One of the biggest debates in Australian Indigenous education today revolves around the many contested and competing ways of knowing by and about Indigenous cultures and the representation of Indigenous knowledges. Using Bakhtin's theories of dialogue and voice, my concern in this paper is to explore the polyphonic nature of power relations, performance roles and pedagogical texts in the context of teaching and learning Indigenous Australian women's music and dance. In this discussion, I will focus on my experiences as a lecturer in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland and my involvement in this educational setting with contemporary Indigenous performer Samantha Chalmers. Like a field experience, the performance classroom will be examined as a potential site for disturbing and dislocating dominant modes of representation of Indigenous women's performance through the construction, mediation and negotiation of Indigenous knowledge from and between both non-Indigenous and Indigenous voices.

A friend, whom I had not seen for some time, recently asked me what I had been doing overthe last several months. I replied, ‘I have just spent the past year in the most incredible headspace.’ This elicited an excited curiosity from my friend to hear more and I began to explain. At fifty-six years of age I had made the decision to return to academic life as a student and pursue a degree in Australian Indigenous Studies. This had been suggested and encouraged by my Aboriginal sister, Jackie Huggins, and so, with herguidance I applied and was accepted to attend the University of Queensland within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (ATSIS) Unit of the Arts Faculty. It was a major step for me, for although I had been presenting lectures and workshops on aspects of traditional and contemporary Native American culture in the educational and public arenas for a decade, I had not been on the student side of the lectern for 40 years. In the first few weeks of semester one the impact of my decision was almost overwhelming. I had completed secondary school in Canada, being the first person in my family to achieve that and now here I was going to university, another first in my family.

We are Indigenous University lecturers involved in research with the Purga Elders and Descendants Aboriginal Corporation. Our research at Purga involves the instigation of Indigenous Knowledge as the basis of effective and valid research methodologies. This article will describe the work that the University of Queensland (UQ) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit is doing at Purga. It will then articulate the principles of Indigenous Knowledge Research that inform this work.

These simple Cherokee words of greeting enfold an American Indian reality and knowledge system based on the interconnectedness of all things. American Indian ontologies and epistemologies are quite different from most Western paradigms. However, rather than being accepted and respected as coevals within Western universities, Indigenous paradigms, when acknowledged at all, is most often considered as data that informs Western research (Cajete, 2000). In this article, I explore some of the ways in which Western Research paradigms suppress the sacred aspects of Indigenous people's epistemologies. I then describe the Medicine Wheel Paradigm upon which I based my PhD research, which incorporates spiritual experience as one of the four key elements of human experience.

The concept of Indigenous knowledge itself has life; it is ‘living’ knowledge. This Indigenous knowledge or ‘living’ knowledge is not written, but rather transmitted orally by the gatekeepers and holders of knowledge, especially from our Elders ‘Athe’ (grandfather), ’Aka’ (grandmother), our parents ‘Baba’ (father), and ‘Ama’ (mother), as well as our (uncles) ‘Awahdeh’ and our (aunties) ‘Ama’. These holders of knowledge play a major part in our individual lives as they mould or shape our minds, values, ethics, morals and opinions about society today and its influences on us as individuals. The Elders also influence where we place ourselves in our community and in the wider community. This transmission of Indigenous knowledge is ‘passed on’ through traditional language, traditional lores, understandings of totems, kinship ties, performance of dances, songs, stories, myths, legends, rituals, ceremonies and activities or events which influence our lives daily.