Bringing Indigenous voices into the classroom

'LIN 100 Aboriginal Australia: Victorian people, places and experiences' is an introductory unit in the Indigenous studies minor, and an elective unit open to students from any study area. The unit aims to provide students with an understanding of Australia's Indigenous peoples and the issues that define their experiences as Australian citizens, and to encourage students to examine their role as Australian citizens in our contemporary multicultural and multinational society. The unit includes a program of Indigenous guest speakers, representing a wide range of backgrounds and employment areas, as well as field trips to areas of significance to the local Indigenous community. Feedback from students in institutional generic surveys has been highly positive; however, these results may not give a complete picture of the role played by the guest speakers and Indigenous community members in the unit, in both on and off campus environments. An initial literature search indicated a clear lack of information in this field---most of the literature is based around the education of Indigenous students, rather than utilising the Indigenous people and their cultural knowledge for non-Indigenous students. This paper reports on the outcomes from interviews with students to determine students' perceptions of the impact of these interactions in them both personally and academically.