INDIGENISING WITH COUNTRY

The report promoted the new edition of Architecture Australia:

AA August 2026 preview

In a freshly relaunched format, Architecture Australia explores how architects and designers are progressing on the Indigenising of the built environment.

https://architectureau.com/articles/aa-august-2026-preview-Indigenising-built-environment/

The obvious question is: what is Indigenising, complete with its capital ‘I’ . . . and why? Even the definition does not help us understand just how this might be achieved with the built environment.* The suggestion seems to be that it has something to do with regenerating Country.

The preview illustrates a double page spread with the bold title Regenerating Country. Throughout this text, ‘Country’ is always spelt with a capital ‘C’. The question is: what does the author mean by ‘Country’? The concept of ‘Country’ has been explored previously - see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2024/06/country-outside-inside-place.html; and the use of ‘country’ and ‘Country’ has also been reviewed and commented on – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2026/07/the-paradox-of-country.html. The understanding is important, because one has to know or have some idea of what is to be ‘regenerated’ if this is the ambition, before wondering about how this Indigenising might be achieved.

The author begins by explaining: Country is the tangible and intangible systems that we live and thrive within. This broad definition is hardly useful with its loose, motherhood notions that could refer to a variety of matters. As if to explain further by noting that ‘Country’ involves the wisdom of the Elders, while developing the built environment argument, the author continues: Elders assure us that Country does not disappear after the appearance of urban places. However the Country that holds urban centres can be severely harmed by the processes of design and construction, leaving behind unhealthy and unbalanced spaces.

Without really knowing exactly what this is referring to, we are then told that:

All who live on Country benefit from Country and rely on Country being healthy for their own health . . . it is incumbent on all who live and work on Country to play a role in improving its health and wellbeing. The author develops the idea by mutating the notion of ‘Country,’ turning it into a matter to do with health, pointing out that, because of this:

it is critical that built environment professionals seek a regenerative approach to their work.

This strategy of regenerating Country in urban settings can be achieved, so it appears, by acknowledging that it is not only humans who inhabit the places we design . . . Ah, so ‘Country’ is a matter of caring for other living things?

In spite of this logical reduction of the concept, it is still difficult to understand what the author actually means by ‘Country.’ The danger is that the ancient mysticism is rationalised into something similar to James Lovelock’s Ghia hypothesis, to be interpreted as an environmental endeavour that seeks a wholeness in practical inclusiveness, when ‘Country’ is much more than this comfortable, ‘green,’ wholesome thinking.

‘Country’ referred to in this reductionist manner carries as many issues as ‘Country’ being referred to in the cliché acknowledgements that we hear so frequently blurted out on cue by Tom, Dick, and Harry. That ‘Country’ does involve matters known and unknown, tangible and intangible, leaves one wondering just how such uncertain matters can actually be regenerated. What is one supposed to do? Does the approach include blind hope? How might one assess success? This disturbing situation appears to want to commodify ‘Country’ in order to manipulate it intellectually, grasping it as a part of our fashionable jingoism, to join words like segue and narrative, journey and intersection, e.g.: We’ll segue into the intersection of the journey with the narrative of regeneration in indigenising the built environment with Country. Random combinations of words have the benefit of apophenia, defined as the unmotivated seeing of connections accompanied by a specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness: our propensity to seek patterns, to want to make sense out of situations where there is none: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2011/02/chance-and-design.html. ‘Country’ seems to rely on this quirky circumstance for its current standing.

One has only to read Bill Neidjie’s writings (speakings) to get some sense of the rigour and intensity of the personal, lived involvement in the understanding of these serious spiritual matters that are a vital part of being. They embody the wholeness of meaning, involving significant issues that can never be spoken of. Statements like: All who live on Country benefit from Country and rely on Country being healthy for their own health, are in danger of turning the whole subject, if not into gobbledegook, then into a clinical matter of the health and well being of living things that then moves matters on into designing for these factors that now define ‘Country,’ limit it, when this might only be one tiny aspect of this rich mystic wholeness, perhaps an incidental aside.

‘Country, Country, Country’ statements seem to protest too much; appearing to try too hard to hold the intangible in the palm of the hand as facts; putting too much effort into convincing anyone about what one knows and has rationalised as ‘Country’ and its assumed relevance. It is a little like interpreting indigenous art with a dictionary of aboriginal forms and meanings, believing we have decoded the mystery of the intention when we have only managed an analytic explanation of a rich emotional understanding and expression that is far different to what we see as arty self-expression, leaving its inner substance as an amorphous fuzz that is too difficult to acknowledge, too easy to be set aside, ignored as something else – an irrelevance created by the superstitious primitive mind that has been superseded by today’s sophistication.

The concern is that we might be turning ‘Country’ into a factual understanding for fashionable action – Indigisation: whatever this might mean; and whatever outcomes this might envisage in relation to ‘Country.’ One finds that ‘Country’ is just too easily overused as some kind of meaningful ‘stocking stuffer’ in the ad hoc search for depth and referenced quality in indigenous matters.

One has to be careful, for there is the easy possibility of humbug here; the self-conscious effort to appease lingers as the struggle to be sensitive to indigenous things when we live in a country that voted in the majority to deny these people a ‘Voice.’ The difference between the meaningless repetition of acknowledgement and this popular outcome highlights the terrible, deceitful clash of intentions. If one truly cares for ‘Country’ in design, what does one do? Give the land back? The question was asked in Stutchbury’s Lagoon House project: see – https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2025/09/lagoon-house.html. There is a dilemma here that is not readily resolved without clever spin. We seem happy to press on doing everything we have in the past while mouthing words to indicate that things are different; that we care. This is the problem with Indigenising.

In amongst all of what might be seen as an emotional pretext, what might be called ‘proper, faux sensitivity’ for ‘Country,’ one hears reports from those involved in remote aboriginal communities of serious and repeated annoying and troubling social matters that have nothing to do with ‘Country’ in ‘Country’ by people who claim ‘Country’ as the heart and soul of their being; embodying a vital necessity. The stresses involved in this situation are intense, driving a cynical interpretation of the ambitions of those who spruik ‘Country’ over and over again, for whatever reason – perhaps because it is the new political theme to segue into, like Indigenising. Are we merely trying to alleviate a deep-rooted guilt with words? If ‘Country’ cannot support ‘Country,’ and its ideals, what is the problem? How can we manage matters?

‘Country’ demands something different, something more humble; more respectful; more responsive to honesty, sincerity; to serious emotional substance: to the integrity of life and feeling itself. One of Bill Neidjie’s books is titled Story About Feeling, (Magabala Books, 1989). An awareness of ‘Country’ would be the first to highlight the problems in any rationalisation of its interpretation. ‘If it could be explained, it would have been’ is tradition’s response.#

If we are going to get close to ‘Country,’ or ‘country,’ we need to change ourselves first rather than prescribe a process or strategy for design to regenerate what is at the heart of soul, for, without this involvement, we will find ourselves destroying what we seek to discover, reveal, and regenerate. We will end up only acting on the simplistic ideas that we have resolved from the vast mystery of ‘Country’ as we step away proudly declaring the success of our intentions, with the outcomes being published for our exultation, proudly recognising our success.

The problem is that the fashionable ambition to understand/interpret ‘Country’ will grasp the 'country' issues, and  discard the matters that appear more quaintly obscure and awkwardly, anecdotally spiritual, as aspects of other, less progressive more gullible, uninformed, perhaps whimsical, naive times, to be seen as something like Aboriginal English, a stumbling apology for expression, rather than seeing these elements as an integral part of the whole complex symbolism of experience named ‘Country,’ leaving the notion schematically neutered, devoid of its essentially mystic rigour. We have to be careful not to transform these ideas and ideals into jargon fit only for social media hype.

*

The AI Overview tells us:

Indigenising is the active process of integrating Indigenous histories, knowledge systems, cultures, and perspectives into mainstream institutions, policies, and educational frameworks. It works to respect and elevate traditional ways of knowing as legitimate and authentic, rather than letting dominant Western worldviews completely overshadow them.

Core Aspects of Indigenising

• Inclusion of Knowledge: Weaving Indigenous worldviews, experiences, and voices naturally into everyday settings like schools and organizations.

• Respect and Recognition: Acknowledging the value of local Indigenous heritage, language, and deep connections to the land.

• Collaboration: Ensuring the process is led or guided directly by Indigenous peoples in a respectful partnership.

• Difference from Decolonisation: While decolonisation often focuses on removing or dismantling colonial power structures and bias, Indigenising focuses on positive addition, visibility, and honor.

• 
  

#

See Jon Rhodes’ excellent books on the aboriginal presence in Australia, how it can be understood, and how it has been treated:

Cage of Ghosts, 2018.

Whitefella Way, 2022.