In this article from Swinburne Magazine, Karin Derkley describes how Wiradjuri man Dr Norman Sheehan is helping to set up a new centre for Indigenous knowledge and design anthropology.  The new centre aims to introduce Indigenous influences to the way knowledge is taught and regarded in Western universities, with an understanding of Indigenous ways of knowing and experiencing the world. Indigenous knowledge could be integral to the design of products, services and education programs.

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How do you work with or for people unless you understand how they see and experience the world? How do you create products, design systems and provide services unless you have an insight into what is meaningful or relevant?

For a designer, these are basic questions if design and function are to meet. The same questions are also fundamental when reaching across cultures, particularly when working with Indigenous communities.

For Dr Norman Sheehan, it makes sense to bring the two aspirations together and provide a way for Indigenous knowledge – often more holistic than prescriptive – to influence teaching in Western universities. To this end, Dr Sheehan has been engaged by Swinburne University of Technology's Faculty of Design to establish the Centre for Indigenous Knowledge and Design Anthropology (CIKADA). He will be assisted by Elizabeth 'Dori' Tunstall, who has recently been appointed as Associate Professor of Design Anthropology. Formerly at Chicago's University of Illinois – one of the top US design schools – Associate Professor Tunstall was one of the architects of the new US National Design Policy.

Dr Sheehan says Swinburne's decision to establish the centre is an important step towards rebalancing the way knowledge is taught and regarded in Western universities. "Too much emphasis has been placed on acquiring and mining knowledge and not enough on developing an understanding of knowledge as a way of being, or existing. What we are aiming to do with the centre is to develop Indigenous knowledge as a basis for educational programs for everybody."

Professor Ken Friedman, Dean of the Faculty of Design, says CIKADA aims to offer new ways of thinking and working to people interested in design. "In design we are always looking at how we can use different knowledge traditions to create better products, processes and services. Our aim is to use the laws of anthropology to study how people perceive products and services and how they will integrate them into their lives."

For Dr Sheehan, establishing the centre represents the culmination of a long journey from a childhood where he was all but cut off from his Indigenous heritage. A Wiradjuri man, born in Mudgee, New South Wales, Dr Sheehan was brought up in a Catholic boarding school. He says it was not until he started teaching art within Aboriginal communities that he became aware of the depth of his Aboriginal heritage. "I was teaching a couple of elders in the group, and they ended up teaching me much more about my culture than I could ever teach them."

The knowledge imparted by those elders has influenced Dr Sheehan's work ever since. In his postgraduate work at the Sydney Art Institute, he produced sculptures that represented Australian colonial history from an Aboriginal point of view. He has taught in Aboriginal communities in NSW, Queensland and Tasmania; recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship in psychiatry at the University of Queensland's School of Medicine that addressed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social and emotional wellbeing; and in 2009 he was the recipient of the South-East Queensland National Aboriginal and Islander Day Observance Committee award for his teaching and scholarship in the Indigenous community.

Over the years Dr Sheehan has been drawing on his deepening understanding of Indigenous culture to develop a body of work around the growing discipline of Indigenous knowledge. It is a discipline that focuses on knowledge not just as an accumulation of facts, but as a way of understanding and living in the world, informing everything we do. "For Indigenous people this approach to knowledge is fundamental to everyday life."

Research and education in Indigenous communities has often failed in the past because it has sought to impose white values on Aboriginal people rather than empowering Aboriginal people to research and educate themselves, he says.

"A lot of problems need healing, but only Aboriginal knowledge can do this. You have to reinforce a community from within with programs that include that community's voice and values."

Among the assignments in which Dr Sheehan has employed that methodology was an Australian Research Council-funded project to develop a design-based visual and oral research method for collecting and making sense of data across different cultural understandings. The program uses symbols to track movement in a narrative, allowing marginalised groups to create images to represent their community's journey towards improved wellbeing.

"Knowing and tracking are fundamental aspects of Indigenous knowledge," Dr Sheehan says. "If you can track narratives you can develop deeper understandings of the social forces that influence peoples' lives." The symbols work as a set of tools that groups can use to build an instigation model that helps them build their own pathways to self-understanding and healing.

Dr Sheehan's work has contributed to ways of exploring issues at the heart of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, says a former colleague and Aboriginal community leader Sam Watson, the deputy director of Queensland Aboriginal Communities at the University of Queensland.

"People like Norm are developing important visionary concepts that are helping to provide a pathway to work with Aboriginal people. Swinburne has taken a huge step here because this is groundbreaking work that will not only deliver outcomes to the Indigenous community but also create a broader awareness in the national academic community."

The CEO of the Link Up (Qld) Aboriginal Corporation, Dr Melisah Feeney, says that as a director of the organisation Dr Sheehan has shown a passion for helping improve the social and emotional wellbeing of Indigenous people.

Dr Sheehan and Dr Feeney are collaborating on an art initiative for Indigenous people in Queensland to express the healing power of 'connectedness'.

"Norm is an inspiring role model for Indigenous people. He has a deep insight and uses creative approaches to helping people learn about Indigenous ways of knowing and helping them to experience what it feels like to be excluded due to being in a minority," Dr Feeney says.

Professor Friedman says that he has long been keen to bring Dr Sheehan to Swinburne's Faculty of Design. "I've been following Norm's work and his approach to learning and design for a decade and I was keen to talk to him when we started looking for exciting scholars to attract to the university."

Professor Friedman says that Dr Sheehan will be a valuable addition to an exciting new facility at the university. "The thing about Norm is that not only does he come with his considerable intellect and resources, but he also has a passionate community spirit. He is not just interested in having a narrow focus on his own area but has the generosity to work with and help other scholars."

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This article was originally published in Swinburn Magazine, a publication of Swinburn University of Thechnology. www.swinburne.edu.au