Decolonisation of Space and Mind: The Native Garden Project

Byline: Rikke Bundgaard-Nielsen, Lee, Oskar, Charles, Finn & Flynn.

The first year Arts Discovery program has a strong focus on Indigenisation and decolonisation of the spaces and structures that we inhabit and invites students to step outside of the classroom and beyond traditional research outputs to create New Futures. 

This has led a group of 2024 first-year Arts Discovery students to invite us all to decolonise our minds—and gardens—and experience Melbourne/Naarm beyond and below the layers of horticultural and linguistic colonisation. 

With their Native Garden Project , Lee, Finn, Flynn, Charles, and Oskar provide a resource for anyone to learn about Melbourne/Naarm’s native plants and to inspire visitors to the site to begin decolonising their own natural spaces. Autoethnographic site visits to green spaces around Melbourne/Naarm provide inspiration and experiences of space as a prompt to think actively about one’s relationship to the world around us and the decisions made and being made about how a space is constructed. 

Central to the project is the use of Wurundjeri words for local flora, in a way that does not draw explicit attention to that decision, but instead implicitly confronts the viewer with their own response to a perceived ‘otherness’ of the language. By presenting Wurundjeri plant names first, viewer expectations are disrupted, and this barrier is broken down as visitors to the site are encouraged to use Wurundjeri plant names by default rather than an afterthought or translation. 

In that sense, the project outcome is both a resource to learn about native plants in Melbourne/Naarm and a prompt to others to decolonise physical spaces. It is also a reflection of the process of decolonisation of our mindsets, imagining New Indigenous Futures where Wurundjeri language is used without second thought.

Reflecting on their process, Oskar discusses Arts Discovery as the highlight of the first semester of his undergraduate studies as it allowed him to research what interests him most; Indigenous culture and language. He hopes that “SOLL takes every step necessary to continue to engage students and presents the opportunity to work with the school on Indigenous Language studies at all levels of study, as it would strengthen the community and academic bonds throughout the school.”

Lee agrees that doing research for the project has helped them to better understand what they enjoy studying, and Charles is encouraged by the idea that their work might make a difference outside of the Arts Discovery assessment domain: Real world impact matters—and our students are keen to make a difference! As Flynn says: “Even if a few people could learn, read, and consider the construction of spaces, this contributes to an ongoing decolonisation, and small-scale Utopia.”

As SOLL (School of Languages and Linguistics) and The University of Melbourne continue to engage in truth-telling and implementing the values and practices outlined in Murmuk Djerring, students like Lee, Finn, Flynn, Charles, and Oskar have the potential to become leaders in each their preferred field of specialisation. As the Academic Lead who had the benefit of guiding them through their semester, I hope they continue to enjoy the “genuinely rewarding and surprisingly creative freedom in research,” as Flynn expresses it. 

I am sure we all look very much forward to discovering where Lee, Finn, Flynn, Charles, and Oskar’s Utopian Thinking will take us, and in the meantime, I hope our paths keep crossing, and I will make sure to visit the Native Gardens of Melbourne/Naarm.