Western literacy and illiteracy: implications for Archaeology

Abstract

This presentation interrogates western constructions of literacy (and the illiteracy it infers) as tools of cultural erasure that not only subjugates Indigenous knowledge but subjects it to western experience. Drawing on notions of place and land-based literacies, the author reframes meaning-making as an ongoing dialogue with tangata whenua (people of the land) discourses in and of the more-than-human world—in practises of walking, reading and storying the land in ways that inherently resists the colonial nature/culture divide.

Grounded in the author’s emerging sense of manuhiritanga (in the manner of being a guest)(Haua, 2025), this orientation is also grounded in the specific contexts of tangata whenua knowledge and systems here in Magandjin/Meanjin and to where he also lives on Quandamooka Country. This subject-position speaks of the need to not only defamiliarise dominant western epistemologies that privilege print and alphabetic skills but explore and trust what becomes possible in strengthening new relations and embodied ways of knowing where research is already being proposed and conducted.

Reference

Haua, I. (2025). Manuhiritanga (In the Manner of Being a Guest): A Methodological Framework for Indigenous Researchers on Other Indigenous Lands. Journal of Global Indigeneity, 9(2). https://doi.org/10.54760/001c.157536

About the Presenter

Daniel Kiwa McKinnon (Ngāti Rangitihi, Puketapu) is a post-doc research fellow with the ARC Indigenous Futures Centre at The University of Queensland. Prior to working in academia, Daniel was a secondary high school teacher in Queensland Public Schools for 13 years. His research areas and interests include Critical Indigenous Studies, Critical Theory and Sociologies of Education specifically to do with the Global Education Reform Movement, charter schooling, Māori philosophy and embodiment.

His PhD was conferred in 2024, titled: Charter schools and Treaty partnerships: Māori perceptions of schooling, public systems and privatisation in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Daniel was born and raised in so-called Australia.