Introduction
Notwithstanding decades of “development,” there remains persistent poverty, widening inequality and biodiversity loss. It is clear the UN Sustainable Development Goals will not be met by 2030; and it is obvious the 1.5°C global warming threshold will be breached (Silova et al., Reference Silova, Komatsu, Rappleye and Faul2025). Considering the current oil wars, it is recognised that “the world’s addiction to fossil fuels is one of the greatest threats to global stability and prosperity” (United Nations, 2026). Universities are embedded in this quagmire of planetary, political and personal assaults in ways that are reflective of and to some extent, causative of these overarching problems in their uncritical teaching of unsustainable practices and perspectives, “including the “commonsense” neoclassical economics perspective on the (ecocidal) pursuit of indefinite economic growth” (McGeown & Barry, Reference McGeown and Barry2023, p. 1). The concomitant omnishambles of neoliberalism has been acknowledged for decades (McGeown & Barry, Reference McGeown and Barry2023).
We know there are better worlds, and we are learning to collaborate, hear each other, envision a regenerative world and walk its beckoning pathways. This is a karlup kaartdijin bidi – a homewards learning journey (Collard et al., Reference Collard, Wooltorton and Stredwick2026; Wooltorton et al., Reference Wooltorton, Stephenson, Ardzejewska and Collard2025). The world we envision is a regenerative one, where the regeneration of life is foremost. For this, Aboriginal and ancestral knowledges show ways to live simply with the earth (IPBES, 2024; Redvers et al., Reference Redvers, Celidwen, Schultz, Horn, Githaiga, Vera, Perdrisat, Mad Plume, Kobei, Kain, Poelina, Rojas and Blondin2022).
Within the broader context of essential planetary and societal transformation, this paper addresses a gap in the literature around Aboriginal-led, relational governance in universities. As authors, we build on the experiential notion of relational practice (Jago et al., Reference Jago, Len, Poelina, Guimond, Pule and WooltortonIn Press) and report an exploration of relational governance for universities committed to responding to the planetary metacrisis (Irwin & Wooltorton, Reference Irwin and Wooltorton2026). Our inquiry explores governance as a relational practice rather than an administrative function, paying attention to collaboration, accountability and democratic engagement grounded in Aboriginal relationships with Country.Footnote 1 We ask two questions, as follows. How might universities enact governance that supports the regeneration of culture and Country? How do we bring about this change?
We are a small cooperative inquiry group committed to Aboriginal-led place-based transformative learning, with the Noongar word: karlup as group name. Karlup means place of fire and home place. Rather than a house, karlup as home refers to a place, or local area with a sense of place as intergenerational home. A karlup is important, loved and cared for by Elders using fire. In this way, karl means fire, sense of place and family (Wooltorton et al., Reference Wooltorton, Poelina, Collard, Horwitz, Harben and Palmer2020). Fire is central to Noongar culture and in this paper, we use fire as a metaphor because fire needs care and tendering, like life itself – action and restraint – to ensure regeneration. Our online research group has become a gathering place around the metaphoric fireplace for lively conversation that aims to enrich a process for regenerating a culturally safe, philosophically meaningful university culture.
We are Len, a Whadjuk Noongar cultural custodian of south west Western Australia; Ria, a fifth-generation Australian of Anglo-Celtic ancestry who grew up in Vanuatu and is connected with Bundjalung Country in New South Wales; Vennessa, a Nyikina cultural custodian whose Dad was a Timorese hard hat pearl diver in Broome, Australia; Sandra, a multi-generation Australian with mostly Anglo-Celtic ancestry who grew up in Noongar Country; and Laurie, a Québécoise with French ancestry who grew up on Ndakina, ancestral land of the W8banaki Nation, in rural Québec (Canada) and who now lives in Montréal-Tiohtià:ke-Mooniyang.
Within a relational ontology (Bawaka Country et al., Reference Country, Burarrwanga, Ganambarr, Ganambarr-Stubbs, Ganambarr, Maymuru, Lloyd, Daley, Suchet-Pearson and Wright2023), this paper uses relational practice: a culturalFootnote 2 way of being and working that is grounded in care, responsibility and reciprocity. It uses response-ability – the capacity to respond to each other and the more-than-human world (Bawaka Country et al., Reference Country, Suchet-Pearson, Wright, Lloyd, Tofa, Sweeney, Burarrwanga, Ganambarr, Ganambarr-Stubbs, Ganambarr and Maymuru2019). Our learning involved engaging with the difficulty of transforming colonial and adversarial structures that constrain relationships in universities. These patterns are deeply embedded and change can be painful, requiring moments of pause – what Haraway (Reference Haraway2016) calls “staying with the trouble.” Relational practice is both generative and challenging. We notice that fostering conditions of invitation, rather than accelerating solutions, support more democratic and life-affirming university cultures. For us, relational practice puts Country first (Wooltorton et al., Reference Wooltorton, Collard and McGuire2026), recognising the presence of the more-than-human world in our conversations and activities. As well as each other, we attend to feelings, synchronicities, responses and meanings. This takes time – it is slow, thoughtful work. It can’t be rushed.
In this paper, beginning with a literature review on governance and culturally regenerative universities, we weave a storied contribution to the development of relational governance in universities. We include stories that build concepts, that showcase practices for dialoguing across worlds, and that embody Aboriginal and place-based epistemologies. Note that place-based and Aboriginal epistemologies are not the same, but there are common experiences that we build upon to create pathways towards political convergence. We intend to align these epistemologies, with a view to closing societal and university knowledge gaps characterised by racism and discrimination (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2026; Bongiorni, Reference Bongiorni2023; Grant, Reference Grant2023).
Literature review
In this literature review, we explore ground-up ways of thinking about governance and culturally regenerative universities; to explain and draw together the stories we offer.
What is governance?
As a starting point, we sketch an overview of governance culminating in university governance, to illustrate the landscape where we weave our stories into implications and recommendations for developing relational governance practices in universities. Simply, governance is the way people organise themselves to achieve a shared goal. From the perspective of the Australian Indigenous Governance Institute (AIGI), governance includes purpose, people, culture, wider environment, resources, rules, strategy and structure (2026). We note the inclusion of culture and the wider environment. We begin this review with community and cultural governance.
Community and cultural governance
Community governance, according to AIGI (2026) refers to the complex collection of relationships, practices, cultural protocols and more. It is inclusive of a range of corporations, nations, organisations and governments. Although a particular group’s governance may not comprise the entire community, both organisational and community governance reflect the culture of their members.
Cultural governance is the type of community governance that is modelled by the Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council, using collective principles to uphold the cultural, spiritual and ecosystem health of the catchment. It comprises a Senior Elders Council with young leaders from Traditional Owner Groups of the Fitzroy River, King Sound and the river catchment. Their work uses First Law and its cultural guardianship of obligations, responsibilities and rights to protect and promote the Martuwarra Fitzroy River Valley with its broader cultural community to benefit future and present generations (Poelina et al., Reference Poelina, Bagnall, Graham, Williams, Yunkaporta, Marshall, Diop, Samnakay, Maloney and Davis2024). In this governance model, the region is understood as sentient, alive with feeling and is deeply respected. For example,
Welcome to the River Country, Mardoowarra, the sacred River of Life. My name is Mardoowarra. When the Europeans came, they called me by another name, Fitzroy River, but I hold to my name which was given to me in the Bookarrarra, the beginning of time. I hold my totem, Yoongoorrookoo, the Rainbow Serpent who formed the valley tracts as Woonyoomboo, the first human being, stood and rode on my back, holding the spears firmly planted in my rainbow skin. As we twisted and turned up in the sky and down in the ground together, we carved our way forming the Mardoowarra, singing the Warloongarriy River Law song for Country. (Poelina, in Poelina et al., Reference Poelina, Bagnall, Graham, Williams, Yunkaporta, Marshall, Diop, Samnakay, Maloney and Davis2024, p. 45)
Community and cultural governance is relational and grounded in living place, with protocols to reflect and safeguard members’ cultural practices that are based in an ethic of care. Cultural governance in the Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council means decisions rest on First Law, with its foundation in a sentient, living river and catchment. There is a wide gap between these relational, grounded, cultural forms of governance and university governance, as we see next. As Karlup group members, our work is towards healing this gap through developing practices to underpin living, culturally regenerative universities.
University governance
In comparison to relational forms of governance, university governance is required to operate using corporate and academic principles of good governance as defined by the Australian Government’s Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Authority (TEQSA), to implement government policy which is currently the “Higher Education Standards Framework (Threshold Standards)” (2021). Corporate governance, according to TEQSA, is defined as:
…the framework of structures, rules, relationships, systems and processes of an entity through which: • corporate directions and targets are set, • authority is delegated, • organisational performance is monitored, • risks are identified, managed and controlled, • organisational accountability is maintained, • corporate culture is developed and influenced. (TEQSA, 2019, p. 1)
Similarly, TEQSA defines academic governance as the framework through which universities organise, oversee and evaluate their core activities of teaching, learning, research and scholarship. Through a combination of policies, procedures, relationships, roles and institutional systems, it guides academic decision-making and accountability while seeking to maintain standards and support ongoing improvement. (TEQSA, 2023)
Recently there have been significant reports of university governance failures, in books such as Broken: Universities, Politics and the Public Good (in the National Interest) by Turner (Reference Turner2025) and Good Universities and Critique (Connell & Luckett, Reference Connell and Luckett2025) with vivid description of conditions and suggestions for ways forward. Turner (Reference Turner2025) describes how after years of poor policy decisions, insufficient investment and piecemeal reforms, the university sector requires significant renovation. He says the absence of effective government strategic planning has allowed market forces to dominate, resulting in growing inequalities between institutions and the continued marginalisation of some universities that should not be happening. He writes that Australia should not be required to accept that some universities will be losers (Reference Turner2025).
Turner (Reference Turner2025) explains that the older idea of the purpose of universities was to uphold civilisation and culture, but after 1979, higher education was argued by policy makers to have economic growth and workforce planning as their primary purposes. Connell and Luckett (Reference Connell and Luckett2025) explain that the old relationship between the periphery and the centre has transformed into a mirror of the market and become “a steep hierarchy of university-firms, with wealth and prestige concentrated where they are least needed” (p. 190). They explain that since fear, insecurity and resentment characterise politics today, other social models appear possible – one of which is a revived authoritarianism. We see crackdowns on free speech across the planet, and elements of authoritarianism are still present in the lack of Free, Prior and Informed Consent for mining, use of water and self-determination on Aboriginal lands (Poelina et al., Reference Poelina, Toussaint and Muecke2023; Poelina, Reference Poelina, Campbell, Duffy and Edmondson2019).
Research shows that in universities, governance is currently a separate administrative and corporate function as per TEQSA requirements. However, because of its hierarchical structure, key decisions are distanced from the real university work of engaged teaching, learning and applied research for and with community and industry (Connell & Luckett, Reference Connell and Luckett2025). In this way, university governance operates in a binary way – the real university work versus decision-makers, with threads of abstracted interpretations up and down a controlled ladder. Yet as community and cultural governance shows, governance is the relationships, cultural protocols and practices by which decisions are made. As we showed earlier, universities have become markets (McGeown & Barry, Reference McGeown and Barry2023), operating as corporations with disastrous impact on themselves and the planet (McGeown & Barry, Reference McGeown and Barry2023). We wonder how this could change to reflect the values of justice, inclusion and ecological wisdom for a liveable future?
Beyond corporatism: Transitioning university governance
Here, we propose initial steps in governance transition in universities, to incorporate Aboriginal knowledge, protocols and ways of knowing shown to be essential to planetary futures (for example, IPBES, 2024). This is in line with truth-telling and the University of Melbourne’s report of its own history (Jones et al., Reference Jones, Waghorn and Langton2025a).
Since this paper is written in Noongar Country, we begin with the South West Native Title Settlement (Settlement), said to be Australia’s most comprehensive native title agreement (Government of Western Australia, 2025). The South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council is the appointed Central Services Corporation for the Settlement. There is a Community Development Framework with six priorities within the Settlement, three of which involve universities, being: safeguarding, developing and transmitting Noongar culture; capacity building and leadership; and education. There is also an Economic Participation Framework, which includes growing Noongar businesses and joint ventures; capacity building in government procurement and contracting; and building on Noongar community strengths to foster a Noongar entrepreneurial culture. (Government of Western Australia, 2025)
Governance values Aboriginal knowledge, history and experience
First, we need to ensure Aboriginal knowledge and history is valued in universities (Poelina et al., Reference Poelina, Wooltorton, Blaise, Aniere, Horwitz, White and Muecke2022). Aboriginal people have always wanted recognition for their strengths, for their knowledge and its contribution to society, and for their historic and contemporary contribution (Fogarty et al., Reference Fogarty, Bullock, McDonnell and Davis2018). Acknowledgement is due for Aboriginal people’s contribution to global knowledges and to making this nation–state what it is today. Aboriginal knowledge, talent and epistemic contribution is potentially massive but has been silenced and overlooked because Westernised knowledges are always seen as better (Jones et al., Reference Jones, Waghorn and Langton2025a, Reference Jones, Waghorn and Langton2025b). These days however, more people in colonised countries including Australia, are becoming familiar with the power and potential of Indigenous knowledge and cultures, and of the unique contributions being made to current and wider national futures (Jones et al., Reference Jones, Waghorn and Langton2025b). Adding strength to this call are recommendations of the recent Yoorrook Justice Commission (2026), that TEQSA mandate Victorian universities to include specific Victorian First Peoples in their courses, that all courses for teachers include learning about Victorian First Peoples histories and cultures, and that professional bodies in other professions require this.
Aboriginal governance for systemic change begins with reckoning and location
Second, supporting the incorporation of Aboriginal knowledge within universities calls for thoughtful resourcing to realise its potential to contribute to governance and society. This begins with reckoning with the past in the sense of moving beyond “sorry” and tokenism, to seriously incorporate self-determination and systemic reorientation (Kinnane, Reference Kinnane2026). In relation to universities, it includes truth-telling: about cultural histories and the colonisation and appropriation of peoples and locations with an emphasis on the university’s surroundings and locale; including about the university’s own historic practices. For this, universities need to teach, research and function in ways that are decolonising, anti-racist and anticolonial (Dudgeon et al., Reference Dudgeon, Bray, Darlaston-Jones and Walker2020). This means genuine recognition of knowledge, skills, practices and contribution to the organisation within these changed circumstances.
This means the goal of the culturally regenerative process is that the ground shifts for the organisation in terms of systemic response to truth telling and recognition of Aboriginal Voice. Recognising their locale on Aboriginal Country and welcoming Aboriginal contribution (Collard et al., Reference Collard, Harben and Rooney2015; Collard et al., Reference Collard, Wooltorton and Stredwick2026), universities would become genuinely welcoming Aboriginal places for all Australians of all backgrounds. There is also a second volume of Dhoombak Goobgoowana, called Voice – which demonstrates how Aboriginal communities challenged and reshaped the University of Melbourne, contributed to its research, and advocated for the inclusion of Aboriginal knowledge within academic contexts (Jones et al., Reference Jones, Waghorn and Langton2025b).
Aboriginal governance partnerships
Third, engaging in research alongside Aboriginal governance bodies and stakeholders can support the development of shared understandings around roles, opportunities and long-term university partnerships. In Noongar Country, this body is the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council (Government of Western Australia, 2025), and a partnership could take the form of a Noongar government-to-university government negotiated agreement. Noongar participation with senior university decision-makers around Settlement priorities such as community development or economic participation could function to restore the respect long overdue to the first landowners. Remembering the purpose of systemic change towards becoming an Aboriginal place to know, be, do and learn truth-values, this could also serve as a model for relational ways of governing, teaching and learning.
For learners of all backgrounds to see and hear local Aboriginal languages spoken and taught at all levels of universities, in the context of deep and recent histories and engaged cultural practice, could become reality. This could grow the quality of universities, change the nation and be world transforming in impact – particularly around climate change, biodiversity loss, fire and a great number of other seemingly unresolvable problems and crises.
In summary of the governance section, Yunkaporta says it like this:
If western governance is about aspects of control, controlling processes to arrive at predictable outcomes, then Indigenous governance is almost the reverse – the process is the governance. The culture is built on frameworks of unknowingness, uncertainty built into the culture – competing stories which, from a western point of view, would need to be beaten out to find a unified narrative for all people and contexts. (Reference Yunkaporta2023, p. 114)
This reminds us of “staying with the trouble” (Haraway, Reference Haraway2016). Sometimes, there cannot be a resolution, so we wait. Aboriginal Law is in the land, coded into the landscape, as stories waiting to be told. A new way of practising governance in universities is needed.
Culturally regenerative universities: Anticipation and action
For us, the idea of culturally regenerative universities embodies the regenerative fire notions of passion and potential to address the big problems of our time (Wooltorton et al., Reference Wooltorton, Collard and McGuire2026). Warden et al. (Reference Warden, Duthie, Speed, Stead, Siodmok and Steele2025) anticipate that by embracing the living university ethos, universities can catalyse place-based regeneration, form hubs for relationality, become evolutionary spaces enabling response to emerging conditions, and embrace complexity and holistic work. This is a learning journey with many different pathways (Wooltorton et al., Reference Wooltorton, Stephenson, Ardzejewska and Collard2025).
Nature’s systems are intrinsically regenerative, sustained through dynamic and reciprocal relationships across scales. In forests, rivers and soils, cycles of decay and renewal unfold as an ongoing continuity of life (Warden et al., Reference Warden, Duthie, Speed, Stead, Siodmok and Steele2025). Many Aboriginal cosmologies understand these both as ecological processes and as expressions of kinship – where land, water, human and more-than-human beings are bound in mutual obligation, response-ability and care (Bawaka Country et al., Reference Country, Burarrwanga, Ganambarr, Ganambarr-Stubbs, Ganambarr, Maymuru, Lloyd, Daley, Suchet-Pearson and Wright2023). There are elements of living universities everywhere in our universities and in communities – the learning task for our times is to recognise and embrace these. For example, Vennessa mentioned that a Kimberley care home for Aboriginal Seniors can be understood as a living university where a good number of cultural Elders continue to embody, hold and share deep traditional knowledge. These spaces are not just places of care, but potentially sites of learning, cultural continuity and intergenerational connection. Similarly, in sharing a little about a YolŋuFootnote 3 Country-led pedagogy, the writing group Bawaka Country (Reference Country, Burarrwanga, Ganambarr, Ganambarr-Stubbs, Ganambarr, Maymuru, Lloyd, Daley, Suchet-Pearson and Wright2023), describe Songspirals as a university for themselves, due to the depth and breadth of intergenerational knowledge that is held within each song.
The challenge for humanity is to realign our social, cultural and economic systems within Aboriginal and place-based living relational patterns, so that human flourishing is also the flourishing of the living world (Warden et al., Reference Warden, Duthie, Speed, Stead, Siodmok and Steele2025). Such a shift calls for a cultural turning towards deeper relational practice with life, rivers and Country as a whole. At its heart lies a cultural reorientation toward Country – as a fixed location, and as a living, storied and relational field.
For systemic reorientation, many universities need to teach and promote unlearning, recognising that much prior learning is based on false assumptions about the world (Four Arrows, Reference Four Arrows and Four Arrows (Jacobs)2021; Palmer et al., Reference Palmer, Walsh and Batorowicz2022; Silova et al., Reference Silova, Komatsu, Rappleye and Faul2025). Unlearning may accompany the Un-disciplining of knowledge (Dayan-Herzbrun & Gordon, Reference Dayan-Herzbrun and Gordon2021), rejecting objectification and distance from the “subject” while refusing the illusion of capacity to dominate the world and pretend to improve the lives of the humans who inhabit it. To Undiscipline is to decline disciplinary decadence, rather, it recognises that we can only know together in a collective way, through listening and exchange (Dayan-Herzbrun & Gordon, Reference Dayan-Herzbrun and Gordon2021). Within this horizon, a living, culturally regenerative university encompasses an invitation to reimagine higher education as an embedded, relational practice – one that weaves teaching, research and community into Country and the seasons and rhythms of place, and regards Aboriginal knowledge with humility, reciprocity and care. This as a quiet activism in practice (Steele, Reference Steele2021). The next section describes the relationality that characterises cultural regeneration.
Relational methodology
This study uses a relational methodology grounded in the understanding that knowledge is alive, embodied and constituted through relationships with people, place and Country. In this way, knowledge is situated, agential and co-produced through attentive listening, story and embodied presence rather than extraction or abstraction. Relational practice is the onto-epistemological foundation, aligning with Aboriginal and place-based approaches to deep listening such as dadirri (Ungunmerr-Baumann et al. Reference Ungunmerr-Baumann, Groom, Schuberg, Atkinson, (Carlie) Atkinson, Wallace and Morris2022) which emphasises reciprocal, truthful and healing engagement. This represents a profound difference in practice and intent to the notion of the corporate university.
The research was undertaken as a cooperative inquiry (Jago et al., Reference Jago, Len, Poelina, Guimond, Pule and WooltortonIn Press; Reason, Reference Reason2024), responsive to participants and Country. The research unfolded through iterative cooperative inquiry cycles involving individual place-based experience, individual and shared reflective creativity, collaborative conceptualisation and applied practice over more than twelve months, involving five researchers across diverse cultural lineages and geographies. The cooperative inquiry method builds on the relational practice described in Jago et al., (Reference Jago, Len, Poelina, Guimond, Pule and WooltortonIn Press):
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• initial cycles of planning and dialogue, establishing shared intention and forming Karlup – a Noongar concept of home, hearth and collective gathering – as the ethical and relational ground for inquiry.
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• Participants’ embodied place-listening, subsequently sharing experiences, stories, creative works and seasonal observations at fortnightly karlup meetings.
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• Assembling materials, including recordings, transcripts, images, songs and stories, which were revisited as living records rather than static data.
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• Assigned pattern review of transcripts (Ria), allowing patterns of relationality, affect and attention to emerge without predetermined analytic frameworks.
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• Collaborative review of patterns and selection of vignettes to anchor and narrate patterns.
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• Assigned individual review of patterns and vignettes to ensure cohesion and truth values, while integrating literature more tightly and synthesising overall learnings, implications and conclusions.
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• Checking cultural and place-based narratives to ensure overall integrity.
The relational methodology remains intentionally open, iterative and responsive, inviting anticipatory storied learning for universities to co-create regenerative futures.
The regenerative cultures literature allows for processes, or learning journeys with place, for example karlup bidi (Collard et al., Reference Collard, Wooltorton and Stredwick2026) and Kaartdijin Bidi (Wooltorton et al., Reference Wooltorton, Stephenson, Ardzejewska and Collard2025) without defined destination – allowing deep learning with the ongoing life of ecologies/places. A continuous “living into questions of regenerative culture,” as Wahl (Reference Wahl2016) might say, allows for new pathways to open existing regenerative worlds. Country as the living source of moral and social order (Graham, Reference Graham2008; Hughes & Barlo, Reference Hughes and Barlo2021; Kimmerer, Reference Kimmerer2013) for responsive governance frameworks – is a common theme in Indigenist literature globally. Ethnographer Deborah Bird Rose (Reference Bird Rose1996, Reference Bird Rose2011; Bird Rose et al., Reference Bird Rose, Daiyi and D’Amico2011) explored the inextricable interweaving of place and ethics in Australia, as has philosopher Freya Mathews over a research lifetime (Mathews, Reference Mathews1994, Reference Mathews2017, Reference Mathews2022, Reference Mathews2022, Reference Mathews2023).
We stress the protocols, processes and practices of deep respect, care and engagement that accompany the use of Aboriginal Lands and Aboriginal onto-epistemologies in Australia and elsewhere (Barlo et al., Reference Barlo, Boyd, Pelizzon and Wilson2020; Nulungu Research Institute, 2023; Walker et al., Reference Walker, Jago and Dentico2023; Whyte et al., Reference Whyte, Brewer Ii and Johnson2016). To know differently requires practices of feeling and hearing that can enliven the human spirit, landscapes and all beings via a directly engaged listening process that is helpful for the planet at this climate time, when many humans have forgotten their place in the world (Knight et al., Reference Knight, Poelina, Wooltorton, Penteado, Chakrabarty and Shaikh2024). Knowing differently through process (such as story, deep listening, creativity and reflection), with Country as teacher, requires a leap into “not-knowing” – into the “waiting time” (Poelina et al., Reference Poelina, Wooltorton, Blaise, Aniere, Horwitz, White and Muecke2022) so that the communicative mystery held within Country can be experienced directly by the whole of you (Knight et al., Reference Knight, Poelina and Wooltorton2025; Knight et al., Reference Knight, Poelina, Wooltorton, Penteado, Chakrabarty and Shaikh2024). These references reflect the significant protocols, traditions and practices to be learned, respected and cared for during research with Aboriginal people and Country. Below we weave stories that use relational practice to inform relational governance.
Country, law and futures: When stories speak
This section follows the identification of themes across the transcripts. Stories are grouped in three dimensions: Country first; relational practice is cultural practice; and Aboriginal cultural knowledge is embodied wisdom. We take care to ensure the concepts are relational, processual and embodied.
I. Country first
These narratives show the use of relational practice while recognising the obligations towards Country.
Night-swim (Ria)
Ria and Philipa meet at Enoggera Reservoir (Meanjin) as the full moon rises, wondering if they are invited into the night waters. They wade in; Ria swims, watching her own pale skin faintly moon-lit beneath the dark surface. Philipa lingers, absorbed by the light. Here is Ria’s story:
The world is enchanted. We notice frogs and small ducks swimming close. Treading water about 80 m from shore, we speak of dark water, the sacred and our spiritual lineages, remembering the women in our families and their prayers. We laugh. We love it out here in the luminous night. As the moon rises higher, we fall into silence, held by its luminosity.
We return on 3 March 2026 for the blood moon eclipse with my sisters, Helen and Rain. We recall Chiolerio et al. (Reference Chiolerio, Gagliano, Pilia, Pilia, Vitiello, Dehshibi and Adamatzky2025), who found trees anticipate eclipses, and wonder what shifts are moving through us. I call out across the water – coo coo, jingerla – and a duck calls its response. I ask for permission to sing, then begin, quietly. The night feels receptive, the ducks swim towards me. Though my body resists the cold, the quiet lake invites us in. We swim for nearly 40 minutes, watching the eclipse. At its height, a hush falls. In the dark water, one of us spontaneously begins to pray – Hail Mary, full of grace. We are watching with, as Country, and together feeling a sacred presence as Earth’s shadow reveals the blood red moon.
These experiences awaken my own Ancestral stories. Over time, my Catholic spiritual ancestry has been brought alive by Country, through my songs. I am once more inside the skin of its mystical traditions, and the patriarchy and predation of the church no longer separate me from the sacredness still waiting within these lineages. I speak of these experiences in university settings, as living knowledge, as Country teaching response-ability and reawakening my deeper perception (Jago, Reference Jago2025). This story is about invitation, belonging through embodied practice, and truth-telling. My Aboriginal cultural teachers, Uncle Lewis Walker and Aunty Anne Poelina - and Uncle Len in our Karlup group-say everyone is Aboriginal to somewhere: our task is to recover our stories and care for places together, acknowledging there is conflict, pain and sorrow along the way.
This narrative illustrates how the renewal of university governance is interdependent with a sense of place as inclusive of ancestral knowledges, through individual and collective local, historic and contemporary place-based stories. What is the role of the university in facilitating and bringing forward truth telling, we ask? It is substantial as key to societal change (Ungunmerr-Baumann et al., Reference Ungunmerr-Baumann, Groom, Schuberg, Atkinson, (Carlie) Atkinson, Wallace and Morris2022). From this perspective, the task of this age is to uncover ancestral knowledges and work together in ways that also learn from and protect local stories and places. We are generating pathways towards deeper dialogue and understandings of place as keeper of story, forming a stronger place-based ethic of care. As other pathways of truth-telling show, this is often difficult work that requires much “staying with the trouble” (Haraway, Reference Haraway2016).
The Waugal in the sky (Sandra and Len)
With a knowledge of and respect for Noongar knowledge and cosmology, seeing an image of Waugal – the creator spirit serpent – in the clouds is a powerful sign reflecting the life-giving force of Noongar Boodja (Country). As the shaper of southwest rivers and landscapes, Waugal’s presence affirms the continuing stories of the Nyitting (Creation Time). Its appearance in clouds signals its role in weather and the movement of life-giving water. Moving between sky, land and water, Waugal symbolises the interrelation of all beings.
Sandra was walking through a local Bunbury park when she noticed an impressive image of Waugal reaching across the sky (Figure 1, below). She was sending text messages and photos to Len, who was responding with appreciation, when a young Noongar man cycled up. He asked what she was looking at, so she pointed out the huge image of Waugal. He said he didn’t know much about Waugal but was asking lots of questions. Sandra responded with a simple description of Waugal being a powerful reminder of Noongar understandings of the interconnectedness of water, all beings and places across the southwest. She asked him his name, then pointed out his surname was shared with an old friend of hers who has now passed – an Elder who was part of the small group of us who started up the Noongar language project over 40 years ago. Born this century, he had never met Sandra’s friend who was most likely his great grandmother. She told him some lovely stories about his ancestor and her keenness for young people to learn Noongar language and culture, as they walked along together awhile.
Waugal stretching across the sky. Pic: Sandra.
The significance of this story is the relationality of Country as foundation for governance, that is, living Country influences and responds through story, symbol, synchronicity and phenomena – like appearing in clouds and like meeting “serendipitously” – allowing story sharing. This is why Poelina (in Knight et al., Reference Knight, Poelina and Wooltorton2025) talks about the importance of the waiting time – in a responsive world, sometimes the time is right for things to happen, and other times, patience is needed.
II. Relational practice is cultural practice
This group of stories show the importance of using relational practice in a way that recognises cultural obligations and responsibilities.
The classroom beading story (Laurie and Marie-Christine)
Marie-Christine, Atikamekw student, overwhelmed by colonial content evoking the impacts of intergenerational trauma on her community after tragic recent events, leaves the classroom; the class silently holds her. A few minutes later, she comes back and sits at her desk. She pulls out of her bag a big box with many compartments organising abundant colourful beads. She takes out a needle and a small thread, and she beads beautiful earrings while class continues (Please see Figure 2, below).
Marie-Christine Petiquay’s Beading.
Beading becomes governance – a cultural practice that stabilises place, a practice of care in the university’s discomfort. Marie-Christine told Laurie afterwards that she learned how to bead after she arrived in the city, at the Native Friendship Centre of Montréal, with other urban First Nations and Inuit people originating from different northern and rural communities. Beading helped her stay connected to home. In a sense, the ancient practice of beading helps her create a safe place and space, to her, but to others as well. While practising beading, she transforms place, the classroom, the university, the city. She keeps community ties alive, and she creates new ones. In this sense, governance is about the need to keep resistance and healing practices alive, and the need for protocols of respect for mutual care.
Water, ceremony and saltwater culture (Vennessa)
Vennessa describes her family’s deep connection to pearling, water and the sea. She talks about her father, a hard-hat pearl diver who in one story, survived dangerous deep-sea diving near Gantheaume Point. After he had passed away, a newspaper article later helped the family understand his stories about seeing a distant light and hearing his mother’s voice while suffering decompression sickness underwater.
Vennessa relates family practices around death and remembrance. Because the family connection to saltwater life and pearling culture, the family chooses cremation and returning ashes to the ocean rather than burial – feeling the inappropriateness of burying a saltwater diver in dirt. Vennessa tenderly describes taking her younger brother’s ashes out to sea on a lugger with frangipani flowers, and later her father’s ashes being paddled into the ocean by his sons.
These ocean ceremonies have become acts of healing and connection in family gatherings, offering frangipani leaves and ash on the outgoing tides. The stories highlight how grief, memory and cultural identity are intertwined with water, country and ongoing relationships across generations in regenerative ways. This is now part of the culture of old Broome. These stories reflect the significance of ceremony as part of governance practices. Ceremony holds values and memories alive and celebrates cultural principles and priorities.
Relational governance: Nulungu leadership (Vennessa and Melissa)
In this account, Vennessa is yarning with Melissa Marshall, Director of the Nulungu Research Institute, the working home of each Karlup team member at the time of writing. Nulungu uses relational governance, as this section of their recorded and transcribed conversation illustrates.
Melissa: In my role, I have worked to shape Nulungu into a relational, caring space by responding to a history where Indigenous research was driven by academia and communities were othered. My time on Country showed me that a shift was needed, and I stepped into the director role unexpectedly during a period of instability. Early challenges, including the sudden relocation of the institute, highlighted the need to make our value visible, so we engaged positively but firmly with senior institutional leadership, building relationships and creating opportunities to demonstrate who we are and what we do, which gradually shifted recognition. Our progress has come less from individuals and more from how we responded collectively, strengthening programmes like “Aboriginal Research Methods” and “Two-Way Research,” recognising community knowledge, building confidence and influencing academic practice. We have focused on transformational impact, co-design and Indigenous leadership while growing staff, funding and institutional influence. Looking forward, our core principle remains that all work must benefit Kimberley communities, with a future centred on deepening engagement, expanding Indigenous-led pathways, embedding policy impact and remaining responsive, grounded in a strengths-based, collective ethos.
In this conversation, Melissa and Vennessa emphasise the collaborative nature of relational governance. They show it is clearly focused on strategies toward impact; it is based on relational practice and its strengths; and is an Indigenous-led pathway with mentoring and learning programmes to support transformation towards an Indigenous-led relational culture at university.
III. Aboriginal cultural knowledge is embodied wisdom
These stories show how cultural wisdom is essential for a liveable future. It is carried in bodies, seasons and sensation and the wisdom of lifetimes of practical experience. It exists in the everyday and reinforces the ways in which cultural practice with Country can change the everyday. Cultural practice puts Country first.
Wildfires and cultural fires in the Kimberley (Vennessa and Sandra)
Cultural fire brings warmth, community and renewal, while uncontrolled fire brings destruction. This is how fire is a metaphor for governance itself. Vennessa describes driving through a dangerous uncontrolled blaze along the Gibb River Road in the Kimberley that appeared linked to aerial firebombing. Sandra describes driving after dark on the Northwest Highway on Nyikina Country and suddenly being in a slow-moving queue of traffic in thick smoke – only able to see the taillights of the car in front – then big flames lapping the car on both sides. This leads to discussion about the contrast between modern government fire management and Aboriginal cultural burning practices developed over tens of thousands of years. Traditional burning is careful, seasonal, local and based on intergenerational cultural–ecological knowledge of wind, grasses, animals and Country, being responsive to the needs of individual species. Fire, in this sense, is both a practical and symbolic issue connected to governance through Aboriginal knowledge for implementation in practice for liveable futures. The story simply illustrates how beneficial a principle of subsidiarity in governance would be: decisions are best made by those in closest relationship with Country, rather than distant.
Kitchen table conversations (Sandra)
While in Broome, Sandra had been having a conversation with a friend. His home is in a community located on the Martuwarra River in the West Kimberley.
I have forgotten what we were yarning about, but it was likely something about Country since now I come to think about it, he rarely talks about much else. I made some comment, after which he looked straight at me and said, well what do you talk about at your dinner table? I didn’t really answer the question at the time, but what do my family talk about? I’ve no idea – our kids, what’s going on, politics, a bit of everything! For me, that moment with my friend produced a profound epistemic rupture. My friend said all his family – and community – talk about over their dinner table is what’s happening on Country that day, in detail. What’s flowering where and perhaps how early or late in relation to their interdependent visiting insects; particular bird antics in relation to visiting insects, plants, water level, tree vigour or whatever; local animals and their plumpness, behaviours and vitality in relation to the health of their food sources; totemic appearances and meanings in relation to tradition and storied expectations; the weather in relation to all these activities – clouds, rain, heat and humidity regarding patterns of life; observations of relevant synchronicities and serendipities in relation to the cosmological tapestry; and perhaps most importantly, the sentience, implicit meanings and feelings of Country and River in relation to the poetic order of this broader seasonal milieu. I’m sure there is much more to say here. My friend mentioned that even drunks from out of town in Broome only talk about topics like this as they miss their home.
This conversation reveals a gap between everyday relational governance and the mainstream quotidian that hurries groundlessly. Is this how climate change exists as background indifference to the mainstream? Cultural governance works in relation to the everyday meaning, vitality and patterns of Country. This is a moment of reorientation. Governance needs Country and Aboriginal knowledge.
Crabs, Country and learning in place (Vennessa and Lloyd)
In this story, Vennessa and Lloyd yarn about Aboriginal knowledge through stories about crabs, waterways and cultural learning. This conversation reflects deep ecological knowledge and close participation with country.
Lloyd: I know crabs through my father’s Country and through generations of observing their movements, breeding cycles, habitats and seasonal patterns. As Yawuru people, our relationship with crabs is grounded in responsibility, ecological knowledge and care for Country. When I take visitors out crabbing, gathering shellfish, or into the mangroves, I am sharing that cultural knowledge through direct experience, food and time on Country.
Vennessa: I understand crabs through their relationships with waterways, especially the freshwater flows from the Martuwarra Fitzroy River into King Sound which creates sweeter crabs. I notice that freshwater influences where crabs are found and how they taste, and I see these differences as expressions of place. Through stories of crabbing and hermit crabs, I understand that every being has a role within the wider ecological community. Knowledge comes through participation, observation and relationship rather than through instruction alone.
This conversation shows that crabs are more than a food source. In these stories, crabs participate in a web of reciprocal relationships – linking freshwater and saltwater, people and place, learning and governance. The conversations illustrate Country as teacher, and how cultural governance authority and decision-making emerge from deep relationships; where ecological knowledge, cultural responsibility and lived experience guide actions that sustain both human and more-than-human communities.
Discussion
This paper shares our participatory research with governance. It is relational, embodied, storied and incorporates Aboriginal knowledge, protocols, ways of knowing and our response-abilities to truth-telling and meaningful engagement with place. This is a way of governance that is transformative, and that may be embraced within the broader university community of teaching, learning, research and campus life. Our stories with Country are showing us, repeatedly, the aliveness of emergent forms of knowledge, with implications for regenerating universities. Showcasing Aboriginal and place-based governance as relational practice offers a karlup bidi for universities facing corruption in university governance (Connell & Luckett, Reference Connell and Luckett2025; Wooltorton et al., Reference Wooltorton, Stephenson, Ardzejewska and Collard2025). Here, relational practice carries ethics that are inclusive, anti-racist and decolonial, reponding to existing good policy imperatives (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2026).
Through the stories shared, a set of interwoven insights comes together to inform approaches to relational governance. These include attentiveness to conditions of invitation and consent, the importance of deep listening, and recognition of Country as active in processes of place-based engagement, alongside Aboriginal and place-based relational accountability. Writing in Noongar Country, this includes attention to existing governance frameworks and opportunities for collaboration with Aboriginal governance bodies, and the attendant protocols of respect, affinity and learning-together.
The stories suggest that Aboriginal and place-based governance is deeply grounded in Country, expressed through everyday shared cultural practice, and informed by embodied Aboriginal knowledge. In contrast, the literature shows that contemporary university governance challenges are, in part, shaped by dominant governance approaches associated with neoliberalism, abstraction and control (Benner & Holmqvist, Reference Benner and Holmqvist2023; McGeown & Barry, Reference McGeown and Barry2023; Turner, Reference Turner2025). In response, relational governance is offered as a way of living into culturally regenerative universities, reimagining and remembering governance as a living, relational practice grounded in Aboriginal respect, care and attentive listening with Country. We advocate for the incorporation of Aboriginal governance within university governance as one way to transform structures towards capability and functionality for changing university cultures. In this context, transformation involves an ongoing commitment to truth-telling, appropriate resourcing of Aboriginal leadership, and co-responsibility, recognising that this work unfolds over time and requires openness to uncertainty and the complexities of change.
Conclusions
Earlier in this paper, we asked two questions: How might universities enact governance that supports the regeneration of culture and Country? How do we bring about this change?
Here is our response to the first question. This paper shows that responding meaningfully to the planetary metacrisis requires universities to reconsider governance at its current foundations. Moving beyond technocratic and corporate models, we propose relational governance grounded in Aboriginal knowledges and place-based practice, which enacts and reveals emplaced ethics of care. Through literature, cooperative inquiry and storied relational practice, we demonstrated how governance can be lived, embodied and responsive – emerging through relationships with people and within more-than-human worlds. This is slow work and takes time; we are mindful and reflective in attuning to relationships. We explained how merging cultural and place-based governance with university governance offers pathways ways to live into culturally regenerative universities. Importantly, this work highlights how culturally regenerative transformation is not a fixed endpoint but an ongoing learning journey – one that demands patience, humility and sustained commitment. Universities, as influential social institutions, carry significant potential to model this shift institutionally.
In summary, cultural governance is understood as relational and grounded in living systems rather than power-over models, with decisions made by those closest to Country; reflecting the principle of subsidiarity. In this model, Aboriginal knowledge practices and protocols, including storying, ceremony and place-based approaches informed by antiracist, decolonising and anticolonial principles, are foundations. Within this model, Country is recognised as active in shaping knowledge, ethics and restorative decision-making, while structural change is needed to embed and resource Aboriginal partnerships, leadership and knowledge systems. Although Aboriginal and place-based pathways may differ, they share a commitment to recognising Country first, valuing cultural knowledges as sources of ancestral wisdom, and understanding culture as central to collective decision-making. This work requires staying with the trouble, acknowledging that transformation brings joy as well as discomfort and uncertainty, and remaining open to learning and change.
The second question we addressed is: How do we bring about this change? In a nutshell, we are asking readers to slow down, take time and attend to relationships with each other and the more-than-human world. By attending to Country and her moods, offerings, kin relations, meanings and refusals, we can develop governance practices that begin with place and emerge through careful listening and engagement. Governance, in this sense, is the way people organise themselves to achieve shared goals while honouring protocols that reflect Country and safeguard cultural practices. It is mindful, caring work that involves walking and learning together to embed these principles into everyday university decision-making, teaching, research and institutional structures and to cultivate a place-based, Aboriginal-informed worldview. The implications for practice are embedded below, in the format of a vision statement.
We envision Aboriginal governance representatives from local Aboriginal law and culture corporations are embedded within key university decision-making bodies, with governance structures co-designed alongside local Aboriginal agencies. Meetings at all levels of the university begin by acknowledging local Elders, Country and Aboriginal knowledge; while newcomers are welcomed to Country in appropriate forums. This strengthens university – community relationships. Aboriginal leadership, cultural principles and practices inform governance across the institution, including within academic bodies such as the Senate. Overall, decisions are evaluated for institutional outcomes and equally, for their impacts on Country, relationships and community wellbeing.
Ultimately, the paper advances the concept of the culturally regenerative university as a living, evolving assemblage – one that collectively learns with Country in Aboriginal ways; embraces complexity; and fosters ethical, place-based futures. It locates and makes university spaces that are sites of societal healing and regeneration, as we reorient our individual relationships and collective governance practices toward the relationality, humility and care that characterise Aboriginal and place-based governance practices.
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the contributions of Philipa Duthie, Rain Ratajczak, Helen McCosker, Lloyd Pigram, Associate Professor Melissa Marshall and Marie-Christine Petiquay for their permission to share stories and/or a photograph. We thank the reviewers and editors for their diligent attention and helpful feedback on an earlier version of this paper.
We cherish Noongar Boodja as vitality, strength and nurturing for us all. We pay respect to our moort, our Elders, ancestors and all our relations. We recognise Kimberley Aboriginal Elders, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Elders – and Country – across Australia; and acknowledge the Lands and Territories of Indigenous peoples everywhere.
Financial support
We are grateful for a small grant from the University of Notre Dame Australia that funded this research.
Competing interests
The authors declare that there are no competing interests regarding the publication of this paper. The authors would like to disclose that Professor Sandra Wooltorton is an Associate Editor of The Australian Journal of Environmental Education (AJEE). In accordance with AJEE protocols, Professor Wooltorton was not involved in the editorial process or decision-making regarding this manuscript.
Ethical statement
This research was conducted according to the Notre Dame Human Research Ethics Committee guidelines, approval number 2025-009, for the project: Culturally Regenerative Universities.
Author Biographies
Len Collard is an Adjunct Professor at the Nulungu Research Institute at the University of Notre Dame Australia, an Emeritus Professor at the University of Western Australia, and Director of Moodjar Holdings Pty Ltd., an Indigenous-led cultural education company. He is a highly respected Whadjuk Nyungar Elder and Traditional Owner of the Perth Metropolitan area and surrounding lands, rivers, swamps, ocean and culture. Len has focused his life’s work on explaining how and why Aboriginal place names continue to provide collective insights into our shared Land. After studying literature and communications, Len spent his career recording and reclaiming Aboriginal language and culture.
Sandra Wooltorton is a transdisciplinary researcher and Professorial Fellow with the Nulungu Research Institute, at the University of Notre Dame Australia’s Broome Campus. Sandra lives in Noongar Boodja and has an interest in nurturing place-relations as decolonial praxis. She is interested in prefigurative cultures, for co-constructing the world we want to live in; or living the change we want to see. Her focus is in answering research questions such as these: We not me – how does leadership support the interests of Indigenous and multi-species justice? How do people learn into a culture of flourishing within bioregions? In Australia, the answers are all around us – in Indigenous cultural ways of being, doing and knowing, in landscapes and in knowledge holders.
Vennessa Poelina is an Aboriginal woman from the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Her ancestry is Timorese (Koepanger) through her father and Nyikina and Warawa (of the Martuwarra Fitzroy River) through her mother. She was born and raised in Old Broome, and she identifies with both her saltwater and river traditions, celebrations and Aboriginal cultures.
Marianne (Ria) Jago is an Independent River-listening Academic whose research has been awarded the Dean of Graduate Research Prize for outstanding thesis at Sunshine Coast University. She is a multi-generational Australian of Anglo-Irish ancestry. Her research responds to the invitations of Indigenous Elders, particularly Rivers, to listen with Country, to hear and respond to guidance for addressing ecological breakdown. She acknowledges her many ecological guides, particularly River, Tree, Water, Stone, Fire and Song, and her teachers across multiple lineages, cultures and ancestries. Ria has recently co-published with Wahlabal Cultural Elder Uncle Lewis Walker Yirrabal Gweanj Yirrabal Jooginj in the European Journal of Development.
Laurie Guimond is a Professor in the Department of Geography at Université du Québec à Montréal and an Adjunct Research Fellow in the Nulungu Research Institute at the University of Notre Dame Australia (Broome Campus). Through the lens of social and cultural geography, her research, teachings and community services focus on inclusive and just territorial development in northern and rural Québec, as well as Indigenous and non-Indigenous coexistence. Other fields of research she investigates include contemporary northern and rural mobilities and migrations; indigenous – non-indigenous geographies of everyday life of the North; Indigenous awareness training.
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