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Despite wellbeing being critical for individuals and communities to thrive in life and succeed in education, there is little research that investigates how Indigenous Australian youth attending universities conceptualise wellbeing. The purpose of this research was to empower the voices and agency of Indigenous youth attending higher education institutes to identify their construals of: the significance and nature of their wellbeing, the factors influencing their wellbeing, and the drivers and barriers to their wellbeing. Focus groups were undertaken with Indigenous youth (N=30) attending four Australian higher education institutions. The participants construed wellbeing as holistic, multidimensional, interconnected, collective, and subjective. Cultural identity, family and kinship, connection to Country, spirituality, having a sense of self, Indigenous student role models in higher education, and Indigenous staff support are facilitators of wellbeing. Factors such as racism and discrimination, lateral violence, non-culturally safe university spaces, family violence, “walking in two worlds”, and Indigenous community wellbeing when at risk, were identified as barriers to their wellbeing.

Purpose: This chapter outlines the successful community engagement process used by the authors for the Kinship Online project in the context of Indigenous methodological, epistemological, and ethical considerations. It juxtaposes Indigenous and western ways of teaching and research, exploring in greater detail the differences between them. The following chapter builds on and extends Riley, Howard-Wagner, Mooney & Kutay (2013, in press) to delve deeply into the importance of embedding Aboriginal cultural knowledge in curriculum at the university level. Practical implications: The chapter gives an account of an Office for Learning and Teaching (OLTC) grant to develop Indigenous Online Cultural Teaching and Sharing Resources (the Kinship Online Project). The project is built on an existing face-to-face interactive presentation based on Australian Aboriginal Kinship systems created by Lynette Riley, which is being re-developed as an online cultural education workshop. Value: A key consideration of the researchers has been Aboriginal community engagement in relation to the design and development of the project. The chapter delves deeply into the importance of embedding Aboriginal cultural knowledge into curriculum at the university level. In doing so, the chapter sets out an Aboriginal community engagement model compared with a western research model which the authors hope will be useful to other researchers who wish to engage in research with Aboriginal people and/or communities. Copyright © 2013 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Teaching Aboriginal culture relies on individual teachers providing their particular perspective, yet cultural education is about providing a community perspective. This paper describes the design process for creating such an online system to share multiple experiences of Aboriginal Culture in New South Wales (NSW), Australia in a coherent and social-constructivist framework. The focus of the material is Aboriginal Kinship systems used for thousands of years in this region. This topic was chosen as the history of conflict through government policy, social inclusion and technology take-up has continually returned to issues of Kinship and cultural knowledge maintenance within respective societies, areas in which Aboriginal and European societies are markedly different. There is a pressing need to improve knowledge of Aboriginal cultural heritage and technology provides a novel means of sharing this understanding. Narratives from Aboriginal communities are used to augment an interactive face-to-face Kinship presentation which has been videoed and will be available as part of the learning material. Using innovative authoring tools, teachers will be able to select Aboriginal people's narratives that are relevant to their course of study, and map these to a range of scenarios being developed. The scenarios enable students to select ways they relate to the online characters, listen to various narratives, and become aware of their own role in the wider community, in relation to working for or with Aboriginal people.

Teaching complex learning domains such as cultural awareness relies on individual perspectives. In this paper we present the process and technology to develop an online system to share multiple experiences of Aboriginal Culture in NSW, Australia within a social-constructivist framework. The focus of the material is the Kinship system used for thousands of years in this region. This topic exemplifies the knowledge used to maintain societies and provides the setting for social conflict with the non-Aboriginal people who came here in recent history. We are using stories from the community to augment the learning material. Using innovative web services, teachers can select the stories that are relevant to their course, and link these within a range of scenarios being developed. The scenarios enable students to select the way they relate to the characters, listen to their stories, and become aware of their own role in the community. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.

Teaching Aboriginal culture relies on individual teachers providing their particular perspective, yet cultural education is about providing a community perspective. This paper describes the design process for creating such an online system to share multiple experiences of Aboriginal Culture in New South Wales (NSW), Australia in a coherent and social-constructivist framework. The focus of the material is Aboriginal Kinship systems used for thousands of years in this region. This topic was chosen as the history of conflict through government policy, social inclusion and technology take-up has continually returned to issues of Kinship and cultural knowledge maintenance within respective societies, areas in which Aboriginal and European societies are markedly different. There is a pressing need to improve knowledge of Aboriginal cultural heritage and technology provides a novel means of sharing this understanding. Narratives from Aboriginal communities are used to augment an interactive face-to-face Kinship presentation which has been videoed and will be available as part of the learning material. Using innovative authoring tools, teachers will be able to select Aboriginal people's narratives that are relevant to their course of study, and map these to a range of scenarios being developed. The scenarios enable students to select ways they relate to the online characters, listen to various narratives, and become aware of their own role in the wider community, in relation to working for or with Aboriginal people. © Common Ground, Cat Kutay, Janet Mooney, Lynette Riley, and Deirdre Howard-Wagner.