Teaching Race to Teach Indigeneity (original) (raw)

Indigenous Education and Indigenous Studies in the Australian Academy: Assimilationism, Critical Pedagogy, Dominant Culture Learners and Indigenous Knowledges

The socio-political ideology of ‘assimilationism’ has been prominent in social and political discourse throughout the continuing colonial project of ‘civilising’ and ‘educating’ Indigenous Australian peoples. Assimilationist assumptions posit Indigenous peoples, their knowledges and practices as inferior to Western peoples, knowledges and practices. Indigenous people’s survival is perceived to be dependent on wholesale assimilation into the dominant, ‘superior’ culture and language, where the economic and social dominant culture objectives of education override any Indigenous cultural, linguistic, social or human rights imperatives. Assimilationist ideology remains the most powerful and influential ideological trend in relation to Indigenous peoples’ inequitable socio-political positioning within modern Australian society. Drawing on my own research, workplace practices, experiences and observations over the past ten years teaching Indigenous Studies in a regional Australian university, I explore some of the divergent contextual complexities, contradictions, practical challenges and limitations of engaging critical pedagogical approaches to challenge assimilationism and dominant ideology in Indigenous Studies in the Australian higher education sector. Critical approaches to Indigenous Studies are posited as having the potential to make a significant and valuable contribution to challenging assimilationism and effecting social change but are always inhibited by the dominant ideological, institutional, systemic and disciplinary imperatives of the Academy. The challenges of working with predominantly dominant culture learners, the institutional and systemic imperatives of the Academy and the limited capacity of Indigenous Studies to protect embodied Indigenous knowledges from appropriation by the disciplines of the Academy are explored to reveal that, regardless of these limitations, critical Indigenous Studies pedagogy is a crucial and necessary site of resistance to assimilationism and Indigenous oppression.