maar bidi editors Rachel Bin Salleh, Elfie Shiosaki and Linda Martin. Image courtesy of UWA.

Academia has inherited a long history of non-Indigenous people speaking for Indigenous people and defining Indigeneity and Indigenous cultural heritage – each recurring act erasing Indigenous voices and agencies to speak. Within the discipline of Indigenous Studies, scholars are carving out new transformative pedagogical spaces to create Indigenous-determined stories and storylines. We advocate that, now more than ever, next-generation Indigenous storytelling is needed to nurture intergenerational story cycles which imagine and enliven Indigenous-determined futures.

We gather at Bilya Marlee on Whadjuk Noongar boodja, where Kaart Geenunginyup Bo (the place from where you can look afar) meets the beeliar.² We acknowledge the Whadjuk people of the Noongar Nation, their ancestors and Elders, and Whadjuk story cycles held in the land-, water- and skyscapes on boodja. We thank Whadjuk Traditional Owner Len Collard for creating the Noongar language phrase maar bidi for our collaboration. Maar bidi means to carve out a pathway with your hands. It can be translated as handwriting.

Plains Cree and Saulteaux woman Margaret Kovach teaches us that ‘we know what we know from where we stand’.³ Our knowledge is grounded in our own standpoint, and sense of place and belonging to place. We acknowledge our diverse standpoints on Whadjuk boodja. Elfie Shiosaki is a Noongar and Yaruwu writer. She is Lecturer in Indigenous Rights at the School of Indigenous Studies (SIS), and Editor of Indigenous Writing at Westerly. Linda Martin is a non-Indigenous lecturer in creative writing at SIS, an editor, and co-publisher of Night Parrot Press. Nadia Rhook is a non-Indigenous lecturer in history at SIS, and a published poet.