processes of 'deep colonization' (Rose, 1996). We argue that these new learning and teaching methods must be grounded in critical pedagogies to avoid extending neoliberal agendas in the university context. Furthermore, we propose these methods require careful student and teacher reflection, coupled with conscientious attempts at decolonising existing educational institutions and pedagogies (Radcliffe, 2017). In this article we explore the intersections and disconnections between critical pedagogy, attempts at decolonising the classroom, and flexible learning approaches like blended learning. We draw on our collective experiences as both teachers and students who are continuously learning – learning-teachers and learning-students – within the context of a higher level subject entitled 'Rethinking Resource Management' which is taught at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. A blended learning approach is practiced by the learning-teachers of this course, in an effort to situate their responsibilities and shift their pedagogy towards decolonizing approaches. In this dialogue between learning-teachers and learning-students, we argue that while blended learning can provide opportunities to improve learning experiences and support decolonising pedagogies, constraints that arise from a neoliberal university context, such as the reframing of students as clients and the prioritisation of money-saving approaches, can moderate such promise. Further, decolonising education requires more than what can be delivered by blended learning approaches in isolation. They also fundamentally require a careful reconfiguration of responsibilities in a relational and multidirectional manner, of learning-teachers, learning-students and the broader learning-institution context. So while the learning-teachers' efforts at decolonising the classroom and better engaging with learning-students remain partial, they are deeply valued by many learning-students and are important tentative contributions towards nurturing more 'care-full' decolonising learning spaces. The article offers a critical discussion of the issues raised in a dialogue between learning-teachers and learning-students of Rethinking Resource Management, and considers what we can contribute to broader debates in decolonising learning, the blended learning trend and structural changes in universities. We offer this instance of care-full teaching and learning as a case study that emphasises dialogue, in multiple modes, to renegotiate power relations, and to advocate caution in moves toward top-down entrenchment of digital teaching modes.

In non-urban places of Australia, caring-as-Country frames natural resource management (NRM) as a practice of reciprocal, more-than-human care-giving (S. Suchet-Pearson, S. Wright, K. Lloyd, and L....

The flipped classroom approach, a form of blended learning, is currently popular in education praxis. Initial reports on the flipped classroom include that it offers opportunities to increase student engagement and build meaningful learning and teaching experiences. In this article, we analyse teacher and student experiences of a trial flipped classroom application in a third year undergraduate human geography course that challenges conventional thinking and practice in resource management, including an explicit focus on the marginalization of Indigenous knowledges in that context. The flipped classroom trial included empirical research with teachers and students to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of this mode of learning. Interviews, focus groups, surveys, reflections and participant-observation activities were conducted before, during and after the course. The research shows that this particular implementation of the flipped classroom approach generated multiple experiences for teachers and s...