Education Commons^™

Different languages, knowledge systems and ways of knowing impact upon shared understandings of place across and within landscapes. In this article we illustrate ways in which Noongar and English language-based understandings of groundwater and wetland interactions can inform a third space. Noongar knowledges recognise deep interdependences across social, linguistic, ecological, physical and spiritual domains, while English ways of knowing highlight separations and abstractions such as those between people and nature, and spirit and matter. The English language assumes a linear sense of time in which the past is always behind the present, where going forward is associated with progress. Noongar …