Lobbying, ethnicity and marginal voices; The Australian South Sea Islanders call for recognition (original) (raw)
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olelo: Our Narratives Endure is an edict that commits us to the collective perpetuation of our cultures. Our rituals and our stories connect our presents to our pasts, solidifying a foundation for our futures. We invoke our ancestors to guide and challenge us as we work to educate and inspire the generations who will follow in our footsteps. We welcome you to be with us. We invite you to share with us. We call upon you to stand with us as Native Peoples of one world and of many. Mahalo nui loa. world indigenous peoples conference on educat ion // E nā lehulehu o kēia au nei, nā kānaka mai kekahi pae a kekahi pae, nā kāne a me nā wāhine mai 'ō a 'ō, nā hanauna a me nā mamo o kēia 'āina a kēlā 'āina, nā kūpuna i 'ike 'ia a i 'ike 'ole 'iaka welina o ke aloha nui iā 'oukou pākahi apau loa aku.
This paper presents a broad overview of developments in Indigenous education theory, policy and practice in Australia since 1945. In the immediate post-war period Aboriginal peoples’ attempts to secure their education rights received their strongest support from the radical left wing of the Australian labour movement, whose explanations for problems in education systems arose from highly politicised analyses of the effects of capitalism, racism and colonialism. From the late 1960s onwards, this type of analysis was gradually overtaken by allegedly ‘less-political’ arguments for educational reform, which drew heavily on research work conducted by a rapidly-expanding body of liberal, middle class academics from the disciplines of education, sociology, psychiatry, psychology, anthropology and linguistics. The ‘culturalist’ research paradigm of this later work proved largely ineffective in explaining and overcoming the failure of education systems to meet Aboriginal peoples needs and aspirations. Drawing on recent international work on racism in education, the paper concludes by suggesting a renewed research focus on more ‘politicised’ analysis which reconnects efforts at overcoming educational inequality with the broader goals of the Indigenous peoples’ movement for social, economic and political independence.
Education for Assimilation: A Brief History of Aboriginal Education in Western Australia
2019
In this chapter we provide an analysis of the tensions in Aboriginal education in Australia, with a particular focus on Western Australia, where the authors live and work. These tensions have arisen from the government policies enacted on Aboriginal Peoples since colonisation. These policies have left a legacy of marginalisation within the current education system nationally. We provide this discussion in order to answer the question: How have past government policies impacted contemporary Australian schooling for Aboriginal students? Commencing with pre colonisation we acknowledge Aboriginal ways of knowing, being and doing that have existed in Australia for over 60,000 years. We provide a timeline of significant government policies and practices that have shaped the current status of Aboriginal education in Australia. We argue that there is a deeply entrenched racist undertone in curriculum policy and pedagogies that non Aboriginal Australia is yet to address.
Framing the Islands: Knowledge and Power in Changing Australian Images of 'the South Pacific'
A f\ tr.and powerful set of images of the South Pacific, and of Pacific Islanders, has recently come to prominence in Austrâlia. The images are embedded in a forthright salvationist message that describes a.region in danger of "falling off the map." It warns of an approaching "doomsday" or "nightmare" ûnless Pacific Islanders remake themseives-just as Australians have had to. Such a remaking, it is asserted, will require sac¡ifice: a change in cultural practice, the taking of hard decisions, and the changing of unsound behaviors. Yet, not only can the nightmare be avoided through right action, dreams can be realized. These ideas, of the kind more generally associated with millenarian movements or nineteenth-century missionaries, are coming from a most unlikely quarter. This is not yet the imagery of Australian populâr culture, which still holds to the idea of paradise, but that of the heartland of "rational" thinking-the intersecting worlds of the bureaucrat, the politician, the foreign affairs .iournalist, and the academic economist.
The Aboriginal and Islander student in the classroom
The Aboriginal Child at School, 1990
t~an ~tandard Aus~frali'an Engfish (SAE) .. ,., To •say• that• all stude.nts:,are•~equal and should be treated thl-~ame' way is to• d{my.th'E~se' impo!ftant differe"':ces ;and ~J!lpepe t})~J:,l.~,~;rni}l~. of Appr,iginfil. . <l:nc~ :Is l,~nd~n r~'~l.ldt:!nts Tn '"the. mainstream•.classroom.... .
This paper interrogates discourses of Aboriginality about, and by, early career Aboriginal teachers as they negotiate their emergent professional identity in specific Australian school contexts. These discourses position the respondents via their ethnic and cultural background and intersect with selfpositioning. This relates to the desire to be positioned as teacher rather than (only) as an ‘Aboriginal’ teacher. Consequently, the over-determination of Aboriginality includes such suppositions as the ‘think-look-do’ Aboriginality with a ‘natural’ connection to community, the ‘good’ Aboriginal teacher who fixes Aboriginal ‘problems’, the Aboriginal teacher as ‘Other’, and [the notion that] ‘Aboriginal work’ as easy, not real work and peripheral to core business. Through qualitative methodology, eleven Aboriginal teachers from the University of Sydney were interviewed. They were able to construct stories of early career teaching and the data was analysed to explore how the participants interpreted, accepted and/or resisted various discourses in their efforts to be agentic and resilient and to make a difference for the Aboriginal students they teach.
A Controversial Reform in Indigenous Education: The Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy
The Australian journal of Indigenous education, 2012
This article examines a controversial initiative in Indigenous education: the establishment of the Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy (CYAAA). The article provides a brief description of the Academy's three campuses and their communities and considers: the circumstances of its creation, including the role of Noel Pearson and Cape York Partnerships; the rationale and philosophy underpinning the case for establishing the Academy; implementation; and some key issues relevant to assessing this reform. These include its impact on a range of performance measures, the veracity and power of the social and educational rationales on which the reform is based,the use of 'Direct Instruction' (DI), and the practicability of extending and broadening the reform. The time period considered is from late 2009 through 2011. The article draws on publications, and on visits to campuses of the school and meetings/communications/discussions with personnel from the Queensland Department of Education and Training (DET, now Department of Education, Training and Employment), Cape York Partnerships, the CYAAA and others undertaken in the author's role as a teacher union officer.
‘Embodying the Australian Nation and Silencing History'
The old adage, ‘silence speaks louder than words’ does not mean that silence is simply a passive absence. As renowned playwright Harold Pinter demonstrated, silence has a power to communicate and dominate. This article explores the endurance of the Great Australian Silence over the history of our colonial past, and the continuing colonization of Indigenous people. Despite the introduction of Indigenous Studies and Indigenous History into school and university programs, and despite the heart-felt statements that Australians need to understand their own history, that understanding remains partial. The desire to engage with this history appears problematic. This article argues that the failure of a more embracing history to penetrate, more than partially, into the education system and popular understanding is a product of a particular national imagination embodied in projections of the Australian landscape and the Australian individual. The case is put that a particular way of framing the embodiment of national identity and the land has created an imagining of ‘Australianness’ that impacts on our capacity to hear and accept the history of Indigenous colonization. It argues this embodiment, when accepted uncritically, perpetuates not simply a silence but an un-history, a not-telling, a non-acceptance of colonial history post-1788.
Policy Futures in Education, 2005
A cornerstone of my pedagogy as a teacher educator is to help students analyse how their culture and socialisation influence their role as teachers. In this paper, I share the reflections of my Australian students on their culture. As part of their coursework in an elective subject, Cultural Diversity and Education, students reflect on and address questions of how they have been socialised to regard the different ethnicities in their society. My paper argues that in grappling with the negative legacies of neo-colonialism and its 'race' ideologies, teachers need as a first step to analyse discourses of ethnicity and how these discourses construct 'white', 'ethnic' and Indigenous Australians. This groundwork is necessary for the further steps of honouring the central role of Indigenous people in Australian culture, recognizing how interacting cultures restructure each other, contributing to initiatives for peace and reconciliation, and promoting the study of cultural diversity in the curriculum -all essential components of an intercultural pedagogy.