Chapter 15: The Relationships and Connections Behind Three Stories: Aboriginal Students in Higher Degree Research

Victoria Grieves (PhD) is one of the first Warraimay persons to be awarded a PhD, for her dissertation titled Approaching Aboriginal History: Family, Wellbeing and Identity in Aboriginal Australia, Macquarie University. Dr Grieves’ words are inspiring, reminding us of one of the key messages of AIME (the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience): Indigenous = Success (Harwood, McMahon, O’Shea, Bodkin-Andrews, Priestly, 2015). Success for this chapter is what an individual Aboriginal person perceives in being successful; and being critical only separates people further within a Western system whose binary approach to thinking focuses on difference (McKnight, 2015). Aboriginal people can be different in how they journey through a world of conflicting pressures. An Aboriginal person is still Aboriginal if they maintain their connection to culture, even if achieving a Western education as all Aboriginal people do today, either by choice or legislation. Success occurs in many ways, including the range of possibilities that education offers and one of these, as we share in this chapter, is the PhD.