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Winanga-y Bagay Gaay: Know the rivers story

Article in Curriculum Perspectives July 2014
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POINT AND COUNTERPOINT
Winanga-y Bagay Gaay: Know the rivers story

A conversation on Australian curriculum between five Indigenous scholars
K. Lowe, V. Backhaus, T. Yunkaporta, L. Brown and
S. Loynes acknowledge our old people, our communities
and the traditional owners of country everywhere this
message goes. The message is a call to end the deficit
logic, or low expectations that currently inform Indigenous
education policy and curriculum. We acknowledge in
particular the custodians of the Gamilaraay/Yuwaalaraay
languages which are used in the title of this work, and
the custodians of their country, the landforms of which
informed the unifying analogy and structure of this
work. This framework was innovated by high school
student and co-author S. Loynes, who drew upon ancestral
knowledge inherited from her mothers family to develop
the land-based analogy and its Indigenous language title.
The river analogy has four stages or levels of knowledge,
which will inform both the structure and the cultural
integrity of this publication.
1. Mountains to sea The land directs the movement
of the river, from the mountains to the sea.
2. Water shapes river banks The water flow shapes
its river banks, journeying on its own path from the
mountain to the sea.
3. Landscape moves, grows The landscape has
continued to grow and move with the river, aiding in
its journey across the terrain.
4. Layers of landscape The river builds and grows
stronger travelling through all layers of the landscape.
Loynes:
During December 2013, I journeyed on the country
of the Murruwarri, Gamilaraay, Yuwaalaraay, Yuwaalayaay, Wiradjuri, Ngiyampaa and Ngemba in northwest New South Wales (NSW). Reflections from this
journey informed the creation of my river analogy,
drawing on themes of aspiration, awareness and
agency. The title of this publication relates to the
river analogy, with the waterways representing my
current journey as a 15 year-old student through
the curriculum, and the landscape representing
curriculum content and pedagogical practices I have
encountered to date. In a broader sense, the waterways
represent students (and their pathways); the terrain/
landscape represents curriculum knowledge and
CURRICULUM PERSPECTIVES VOL. 34, NO. 3
practice; the mountains are the curriculum policies

and policy makers; the sea is the economy/workforce
that students are being prepared for (but so much
more than this also); and the layers in the landscape
represent the potential knowledge that could enrich
the curriculum through deeper and more honest
engagement with places and Peoples.
Yunkaporta:
The genre of this work is Written Yarn, a recently
recognised and published Australian First Nations
innovation (Yunkaporta & Kirby, 2011), combining
common elements of classical Greek and Indigenous
intellectual traditions to form an academically
rigorous but more widely accessible mode of
knowledge transmission. The dialogical format
should be recognisable to scholars grounded in
many diverse intellectual traditions, connecting with
digital modalities emerging from social networking
technology and transcending the division between
oral and written forms. Common Indigenous
protocols guide our yarn, including a foundational
knowledge protocol of building upon what previous
speakers have said rather than seeking to defeat them
in debate, and a communal knowledge protocol
that combines five very different knowledge sets
into a single shared message. Protocol also demands
that we declare our languages to be used in the
yarn. Gamilaraay/Yuwaalaraay has already been
declared and some language from the Islands north
of Queensland (once part of Indigenous Australia
before an arbitrary line was drawn across the sea)
will also appear, along with a bit of Gumbaynggirr
from the east coast.
The uncertain status of these languages in
curriculum and policy should be noted here, a
status that is known well to Lowe and myself who
have worked for many years with the Board of Studies
and Aboriginal communities on Indigenous language
programs. The implicit understanding is that these
languages are considered to be either dying or dead
(endangered or sleeping in cultural sensitivity discourse
terms). Even though there are many thousands of
59
children growing up speaking these as first languages,

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tongues are so
disregarded by curriculum and policy that those
students are excluded from the same access to English
as a Second Language (ESL) support services that
foreign language speaking students from overseas
are given upon arrival in Australia. Aboriginal
language programs in schools are generally ad hoc
and short-lived, as they are considered revival
efforts for dead and dying languages, effectively
cursing themselves to fail from the start with deficit
logic.
We do not subscribe to deficit logic in this yarn,
so let us re-imagine these destructive, colonising
values that constrain our languages and their use.
I like to think of that zombie language, Latin, when
I encounter the colonising discourses of linguistic
death. Supposedly a dead language, Latin is still used
to inscribe Western ownership onto every scientifically nameable entity on the planet every plant,
animal and phenomenon is labelled in Latin,
which even changes to incorporate the names and
languages of the people it encounters, just like living
languages do. As Aboriginal people, we often mimic
this naming/titling process with our own languages
(even the supposedly dead ones) within social
programs and academia as a form of resistance
and assertion of sovereignty. So although Loynes is
not a native speaker of Gamilaraay or Yuwaalaraay
languages, she combines and works with these in
her familys particular way to produce names for
things she wishes to reclaim or even create in the
name of her ancestral heritage. Backhaus and Brown
will use their own Indigenous language greetings and
introductions to invoke this same ownership and
sovereignty of their knowledge within the yarn.
In addition, there will be several English codes
used, including academic and prosaic forms and the
occasional demotic. Aboriginal English, while present
in lexical items such as yarning and shame, is not
simply mixed in as an authenticating feature, but
rather emerges in the structure of the discourse,
which may at times seem to jump from one point
to another and then recycle back again in logical
sequences that may be unfamiliar to some, but are by
no means incomprehensible. For those readers who
are uncomfortable with this structure, the text may
be viewed as a kind of collage, a pasting together of
diverse texts and ideas that are most productively
viewed as a whole, rather than as a progression of
ideas from moment to moment. The whole in this
60
case is a communal yet subjective body of knowledge,

experience and narrative that is shared between
those yarning. We answer to that knowledge and
those stories, and therefore must begin by naming
ourselves identifying our Indigenous connections
and subjectivities in relation to the yarn.
Brown:
Here we resonate with Indigenous academic Ian
Anderson (1997, pp. 45), who states:
Aboriginal protocol usually links the right to
tell a story with a declaration of involvement or
connection to the story. This, for me, is a more
compelling reason to make the connections
between the issues about which I write and
myself.
Yet it must also be acknowledged that such processes

of cultural integrity may be fraught within spaces
such as the academy, which continue to be the
domain of the privileged majority (Anderson, 1997;
Moreton-Robinson, 1999). Thus to reveal subjectivity is to engage with a problematic and potentially
dangerous set of power relations. Within this domain
Aboriginality has historically been defined in ways
that have been instrumental in justifying colonial
and continued dispossession (Balvin & Kashima,
2012; Dodson, 1994; Langton, 1993a; Paradies,
2006). In order to disrupt prevalent representations,
Anderson (1997, p. 5) asserts that for Indigenous
people the process of challenging prevailing colonial
stereotypes requires us to lay bare intimate and
sometimes personally painful aspects of our subjectivity to a potentially unsympathetic audience.
Yunkaporta:
Therefore there is an issue of protection that we need
to be aware of. In this yarn we have four Indigenous
scholars (Lowe, Backhaus, Yunkaporta, Brown)
specialising in education and one junior scholar
(Loynes) who actually has to live with the consequences of our professional research, publication and
discussion. We should acknowledge the risk Loynes
is taking and the trepidation she feels in undertaking
this task, which she feels could expose her to punitive
consequences within the institution of schooling.
While this potential for risk is noted, we also feel it
is only ethical to include such informed student
voices in the curriculum debate. Culturally we feel
accountable to her and her peers (whose voices are
also represented here via Browns research) and
we are aware of our community protocols and
responsibilities in following up and protecting our

young people and keeping families informed of
their actions. At the same time we respect their
agency and ability to make informed decisions and
take calculated risks. Now, as a matter of protocol
within the yarn, we need to introduce ourselves in
order of seniority and disclose who we are, where we
come from and what knowledge we are bringing to
the yarn.
Lowe:
I am a Gubbi Gubbi man from south-east Queensland.
I have lived and worked in many parts of NSW,
growing up in Gamilaraay, Wiradjuri and Dharawal
country, then working and travelling across the
state as a teacher, advisor, mentor and administrator.
The last period of my work provided opportunities
to work in collaboration in communities of Aboriginal
educators and teachers in developing and implementing culturally appropriate teaching programs.
The aim of my yarn is to shift current criticism
from the end point of Australian curriculum; I want
to create an understanding that the fault line
within curriculum development is not the finalised
curriculum content, but instead the core curriculum
rationale that corrals and constrains Indigenous
knowledge, legitimating and privileging certain
ways of knowing while excluding others. I then shift
the focus of my yarn to suggest how a 180 re-orientation of this rationale would re-position the
Indigenous person as the speaker and knower
within the process of curriculum development,
instead of just an object of anthropological and
archaeological description.
Yunkaporta:
I am a Bama fulla of Nunga, Scots and Koori origins.
I am an Aboriginal education specialist and hold a
doctorate in education. My role in this written
yarn is to see to the needs of the participants within
their community roles and obligations, and to
provide structure and translation to meet the needs
of those listening/reading, while maintaining the
integrity of the original message. Where relevant, I
will include messages of importance I have picked
up here and there, while weaving unifying narratives
or commentary to help tie it all together.
Brown:
Giinagay, hello. I am proud to belong to the
Gumbaynggirr people of the mid-north coast of
eastern Australia. My family has belonged to this
country for thousands of generations. I am also
proud
of
my
strong
familial
and
cultural
connections to England and Scotland. My passion

for knowledge creation and transfer, and the
potentiality of education to create positive social
change, leads me here to share with you aspects of
my graduate research in education. My purpose for
doing so is to give primacy to the Indigenous
student experience, but also to share my knowledge
and experience of the education system while
supporting my fellow contributors, particularly
Ms Loynes, to do the same.
Loynes:
My family are the Walfords and Peters from
Gamilaraay/Yuwaalaraay country and I likewise
proudly identify with my English ancestry from
Backhaus:
my fathers side. Residing at various times in my
Ro wade. Mo erea Kiwai osio buro from Parama

Island in the straits that separate Australia and
Papua New Guinea. My fathers country is Kalkadoon
(Mt Isa Aboriginal) and my grandfathers people
descend from the Malaita people of the Solomon
Islands. I believe we are all travellers who leave
country to share with others and help shape destiny.
I am an MPhil student in educational psychology
at the University of Cambridge and will transition
to doctoral studies in education this year. I wish
to share in this yarn my knowledge of Indigenous
education in Australia. I wish to share the history of
Indigenous education since 1967 and the impact of
various scholarly research projects and ideas that
have shaped curriculum over the last 40 years.
life on Gadigal, Wurrundjeri, Nyoongar Boodjar
and currently Boonwurrung country has offered

me a diverse range of educational experiences
within the public and private school systems. My
work here in representing this experience is
grounded in an analogical, thematic, analytical and
anecdotal methodology, to best express concerns
about my experiences as an Indigenous student
regarding the current curriculum. Through the
practice of living within the curriculum, I will
convey my understandings and experiences. I will
share my river story and how the curriculum impacts
on my aspirations, awareness and agency.
61
Yunkaporta:
Returning now to Ms Loynes river analogy, the
readers/listeners will need initially a more detailed
overview of the four levels, in order to locate
themselves better within the yarn. The first layer,
The land directs the movement of the river, from the
mountains to the sea, will introduce the curriculum
policies, issues and realities that have historically
directed the flow of students towards their place in
the Australian economy. The second layer, The water
flow shapes its river banks, journeying on its own
path from the mountain to the sea, will focus on the
student and community responses to the implementation of this curriculum. The third layer, The
landscape has continued to grow and move with the
river, aiding in its journey across the terrain, will
examine curriculum reform and the cultural/political
struggles surrounding it. The fourth layer, The river
builds and grows stronger travelling through all
layers of the landscape, proposes future directions
and solutions. This last layer is quite deliberately
grounded in a focus on the learners (the river) and
their lifelong journeys within a complex landscape
of knowledge, rather than on the production of a
flow of students moving towards a sea of economic
growth.
Before beginning the yarn, we should define
curriculum. Curriculum is the key focal point of the
project of defining and asserting the legitimacy of a
nation, as it aims to create a unified citizenry with
common values, language, attitudes to authority
and responses to set stimuli. The current reality of
curriculum in Australia is that it is a battleground, a
site of political warfare which the powerful use to
further their social and economic interests. As representatives of displaced First Peoples in a colonial
state, we will have a particular perspective on this
curriculum. I propose that under the terms of our
adherence to a holistic knowledge orientation, we
must ensure throughout the yarn that our understanding of curriculum is continually contextualised
historically, politically, culturally and socially from
our unique perspectives. As Indigenous writers, we
have an obligation to our communities to maintain
a focus on these things, which we certainly do not
see as being off-topic in discussing curriculum
matters.
62
First layer Mountains to sea

Yunkaporta:
THIS FIRST PART of the yarn concerns the curriculum
policies, issues and realities that have historically

directed the flow of students towards their place in
the Australian economy. Those yarning will provide
elements of literature review and analysis to shed
light on the uncomfortable colonial realities that
have systematically been ignored in favour of policies
and curricula grounded in deficit logic. These
elements and key themes will continue to some
extent throughout the entire yarn. Brown will also
begin to share the voices of Loynes peers, Indigenous
students who are commencing their senior schooling
at the time of this yarn but contributed their voices
to her research a year previously. In Loynes river
analogy, the mountains represent the policy makers
and curriculum designers and academics and stakeholders who decide upon the purpose, journey and
destination of students, who are represented by the
water in the river. The sea as the ultimate destination
of the water represents the economy and workforce.
However, Loynes warns that this is not the only
reality students are aware of or aspire to, and reminds
us of the cyclic and complex nature of the movement
of water on country, and indeed, in the oceans
themselves. The land directs the movement of the
river, from the mountains to the sea (Loynes,
journey notes, December, 2013).
Loynes:
The land directs the movement of the river,
from the mountains to the sea
As the land would direct the movement of the river,
creating paths to the sea, the role of the curriculum
is to provide guidance for students present and
future aspirations. Even though the landscape acts as
a support and guide to the river, sometimes that river
doesnt reach the sea. Rivers are powerful forces and
students should also be reckoned as such. Students
are our future; they will one day be the rain that
influences the landscape we live in. My experiences
about my future though, in my aspirations of going
further after secondary education have been received
with comments about my and others potential to
achieve higher scores than 70 in our ATAR (Australian
Tertiary Admission Rank). Despite the deficit logic, I

think of these ignorant comments every time I enter
a classroom; this inspires me to defeat that logic and
to break the barriers that such comments build.
Yunkaporta:
What this vignette describes quite clearly is the
discrepancy in colonial curricula between the
aspirational logic that is needed to maximise the
potential of every student, and the deficit logic which
is the reality. Deficit logic seeks a lack through
measurement of what is below the average and
focuses solely on indicators showing the gap
between the lowest and the average of that bell
curve. Teachers know how moderation works, so
should be able to reason that any improvement in
outcomes simply raises the value of the average on
the bell curve, making the gap a self-perpetuating
phenomenon within a self-organising system. As
the goal of senior schooling is to rank students to
determine the privileged few who will get access
to the limited social goods of the educated classes, it
is unlikely that this deficit paradigm will change
under the current socio-economic system. There will
always need to be an achievement gap to maintain
the system, just as in economics there must always
be more demand than supply to create growth;
there is both a figurative and literal link between the
gap and the economic problem to be found here.
Additionally, as the continued existence of colonies
(particularly illegitimate ones without treaties)
depends to a large extent on preventing unassimilated Indigenous people from gaining access to the
social goods and codes of the powerful, it is unlikely
that the deficit logic focus on closing the gap for
Indigenous students will produce any significant
change in the near future.
Lowe:
The history of curriculum development both in
Australia and in other colonised states (Battiste,
2000; Hickling-Hudson & Ahliquist, 2003;
McConaghy, 2003) has at first directly legitimated
the invasion and conquest of sovereign Indigenous
Peoples, and more recently found ways to protect
63
state-supported repression by rendering it invisible

to its citizenry. To varying degrees, state- and
territory-developed curricula have provided only
minimal or tangential means for students to investigate the dispossession of land and people in
Australia and the sovereignty and agency asserted
despite this. In place of the truth about our legitimate and autonomous peoples, school students
are provided with a truncated portrayal of Aboriginal
people, stripped of specific social, spiritual and
epistemic connection, and with a skewed and aggregated understanding of the Aboriginal experience
of culture and identity. Even more disconcerting is
that any content about the myriad language groups
and clans of Australia is taught by teachers who
themselves have little understanding of these groups
spiritual and epistemic distinctiveness, and who are
thus intellectually incapable of even seeing let alone
challenging curriculum content that has deeply
embedded Eurocentric and/or colonial perspectives
and legitimations (Henderson, 2008). Grande (2009)
has cogently argued that such is the depth of control
exerted over Indigenous people, that their identity
has been manipulated and re-shaped to suit a colonial
narrative. She argues that an Indigenous identity has
been prescribed within an essentialist construct and
is portrayed as static, primitive in its understanding
of the real world, and homogeneous.
Yunkaporta:
It is the myth of primitivism that is at the heart of
systemic low expectations and deficit logic in
Aboriginal curriculum. Actually, it permeates all
aspects of Indigenous realities, right down to our
own identities. We identify ourselves through English
words Aboriginal or Indigenous or Torres Strait
Islander (even though the boundaries of the Torres
Strait have been changed in recent decades, altering
the identities of people like Backhaus) English
labels with an accompanying set of colonial indicators
that are recognisable to both the colonist and the
colonised. Those indicators are usually associated
with lack, with loss and dysfunction. Either that or
they are associated with a race-based image of
stone-age simplicity and exotica. We are policed by
outsiders and even by ourselves to ensure we conform
to this deficit identity. There is a reason we are the
most studied people on the planet. Our manufactured primitivism and dysfunction provides justification for the unjustifiable. We make discourses of
progress possible by providing cautionary images of
64
the opposite of progress. We provide a false narrative

of a miserable primitive past to justify the unchecked
and exponential growth of the benefits of Western
civilisation. We provide the shocking stories, data
and images to mobilise emergency responses that
would otherwise be unthinkable in a democracy.
We are the Trojan Horses for the erosion of human
sovereignty everything that has been done to us is
also being done, or will be done, to mainstream
Australia (for example, welfare reform). Curriculum
is the vehicle for inculcating acceptance of this in the
wider population, and the myth of primitivism in
Indigenous people is an essential part of the formula.
Backhaus:
In a recent project I undertook about the colonial
other in Papua New Guinea (Backhaus, 2012), I was
able to chart the notion of the primitive through
historical first contact with a particular Indigenous
group and articulate how the myth of the primitive
still resonates with the same group today. My investigation of primitivist representations of the Beami
language group redefined a history of representation
and highlighted how the notion of the primitive
cannibal came to be stereotypical of the Beami
language group and their socio-cultural history. I
outlined the historical development of primitivism
in European thought and highlighted the role of
cultural difference as a key element of this
discourse. I showed how these ideas were deployed
in government patrol reports as well as documentaries that seemed to promote Indigenous agency,
but in actuality reinforced the myth of primitivism
(and therefore inability to self-govern). This
reinforcement was escalated more intensively
recently by a National Geographic production made in
2011 which fetishised cannibalistic representations
of the Beami. I concluded the project by arguing
that visual representations of the Beami had
been re-commodified for the neo-colonial era in a
way that demanded the assertion of new grotesque
primitive stereotypes. My work in this project
revealed the persistence and pervasiveness of primitivist stereotypes in colonial institutions (including
education), and the need to be critically aware of its
surprising and continuous reproduction.
Lowe:
Memmi (2003) in his book Mythical Portrait of the
Coloniser argues that the notion of Indigenous
identity has been proscribed an artefact of Indigenous
primitivism and that once the Indigenous person

has been subdued, the coloniser continues to
debase their identities through the use of zoological
terms to dehumanise them. Memmi (2003), and
Grande (2009), like other anti-colonial critics, understand that the coloniser uses a raft of means to assist
in their larger colonial project of de-legitimating
Indigenous presence within their own country and
by denying their essential humanness. It is argued
that this belittlement of Indigenous existence is an
essential element in ensuring that the occupancy of
settlers is seen as morally and ethically legitimate.
states that the virtue of the white nation is

recuperated through denying both white brutality
and Indigenous hostility and resistance (p. 22).
Robyn Moore (2012) in her critique of current policy
initiatives to close the gap cites the formal apology
to the Stolen Generations as a public expression of
morality, which served as a discursive break between
the past and the present (p. 9). She identifies a
historical dissonance through the negation of current
repercussions of past Indigenous policies, which she
believes assist in legitimising the current national
government.
Brown:
Lowe:
You cant separate curriculum debate in Australia

from wider contentious debates surrounding
Australias past in terms of national legitimacy
(Attwood, 2005; Hage, 1998; McMahon, 2010;
Moreton-Robinson, 2003a; Moses, 2011; Perera,
1996). Historian Henry Reynolds (2006) notes
the existence of mainstream opposition to the
utilisation of the term invasion to denote British
colonists arrival in Australia. Judy Pryor (2007)
also suggests that the reasons for this resistance are
legal, moral, political and emotional. Furthermore,
Reynolds (1996) contends that the courts have
determined that the myth of peaceful settlement is a
central indeed skeletal feature of the legal system.
Within Australia, contestation over the past has
been relegated to the realm and authority of history
as a discipline and utilised politically as an opportunity to strengthen Australian national identity
(Henderson, 2008). Former conservative Prime
Minister John Howard, for example, during the peak
of the history wars, discounted the term invasion
as belittling Australias Anglo/Celtic history and
traditions (Donnelly, 1997, p. 14). It has been
suggested that consideration of the inclusion of the
extent and impact of colonisation on Indigenous
people within the school syllabus was disregarded
by the Howard government as justified by the
vulnerable image of our youth as a collective
empty vessel waiting to be taught the Australian
story (Clark, 2009). During the construction of our
child, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children
were not figured.
Indigenous academic Aileen Moreton-Robinson
(2005) positions the portrayal and maintenance of
the peaceful settlement myth over invasion and war,
as a form of violence enacted and expressed so as to
reinforce the denial of Indigenous sovereignty. She
School curriculum has been an essential policy

apparatus of the state, as it has advanced privileged
knowledge while at the same time avoiding critical
scrutiny of the essential underpinning tenets of
government and its institutions, and the burgeoning
disparity of access and equitable outcomes. Battiste
(2000) argues that it has been through the tight
control of curriculum entitlement and construction
that the state has denied the legitimacy and
integrity of Indigenous students language and
culture, with the subsequent catastrophic impact on
students school engagement and achievement.
Critics from both overseas (Ball, 1983; Battiste, 2012;
Bishop, Berryman, Cavangh & Teddy, 2009) and
Australia (Hickling-Hudson & Ahliquist, 2003;
Nakata, 2011) have suggested an unequivocal link
between culturally unresponsive curriculum and the
largely uninterrupted trajectory of Indigenous
student underachievement. If evidence alone were
being used to inform change, curriculum agencies
and education administrators would at a minimum,
question the appropriateness and responsiveness
of the Indigenised content within mandated
curriculum. Such an examination might lead to a
closer scrutiny of the so-called consultation behind
the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content
identified in the Australian Curriculum, Assessment
and Reporting Authority (ACARA) Shape Paper
(ACARA, 2011b, p. 22), and its impact on Indigenous
student engagement with school.
Backhaus:
First we need to go back further in the history of
curriculum and policy in Aboriginal education, to
the mountains if you like. The deficit logic focus of
current curricula raises questions on how effective
policy and practice has been in raising the education
65
outcomes of First Australians developed over 40 years

of social intervention (Gunstone, 2013; Malin &
Maidment, 2003; Vass, 2013). Formalised attempts
to focus on Indigenous education began in the late
1960s. Two national seminars brought together a
broad range of practitioners, educators, historians,
writers, social scientists, psychologists and citizens
who were involved in what was then called
Aboriginal Affairs to discuss ways to improve the
education prospects of Indigenous Australians (Tatz
& Dunn, 1969). The significance of these seminars
highlight an overall motivation to challenge social
norms by overturning assimilationist ideology of
a previous era by using education to reinforce
Indigenous cultures and identity and provide
effective pathways to employment and communitycontrolled development (Malin & Maidment, 2003).
The seminars effectively called on the impetus to
move focus towards issues of self-determination,
fostering cultural identity and positive growth. Prior
to this, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander educational policy revolved around mission input and
government reservation zone. Educational policy
during this time lacked a clear, available, cohesive
and relevant national agenda with the Indigenous
voice actively participating in Indigenous educational outcomes (Malin & Maidment, 2003).
Ultimately this period of managing Indigenous
education contributed to masking the cumulative
and widespread negative effects evident in subsequent attempts to improve education outcomes, and
thus had undermined efforts at developing a clear
understanding of Indigenous education (Malin &
Maidment, 2003).
Yunkaporta:
It is interesting there was that initial acknowledgement of Aboriginal self-determination and
promotion of language and culture to avoid assimilation, as crucial factors in Aboriginal communities
and families investing in education in order to
interface with the occupying colony and economy.
Then, during the 1970s, there were either nave or
deliberately ineffective programs claiming to deliver
this. However, this was set against a backdrop of
emergent neo-liberalism and neo-colonialism, with
a new wave of Anglo-hegemonic fervour giving rise
to a backlash of victim-blaming and chronic low
expectations (deficit logic) that would become the
underlying discourse of all Indigenous curriculum
reform to follow. And there was no help from the
66
radical left or new-age operators either, as they

lacked rigour and in the end reinforced the deficit
logic paradigm with their spectacular failures,
romanticism and chronic slackness. As a result, the
1970s saw the beginning of a new era of talking
the talk, but not walking the walk. Anything effective
or authentic quickly became swallowed up in a
barrage of politics, with rampant exploitation on
the one hand and sentimental mediocrity on the
other.
Backhaus:
Despite all this, during the 1970s a national profile
of Indigenous voice developed. One measure of the
profile was the establishment of the National
Aboriginal Education Committee (Vass, 2013). The
platform provided Indigenous voices to contribute
to policy and curriculum debates. However, state
support for the profile initiatives was weak, as it
required a rethink and critique of current education
standards to ensure meaningful change in educational practices or policies was achieved. Characteristic
of the era, popular perceptions in the schooling
community didnt position the problem of
Indigenous student underachievement as being
directly related to the school environment. Problems
were generally attributed to Indigenous social and
economic backgrounds (Beresford, 2003).
Policy reports since that time, developed at a
national level, have focused on social, economic, and
health strategies inclusive of education. In the first
20 years of social intervention major educational
policies included the Aboriginal Study Grants
Scheme (ABSTUDY) 1969, the National Aboriginal
Education Committee 1978, the Aboriginal
Employment Development Policy 1987 and the 1990
National Aboriginal Education Policy. The policies
attempted to guide funding agendas and redress poor
educational outcomes across the country (Schwab,
1995). In the proceeding decade 19902000 key
documents inclusive of, but not limited to, National
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Policy
(1989), the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Act
(1991) and the Royal Commission into Aboriginal
Deaths in Custody (1991), advocated continued
emphasis on redressing Indigenous education
dysfunction (Gunstone, 2013). The reports
highlighted a number of measurements for assessing
educational outcomes that included educational
access; level of educational attainment; school
attendance; reading benchmarks; and retention rates
(Gunstone, 2013). The first document specifically

focused on Indigenous education while the second
and third documents covered a broad range of policy
areas in Indigenous affairs. The significant majority
of these measurements illustrate that Indigenous
educational conditions stagnated or worsened during
this period, both in absolute terms and in comparison
with non-Indigenous educational outcomes and
international Indigenous peoples educational conditions (Gunstone, 2013).
Yunkaporta:
It is interesting to note that all of these well-meaning
attempts to address perceived deficits in Aboriginal
ability and behaviour only served to exacerbate those
deficits. To many in our communities, there is a
sense that all of this is so sneaky that those in the
mountains (to use Loynes analogy) say all the right
things and establish policy and curricula for
education that seem to address inequality, but in
reality are designed to fail and ultimately reinforce
that inequality. It is exclusion by means of what I call
malicious inclusion.
its stuff that I learnt, so long ago. Its like

primary school. They use counters and stuff
and we are in high school. So I dont go.
Jacqui: Like, can you spell because?
Nelly: Can you spell two? The number two!
I was like, What? I am not stupid!
(Jacqui and Nelly, personal communication,
December, 2012))
The students who are chosen to attend these special

tutoring classes are done so based on their
Aboriginality rather than ability level, and as a result
Nelly felt like she was being put down in being
placed in these classes. When I asked Nelly and
Jacqui why they felt some Indigenous students might
not do as well academically, Jacqui aligned low
expectations with achievement. She believed that
were getting the name that we are not that smart
so [Indigenous students] dont really try (Jacqui,
personal communication, December, 2012). Likewise,
Nelly asserted that:
Its because were treated different at school. We
are given lower expectations. They say Oooh
weve got tutors for you and all that and it is
so bad; I dont understand how they can do
Brown:
that at all. Some students are; they do have
This community concern is reflected in the literature.

Gray and Beresford (2008) acknowledge a necessity
in recognising past policies and their impacts, whilst
also conferring with contemporary assertions that
racism has taken on a structural form, which perpetuates current inequality while seemingly seeking to
address it. Overwhelmingly, the racism of low expectations (grounded in deficit logic) is the main form
that this malicious inclusion takes. For example,
during a combined interview with two Aboriginal
students Nelly and Jacqui (pseudonyms) who
attended the same school, I asked them to respond
to the statement: Australia is not a racist country.
This is an excerpt from their response:
trouble with the stuff that we are learning, but
Nelly: Youd be wrong. For example in school

when, like they always, it really annoys me how
if they get more practice with learning that it

will just help them, not giving them counters
to count with! (personal communication,
December, 2012)
A few days before this interview took place, both

Nelly and Jacqui had excitedly attempted to teach
part of a dance routine they had learnt at school
as part of an Indigenous dance group. During the
interview it emerged that they no longer participated
in this group because they felt like other students
and teachers were judging them. They sensed this
was because the initiative was perceived as being
provided for Indigenous students who were
underachieving.
they have to have special help for Aboriginal
Yunkaporta:
kids, its like they dont believe we can do it
It seems clear that the inferred messages students

receive from a lot of the Indigenised content and
programs included at school, like some of the
Aboriginal dancing, is that Aboriginal knowledge is
less intellectual, less rigorous. And the terrible shame
is that the kind of knowledge that is selected to
represent Aboriginal knowledge generally is inferior.
Shame, even bigger shame, is that we celebrate and
promote that slack way ourselves. That deficit
on our own. That annoys me, I know some

Aboriginal kids like the support and need it, but
its not
Jacqui: Its directed in a way that suggests
that we cant do it.
Nelly: The tutoring they have for the
Aboriginal kids at our school is like, two year
old stuff. I dont even go to it anymore because
67
thinking, that identity of false primitivism, is internalised deep within us and it is an addiction that is
hard to break. It is even harder to break for colonists,
who need us to be primitive in order for them to
seem developed and therefore morally legitimate in
their occupation of the continent. This deep need
and the globalising agenda that feeds it is intimately
tied up with curriculum and education in an
historical sense. With this in mind, I would like to
stimulate the rest of this yarn with a provocation
now, a story (that follows in italics). It is a narrative
reframing of the history of education and nationbuilding, suggesting that the two are intimately
bound together, so much so that any change in
curriculum along the lines we are suggesting here
would have ramifications for Australia far beyond
the realm of schools and schooling.
A short, short time ago, the Order of Teutonic Knights,
from Germanic regions previously devastated by Rome,
invaded the lands of the Indigenous Prusi in the north
to form the nation of Prussia. They developed a vast
standing army by using the same system of totalitarian
control that had ultimately failed their old Roman
oppressors and their more recent Middle Eastern opponents
during the crusades. They refined and perfected this
control system by inventing a method of prolonging
adolescence based on the same techniques that were used
to domesticate wild animals. These animal husbandry
techniques were simple separate and confine the young,
give them repetitive and meaningless tasks to do and use
rewards and punishments to ensure compliance. This
training regime was the foundation of the first universal
compulsory public education system, featuring standardised testing within a national curriculum that focused
on the basics of reading, writing and simple calculation.
The system allowed the new nation state to increase its
industry and military to unprecedented levels of success,
by producing workers and soldiers who were obedient
beyond all reason or desire for self-preservation. While
elites pursued academic excellence and explored the
wonders of global knowledge, the masses were intellectually and spiritually deformed, retarded and degraded.
The same system was implemented to assist in the
unification of Germany which earlier, like most of
Europes population, had consisted of self-determined
regional groups (what we call Indigenous people today).
The emerging nation of Germany eclipsed all other local
identities, and following their outlandish success, the rest
of the world followed suit in the late 1800s and early
1900s, implementing this new system of education to
serve in the ongoing eradication of regional and community
68
identities and the creation or intensification of national

identities. Peoples around the world that missed out on
(or resisted) national membership were serviced by
missionaries from these great nationstates, and were
taught their role in relation to empire, as pariahs excluded
from (but servicing) the colonising centre. Within the
great nations, public education succeeded in prolonging
the process of adolescence by several years, and in creating
a permanent state of child-like compliance and jingoistic
national identities in mainstream adult populations. The
exclusion of those with regionalised identities gave the
members of nations, no matter how lowly and oppressed,
a false sense of privilege and inclusion that ensured their
support for the system. Thus the image of primitive or
degraded outsiders became an essential tool for social
control, the propagation of which became the core
business of state-based education.
Unfortunately, as change must begin with
education, and as education is currently controlled
by a schooling system and curriculum that reflects
the needs of the powerful, it is difficult to see any
change on the horizon for such essential colonial
machinery as the myths of race and primitivism.
To change the curriculum would mean changing a
wider socio-economic agenda which is why the
curriculum is such a site of struggle and difficulty in
terms of reform, with changes in explicit content
made with the shifting tides of public debate, but
very little change ever made in the implicit values
and purposes of this instrument of oligarchy. With
that very important distinction in mind, I suggest
that we seek to acknowledge and remain grounded
in the historical realities explored to date in this yarn
as we engage with the next level, which deals with
learner and community responses to the curriculum
issues explored so far.
Second layer Water shapes river banks

Yunkaporta:
HERE WE WILL yarn-up the student and community
responses to the implementation of the curriculum.

Our use of the word response rather than impact
reflects the sense of agency demanded by Loynes
analogy at this level. She asserts a dialogical
relationship between students and curriculum developers that reverses the traditional passive role of
learners. In the spirit of this reversal, this part of
the yarn will turn the deficit logic of closing the gap
back upon itself, reframing the problem as a gap in
the capacity of the curriculum, rather than a gap
in the ability of students.
Loynes:
The water flow shapes its river banks, journeying
on its own path from the mountain to the sea
The relationship between the students and the
curriculum is one of navety, as the negative outlooks
expressed by teachers and career advisors can be
limiting to all students views of their potential.
As an academically-minded student who is often
directed towards non-academic jobs and pathways, I
feel a duty to break through the barriers set before
me, flood the banks of the river. Some students never
overpower those banks due to externally imposed
mindsets and opinions regarding the capacity of
Indigenous students in Year 11 and 12. Additionally,
Indigenous alternative entry schemes to university
courses create hostility between Indigenous and
non-Indigenous students and foster ever lower expectations. Hearing the comments of my peers such as,
why I am worrying about Victorian Certificate of
Education study and I dont have to be academic
to enter university if Im Aboriginal, constantly
reinforces the limiting attitudes, preconceived ideas
and opinions that stem from a lack of awareness in
history, community and social justice. This shortfall
in awareness could reasonably be attributed to gaps
in the curriculum.
Lowe:
There is plenty of content about Aborigines in the
curriculum, but quantity has never been the problem
with Indigenous education inclusion. Many of the
most damaging gaps in the curriculum involve the

quality of Indigenised content. The curriculum to
date in Australia has been written to provide
non-Indigenous students with an external or
outsiders view of Aboriginal people and their
cultures, and consequently it is most unlikely to
provide Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students
with an opportunity to interrogate colonial and
neo-colonial interactions between the colonisers
and the colonised. Grande (2009) and Battiste
(2000) have both discussed the means by which
the state has exoticised Indigenous identity and
culture through the curriculum, while at the same
time disengaging from the larger socio-political
discourse of Indigenous sovereignty and human
rights, with the consequence that Indigenous
learners capacity to speak for themselves has
diminished. Their voices have been largely emasculated by a curriculum that does not make space to
address those issues that remain at the heart of
dissociative relationships between Aboriginal and
non-Aboriginal Australia.
I would suggest that curriculum content
developed primarily to inform non-Indigenous
students about Indigenous people has a socio-anthropological purpose to investigate, dissect and view
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples cultural
experiences as artefacts. There appears to be little
or no requirement within the curriculum for
content to be developed that represents the lived
experiences and perspectives of these people. Perhaps
it is because this would be complicated. Such content
would need to be contextualised locally to genuinely
represent an Aboriginal standpoint, or at least
contain broadly situated knowledge that has
epistemic origin in wider Indigenous notions and
values around belonging and relatedness to place
and people. Of course, you would also then need
to examine the colonial disruption of this state
of affairs, and the contemporary and historical
Indigenous response. Indigenous students and
community members themselves might then want
to speak out, make their own responses, participate
in the shaping of curriculum content through
dialogue.
69
Backhaus:
Participation and genuine partnership with students
and communities have always been known to be a
key factor in successful Indigenous education. The
following are findings from one study that reflect
similar results from dozens of other research
projects and reports over the decades. It highlighted
eight relational factors that seeded success in
Indigenous educational settings (Munns, ORourke &
Bodkin-Andrews, 2013). The emphasis was not only
on the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge to
curriculum and pedagogy but also strengthening
embedded relationships (i) community relationships, (ii) the promotion of Aboriginal spaces,
(iii) valuing input of Indigenous families to student
and community relationships, curriculum and
pedagogy, (iv) Aboriginal perspectives and values
prioritised and embedded, (v) quality teaching,
(vi) schools as learning communities, (vii) targeted
support, and (viii) focused and meaningful relationships. The project incorporated ideas drawn from
policy as well as educational theory drawn from
authentic instruction, productive pedagogies,
quality teaching, and visible learning research
(Munns et al., 2013).
Yunkaporta:
However, it seldom seems to be this research and
proven best practice that drives curriculum and
policy. For some reason theories that suit particular
political ideologies seem to have far more currency,
and there have been dozens of these bouncing
around the curricular landscape for the last few
decades. I know some people reading this will think
Im referring only to conservative ideologies as the
damaging ones, but Im not. Im very bi-partisan
when it comes to curriculum critique, and generally
consider the political continuum to be a distracting
scam so I encourage participants in this yarn,
including readers, to open your minds to the pluralistic realities of human social organisation and
consider a broad range of ideas unconstrained by
false dichotomies.
Backhaus:
McConnochie, 1985), resistance theory (Folds, 1987),

critical literacy defined as genre theory, explicit
pedagogy (Veel, 1991) post-colonialism (Nakata,
1995), visible pedagogy (Hudspith, 1996), scaffolding
literacy genre theory, explicit pedagogy, situated
cognition, multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000;
Nakata, 2000). Noel Pearson (2009) and Chris Sarra
(2005) have voiced two different approaches in
Queensland, from opposite ends of the political
continuum. Pearson explores an education pathway
built on a return to basic pedagogy and curriculum,
harnessing explicit instruction (Pearson, 2009).
Chris Sarras ideas and philosophy for the future of
Indigenous education are based around a strong and
smart vision that places emphasis on developing
positive cultural identity alongside high expectations
for all involved in educating Indigenous students
(Sarra, 2005). There are many theories and techniques
and programs out there, as diverse as the people they
seek to represent and the problems they seek to
address. In this way, there is dialogue.
Loynes:
We may shape the curriculum, but first it shapes us.
We take on the values and biases that are taught to
us, and so the oppressed become the oppressors,
putting down their peers in the form of lateral
violence. This happens for everybody, regardless of
cultural background. Students act out and speak out
the messages that are only hinted at by teachers and
curriculum, the low expectations and bias. In the
series of vignettes I wrote in preparing for this paper,
there was one particular scenario that illustrates
this point. I was waiting outside a classroom one day
with my classmates, discussing our university hopes
and dreams when the conversation took a rather
worrying turn. Having expressed my concerns to my
friends and to anyone that would listen in hopes
that I wasnt alone, I was shocked by the ignorant
and insensitive response of my peers. I was asked
why was I worrying, werent there scholarships for
Indigenous people? Wasnt I already supported financially by the government? Why do I try so hard to
succeed when I dont have to? There was a shared
understanding in these questions, based on secret
prior conversations in which I had not been included.
Since the 1970s various theoretical underpinnings

have informed Indigenous educational research. A
Yunkaporta:
brief but not conclusive range includes: cultural
The curriculum itself is a conversation in which you

have not been included, in which all of its intended
recipients have not been included. There are
difference (Harris & Kinslow-Harris, 1980), reproduction theory and cultural capital theory (Harker &
70
inferences encoded in there, messages that our

Indigenous and non-Indigenous peers translate
into explicit belief statements, then promote these
messages on behalf of the curriculum designers
and policy makers. It is a system in which all are
complicit and yet none are accountable for the
pervasive racism of low expectations. Students and
community may indeed shape the curriculum in
limited ways, but as Loynes suggests earlier, it is the
curriculum that shapes us first, meaning our
identity choices are limited along with our agency,
before any kind of participative process can even
begin. The curriculum sets the limits of our identity
and our sovereignty (and of the public conversation
about these things).
Brown:
Our identity, as the philosopher Charles Taylor
(1997, p. 98) points out in his essay The Politics of
Recognition,
or urban, authentic or fake, full blood, half-caste,

quarter-caste; as not white enough, but not black
enough either the list goes on and on. These articulations inform what Nakata (2007a, p. 7) terms the
corpus that circumscribes the cultural interface which
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people inhabit
every day. This corpus shapes the experience of
Aboriginal people who are constantly navigating
prescriptions of what they should be versus what
we actually are.
Yunkaporta:
Maybe you can give some examples from your
research of some responses to curriculum and gaps in
curriculum knowledge regarding Aboriginality and
identity. These curriculum gaps and implicit messages
result in misinformation that can damage our
students and limit their education and life pathways.
What is the student response to this?
is partly shaped by recognition of its absence,
Brown:
often by the misrecognition of others, and so

damage, real distortion, if the people or society
I asked Jamie for example, whether he could think of

something that would make school a better place for
Indigenous students. He said:
around them mirror back to them a confining
I dont know, because when you address these
or demeaning or contemptible picture of
things youre basically making it known that
themselves. Non-recognition or misrecognition
its happening, and that in a way is a bad thing,
can inflict harm; can be a form of oppression,
because you dont want everyone to know
imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and
youre Aboriginal in a perfect world there
reduced mode of being.
would be no racism, but then again, to get rid
a person or group of people can suffer real
The historical misrecognition or non-recognition of

Aboriginal people as portrayed in the media
(Atkinson, Taylor & Walter, 2010; Banerjee & Osuri,
2000; Meadows, 2001), popular culture (Perera, 1996)
and the academic disciplines of history, anthropology and literature have impacted not only the
way mainstream Australians perceive Aboriginality,
but also how Aboriginal people have come to see
themselves (Balvin & Kashima, 2012; Langton,
1993a, 1993b; Swain, 1993). Yawuru Aboriginal
leader Mick Dodson (1994) asserted during the 1994
Wentworth Lecture series that since Aboriginal
people have come into the view of the colonisers
over two centuries ago they have had a lot to say
about us (p. 3). In this way Marcia Langton (2003,
p. 91) suggests that the majority of Australians, do
not know and relate to Aboriginal people. They relate
to stories told by former colonists. Aboriginal people
have been infantilised (Coram, 2007) and depicted as
wandering nomads, noble savages; on the brink of
extinction, romantiscised, catagorised as traditional
of racism youve got to address it, and addressing

it is the hard bit. (Jamie, personal communication, December, 2012)
Jamie was proud of his heritage, but because of his

fair skin he felt that he really had to reveal that part
of himself or assert himself when it came to identifying with his Aboriginality. There was no language
or image provided in the curriculum which described
his own Indigenous lived reality to his peers, and so
he found himself socially constrained by an
18th century metalanguage of race regarding unscientific notions like blood quantum. When I queried
if he had ever had problems because of his fair skin,
he admitted:
I dont know, yeah, some people say to me
when I do tell them, Its okay Jamie, youre not
Aboriginal, okay, because youre only a quarter.
But you cant put Aboriginality into fractions,
like, just because I am fair skinned doesnt
mean I am not Aboriginal. (Jamie, personal
communication, December, 2012)
71
He felt like he did not look like what an Aboriginal

person should look like, as exemplified in school
curricula; he had fostered an extreme selfconsciousness to do with this aspect of his identity
at school. He explicitly avoided talking about his
Aboriginality within this space as a result:
I tell people when they ask and yeah I am open
about it if they ask questions but sometimes
its better not to be open about it because they
are just going to go on and on when I am at
school I need to watch what I say because
sometimes I know its going to trigger something
that I dont want to talk about. You know? All
the racist jokes and stuff. (Jamie, personal
Nelly similarly avoided talking about her Aboriginality,

because she was afraid that if people knew then she
would be the target for racial prejudice, particularly
since she no longer lived with her Aboriginal mother,
but was in the care of her grandparents.
My Mum was really proud of being Aboriginal,
and I was kind of like, because I had been,
because a lot of people get paid out for being
Aboriginal I am just, its not like I am not proud,
and its not like I am shame or anything, I just
kind of hide a little bit at school. (Nelly, personal
I asked Dell if she was open about her Indigeneity at

her new school, she stated No. Id get discriminated
against. Because to them being Indigenous is
different. Being Indigenous is just another way of
saying that I am different to everybody else (Dell,
personal communication, December, 2012). When
I asked Danny why he was apprehensive about
revealing or discussing his Aboriginality at school he
expressed a sense of fear that the way he perceives
the world would be threatened.
I dont know, like, probably a bit afraid of
getting shut down. If you dont talk about it
with anyone, then your beliefs wont be diminished by people who think theyre smarter than
you or, like, yeah. Sometimes people question
you about it and its hard to respond. (Danny,
personal communication, December, 2012)
Dannys response reflects in general how the students

felt discussing their Aboriginal identity at school.
They often expressed that if they were to disclose
this aspect of their identity they would be questioned,
challenged and required to authenticate this part of
themselves. Particularly as they believed, whether
because of their skin colour or aspirations or amount
72
of culture they thought they did or did not know,

that they did not fulfil what was to be expected of
them as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Australians,
and therefore they would not satisfy the challenger.
For students like Bec who were openly proud of their
Aboriginality, the disclosure about their identity
usually occurred in response to a racist remark. She
believed that because she was not what her peers
expected an Aboriginal person to be like, people were
openly racist in her presence not realising who she
was. I asked her how it made her feel, It just annoys
me and frustrates me. Then they realise who I am and
that I am there and they like apologise. And I am like
Well why would you say it in the first place? (Bec,
personal communication, December, 2012)
For these Indigenous students, their bodily or
epidermal schema, as John Solomons (2000, p. 199)
terms it, does not adequately signify the stereotypical
image of an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person
as currently presented in our school curricula. To
describe the romantic and essentially stereotypical
image of Aboriginality as exported to the world
would invoke a near naked Aborigine [sic] standing
on one leg holding a spear (Cashman, 1999, p. 58).
Aboriginal performer Deb Morrow suggests that the
authentic image of Aboriginality is a man with a
didjeridu, clap sticking, full black, with paint all over
them. And that, thats all they are. Anything less than
that is not Aboriginal (as quoted in Barney, 2010,
p. 213). To position this ideal in the curriculum as the
primary image of authenticity is to deny the diversity
of the Aboriginal community and also the effects and
collective memory of over a century of concerted
policy efforts aimed at breeding out and assimilating
Aboriginal people. Additionally, subscribing to such
essentialised notions of Aboriginality represents an
adherence to the binary logics that problematise
identity at the cultural interface (Nakata, 2007a).
Conceptualisations of the Indigenous experience that
employ the black/white binary may be limited in
considering not only the liminal position of many
Indigenous Australians, but also the existence of
lateral violence, or what has been described as
internal colonialism (Welch, 1988).
Yunkaporta:
From that testimony, it seems the response of many
Indigenous students to curriculum is to hide, to
protect identities from a dominant worldview that
is hostile to them, that excludes them for not representing the preferred markers of primitivism, race and
deficit. No wonder our students are failing so badly at

school, if the reward for success is to lose your identity
in the eyes of the world! I see no evidence of students
or communities influencing curriculum positively in
this regard, particularly these invisible Indigenous
students whose existence does not suit the political
agenda of any powerful group. As most Aboriginal
people these days do not have black skin, this racial
orthodoxy is a massive barrier to genuine dialogue
and representation. Can anybody offer any positive
examples or even possibilities of a dialogical interface
between the curriculum and Indigenous students and
community? I mean a genuine interface too, not just
a falsely democratic representative model, and not
some neo-liberal corruption of partnerships either.
Lowe:
It has been suggested that the development of the
National Curriculum, in its initial stages, offered
some potential to provide Aboriginal students with
the capacity to meaningfully engage in the dynamic
processes of creatively determining their level of
interaction at the cultural interface (Nakata, Nakata,
Keech & Bolt, 2012). Providing that the space and
tools are made available in any given school context,
students (in theory) might even now be enabled to
question and engage in ways that question the
dominant epistemology and open it to their own
reflexive investigation. Theoretically, this is
possible with a teacher who has the capacity to
facilitate or enable this kind of learning. A point of
comparison on the extent to which these issues have
actually been addressed in Australia is the recently
completed New Zealand National curriculum. The
New Zealand curriculum stated that a crucial aim of
the document was to create an Aotearoa New
Zealand in which Mori and Pkeh recognise each
other as full Treaty partners, and in which all cultures
are valued for the contributions (Ministry of
Education NZ, 2007a, p. 7).
Both the English medium, and Mori medium
curriculum, Te Marautanga o Aotearoa (Ministry of
Education NZ, 2007b), have openly acknowledged a
desire for equality between the colonising and
colonised cultures. The New Zealand curricula have
provided a genuine vehicle through which all
students are enabled to navigate the rocky road of
colonialism and imagine a genuinely reconciled state
that acknowledges and legitimises the sovereign
rights of the nations Indigenous population as a
necessary step towards real reconciliation.
Yunkaporta:
Do you feel the same fear that I feel when I even
imagine suggesting the same kind of curriculum for
Australia? Do you feel fearful that the very words we
are writing right now will be regarded as sedition
by many Australians, and particularly by people in
positions of power over us in our lives and careers?
Can you imagine the anger and ridicule that is going
to follow these words if they are actually published?
Where did Australians learn this irrational fear and
denial, if not at school, through a hegemonic
curriculum? I would like for us to consider why a
curriculum honouring First Nations sovereignty
under treaty is so acceptable in a country a few
hundred kilometres to the east of us, but is so
completely unacceptable here. Keeping that sobering
consideration firmly in mind, we are led to the
next layer of the yarn, which focuses on curriculum
reform.
73
Third layer Landscape moves, grows

Yunkaporta:
IN THIS LAYER we will tackle curriculum reform and
the cultural/political struggles surrounding it,

including a continued analysis of policy, introducing
issues around standardised testing, closing the gap
and the national curriculum.
Loynes:
The landscape has continued to grow and
move with the river, aiding in its journey
across the terrain
Awareness is about knowing both sides of a story,
acknowledging the importance of both. Positioned
as the knowledge-holder within the school system,
the curriculum is a powerful tool for increasing
or limiting social awareness. The curriculum that I
have experienced as a student has failed me in this
regard, particularly in reference to Indigenous issues.
This is where the curriculum needs to be consistent
for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous children.
For example, every class could reference First
Nations language maps of country to identify the
Indigenous nations over which the recent histories
and knowledge of Australia have been written. This
does not take additional content, so much as a shift
in attitudes and perspectives. Currently this kind of
shift is inhibited by a curriculum that denies
Indigenous historical presence beyond basic and
vague acknowledgement of traditional owners and
some past injustices. In both public and private
school systems I have had minimal exposure to
current social justice issues in the curriculum.
Additional content is not the answer content is
worth nothing if the relationship between curriculum
and pedagogical practices results in biased attitudes
and unfair representations of Australian society.
The skimming over of the importance of
Indigenous peoples and our history has made our
inclusion in curriculum tokenistic and oversimplified. In response to this I can offer the river
analogy as a tool to envision an alternative that is
more complex and appropriate. For example, the
relationship between students and the curriculum
(the river and the landscape) is a continuing cycle
of mutual engagement. There is no binary opposition
74
when it comes to the multiple layers of landscape

(the many levels of curriculum knowledge) that can
be accessed for quality learning. Knowledge holders
come in many different forms such as members
of the community, knowledge from community,
through the internet, texts and students within the
classroom even the smallest snippet of information
can be influential in the guidance and nourishment
of water on land. The curriculum does not need to
define the parameters of this content through tokenistic and oversimplified generalisations about
Aboriginal culture. Instead, the curriculum needs
to liberate students and teachers to access the vast
landscapes of living knowledge available to us.
Yunkaporta:
Unfortunately, oversimplified generalisations and
binary oppositions are what we get, rather than any
kind of liberation of learning and knowledge. While
the discussion is limited to positions that steer
clear of any possibility of Indigenous sovereignty or
agency or treaties or questioning of colonial legitimacy, a false flag skirmish between so-called left
and right political ideologies regarding curriculum
topics is established in the media to encourage
public debate over issues of culture rather than
scrutiny of invasive Indigenous policies. For those
of us impacted by interventionist policies and
closing the gap rhetoric, there is very little difference
between left and right, who tend to agree wholeheartedly with each other when it comes to defining
and policing the place of Indigenous peoples in
relation to the dominant culture.
Brown:
The seemingly unassailable and commonsensical
clarion call to close the gap in Indigenous disadvantage constitutes the linchpin of current national
policy discourse. I assert that Indigenous disadvantage has been positioned in a way that disconnects it from its historical inception and situates it
as external to the social universe of non-Indigenous
Australians. This serves to reify Aboriginality within
a framework dependent on simplified binary oppositions. Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations
continue to be informed and perpetuated by

normalised colonial assumptions that permeate
and shape the curriculum. This is ignored as we
focus single-mindedly on measuring and administering to Indigenous student dysfunction and
school achievement deficits.
Backhaus:
School achievement for Indigenous Australians has
received a renewed focus as a result of the introduction of the National Assessment Program Literacy
and Numeracy (known as NAPLAN) testing regime
(Vass, 2013). Launched in 2008, the publication of
results served to clearly reiterate disparities in
academic outcomes when Indigenous students were
compared with non-Indigenous students. Whilst
there is an achievement gap between Indigenous and
non-Indigenous students in all states, in the Northern
Territory it is a staggering 50 percentage points or
more in reading, writing and numeracy across all
year levels currently tested (Ford, 2013). The renewed
focus on school achievement gaps also raises questions
on how effective policy and practice has been on the
education outcomes of First Australians developed
over 40 years of social intervention (Gunstone, 2013;
Malin & Maidment, 2003; Vass, 2013).
Brown:
Educational disadvantage in the Northern Territory
and other remote areas is enhanced by a lack of
resources including trained educators equipped to
engage with learners that hold English as a second
language, basic infrastructure and services such as
healthcare, in addition to limited access to economic
opportunities (Carson & Koster, 2012; Cooke, Mitrou,
Lawerence, Guimond & Beavon, 2007; Harrison,
2007; Sutton, 2001). While Indigenous education in
many remote communities is in crisis, non-Indigenous education in remote areas is a problem too,
and the extremely low educational attainment of
Indigenous students in urban and regional centres
is also a cause for concern, not to mention that of
all students in low socio-economic area schools,
regardless of ethnicity. Identified as a pitfall in
current policy discourse surrounding Indigenous
disadvantage is the lack of acknowledgement of the
significant socio-geographical diversity of Indigenous
Australia (Altman & Fogarty, 2010; Brasche &
Harrington, 2012; Carson & Koster, 2012; Hunter,
1993; Yu, 2011). This is an important point,
particularly as in her investigation of poverty in
New South Wales, Rebecca Reeve (2012) revealed a

persistent discourse which positions Indigenous
people in remote communities as the real disadvantaged, and thus the complexity of disadvantage in
major cities and regional centres is often overlooked
within both policy and scholarly considerations of
Indigenous education. In the state of New South
Wales for example, 20.3 per cent of Year 9 Indigenous
students were below the minimum standard
compared to 5.1 per cent of Year 9 non-Indigenous
students (Ford, 2013, p. 12). The achievement gap in
reading and numeracy was similar.
While national standardised testing has been
criticised for a number of reasons, the level of
disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous
test results is significant (Biesta, 2009). In 2008 in the
state of Western Australia, for example, only 22 of
683, or 3 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander secondary school graduate students were
eligible to attend university on the merit of their
grades. This is compared to 35 per cent of non-Indigenous students (Aurora Project & Monash University,
Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, 2011). Issues
of engagement (Fisher, Frey & Lapp, 2011; Lea,
Thompson, McRae-Williams & Wegner, 2011) and
attendance (Bourke, Rigby & Burden, 2009), in
addition to socio-economic and familial factors
(Altman, 2000; Marks, Cresswell & Ainley, 2006), and
geographical isolation (Altman & Fogarty, 2010) only
partially explain the educational gap between
Indigenous students and their non-Indigenous
counterparts. Despite three decades of policy focus
set to ameliorate this profoundly significant
inequality, which is reflected at every level of
education in Australia from primary school to
tertiary level, the disparity continues to persist. Thus,
as Anne Hickling-Hudson and Roberta Ahlquist
(2003) state, research into Indigenous education
within Australia cannot be considered without asking
why is it that Indigenous citizens continue to be
far from achieving the educational levels of other
citizens? (p. 71).
Backhaus:
The statistics show a decrease in outcomes alongside
the increased focus on testing. In 2005 the educational outcomes differences between Indigenous and
all other students ranged from 14 percentage points
in Year 3 numeracy to 33 percentage points in Year 7
numeracy, with only 49 per cent of Indigenous
students meeting this benchmark. In addition, there
75
was evidence that there has been a decline in

numeracy achievement in the middle years that is
particularly apparent for Year 7 and Indigenous
students. In the 2005 national benchmark-testing
program the Indigenous scores were lower than the
2004 scores on eight of the nine benchmarks, and
in eight cases the gaps between Indigenous and
all other students outcomes widened between the
two years. Furthermore the proportion of Indigenous
students who achieved a Year 12 Certificate decreased
from 51 in 2001 to 49 per cent in 2005, while the
proportion of non-Indigenous students who
achieved a Year 12 Certificate increased from 80 to
87 per cent in the same year (Klenowski, 2009).
NAPLAN results from 2011 highlight educational
gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous
students with examples above 20 percentage points
for reading, writing and numeracy in Year 9 school
students (Fogarty & Schwab, 2012).
Brown:
This deficit focus on national testing and measuring
and administering to gaps in ability is happening
around the world, not just in Australia. Over the last
decade, close the gap rhetoric has emerged as part of
many Western democracies efforts at reconciling the
educational aperture between the achievement of
respective minorities and their counterparts (Brayboy,
Castagno & Maughan, 2007; Cherubini, Hodson,
Manley-Casimir & Muir, 2010; Gillborn, 2008;
Giroux & Schmidt, 2004; Taylor, 2006). Although as
the achievement gaps in many of these countries still
persist, gap rhetoric is increasingly being challenged.
Henry A. Giroux and Michle Schmidt (2004) for
example, criticise the reliance on the gap rhetoric in
the United States for its basis on statistical evidence
gained through standardised testing. Rather than
closing the gap, they assert that policy efforts driven
in this way have devastating consequences for
undermining the autonomy of teachers, lowering
the quality of the curriculum and reproducing those
tracking and stratification policies that bear down
so heavily on minorities of class and race (p. 215).
Yunkaporta:
Previously in this yarn we explored the influence
Indigenous students may or may not have on the
curriculum, but we missed the most powerful way
that they might influence design and policy with
their dysfunction. Our community sends its most
powerful messages through low school attendance
76
and outcomes. This use of the limited power available

to us, as self-defeating as it might be, can also be seen
as a form of resistance against assimilation and
colonisation. Arguably, if the rhetoric around closing
the gap is directed primarily towards remote
communities despite the statistical realities of urban
Aboriginal dysfunction, then it could be justifiably
described as an aggressive policy targeting Aboriginal
communities living on country, for the purposes
of urbanisation and assimilation (not to mention
land-grabbing). It is certainly assimilatory from the
perspective of those thousands who resist closing
the gap initiatives through non-compliance with
education and other government programs.
Brown:
A brief synopsis of the critical consideration of the
national policy, Close the Gap, may be useful in
highlighting the disjuncture between what is put
forward as important within policy discourse, and
what may be perceived as significant from an
Indigenous perspective. For example policy discourse
does not contend with racism, the dominance of a
Eurocentric perspective within curriculum and the
low expectations afforded to Indigenous students
by educational staff. David Cooper (2011) in his
assessment of the implications of the Close the Gap
policy on the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Australians suggests that
recognisable mainstream social determinants, such
as social exclusion as a product of racism, discrimination and the level of control an individual possesses
over their own life circumstances, are accorded a low
status and priority within policy discourse. Yet this,
he asserts, stands in contrast to the importance
with which they are regarded by Indigenous people
themselves (Cooper, 2011, p. 8). With an emphasis
on empirically informed policy decision making,
rigorous policy evaluation and unity between
Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, Close
the Gap, it has been argued, is widely perceived as
politically benevolent (Altman, 2009; Fisher et al.,
2011; Pholi, Black & Richards, 2009). As a result it
has received bipartisan support and come to occupy
a relatively neutral position in the political arena.
Kerryn Pholi, Dan Black and Craig Richards (2009)
question whether the perceived benevolence and
appeal to unity generated by the Close the Gap
campaign may have culminated in a lack of critical
policy engagement, particularly with its emphasis on
a seemingly evidence-based approach.
The emphasis on calculable progress and

outcomes, Pholi et al. (2009) argue, may suture over
the less measurable social causes of inequality like
social exclusion and racism, which directly implicate
non-Indigenous Australians in considerations of
the cause of the gap in the first place. This is reflected
in a lack of nationally coordinated data collection
relating to the prevalence of discriminatory or racist
attitudes held by the wider Australian community
toward Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people
(Pholi et al., 2009, p. 5). A failure to address or
measure the structural nature of these issues within
policy deliberations of inequality, they suggest, does
not indicate these issues do not exist. Rather, Stella
Coram (2008) asserts that the discourse of inclusion
and disadvantage employed as part of the Close the
Gap rhetoric serves to obscure the institutionalisation of inequality. She critiques current policy in
its attempt to mainstream Indigenous inequality
on the basis that disadvantage is an intersectional
issue that cuts across all social and economic
sectors (p. 2) and may be ameliorated by increased
participation and inclusion. Disadvantage, she
suggests, is constructed in a way that potentially
displaces the politics of race discrimination and
difference (p. 3). In this way disadvantage, or
particularly, the disadvantage experienced by
Aboriginal people, is isolated from its historical
underpinnings. She states that any meaningful
consideration of Australian colonial history makes
it clear that inequalities derived of race ideology
have, and continue to apply to indigenous
Australians yet the collective experience of racial
inequality has been redrafted as cultural difference
and disadvantage (p. 8). She further asserts that
framing disadvantage as lack of advantage serves
to position inequality as momentary and apolitical
(p. 9). A growing body of literature is emerging that
engages with Close the Gap discourse and addresses
some of these issues, particularly from a critical race
perspective. These critiques provide a useful way of
taking into account the links between power,
inequality and race and how these may inform the
gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous
Australians in health, wellbeing and education.
Yunkaporta:
The redrafting of racial inferiority as cultural difference
was a way of preserving illegitimate Anglo imperial
power structures when science finally debunked the
ridiculous myth of separate biological human races.
I still remember those race charts and diagrams from

my textbooks and classroom walls when I went to
school, back when racial difference was an explicit
cornerstone of curriculum and Australian identity.
Australian Federation was built on that myth of race,
with the promise of a final solution to the Aboriginal
problem, which in turn informed blatantly genocidal
and ethnocidal policies of biological and cultural
assimilation, later sanitised and reduced by history to
a limited narrative of Stolen Generations. Although
the racial rhetoric has now been rebadged and the
sentimental tone is one of goodwill, the underlying
policy agendas remain the same. These seemingly
benevolent policies are rolled out very much like
foreign aid, particularly in the way access to basic
rights and services is often tied to agreements to
open up Aboriginal land and communities to outside
private business interests. The machinery of racism is
still serving the interests of the powerful, and so it
remains firmly in place, despite recent lexical refurbishments. The Aboriginal student voices included
earlier in our yarn have testified to the way curriculum
still excludes Indigenous identities lacking the old
biological racial identifiers, a subtle way of continuing
towards the Australian Federations unifying goal of a
final solution to the Aboriginal problem defining
us out of existence as the old skin-tone difference
markers inevitably disappear over time.
Now Australians from all states and political
persuasions are uniting once more, with the
Aboriginal problem rebadged as Indigenous disadvantage, and the final solution of defining lighter
Indigenous people out of existence rebadged as free
speech. This has provided the impetus for creating
further national unity, exemplified by new permutations of a national curriculum a work in progress
that boldly asserts Indigenous perspectives as one of
its three pillars yet excludes the contemporary experiences of racism and neo-colonialism as part of that
perspective. On that note we will bring the focus of
the yarn to national curriculum now, particularly
as this paper was commissioned on the strength of a
previous publication by Lowe and myself (Lowe &
Yunkaporta, 2013), which was a three-level cultural,
cognitive and socio-political analysis of the national
curriculum Indigenous content.
Lowe:
In that analysis we questioned whether the Australian
Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority
(ACARA) had met its remit to provide all students
77
with knowledge, skills and understanding about

Aboriginal history and culture. Our investigation
raised doubts as to the process used by ACARA to
develop and map the content, and the efficacy of
its attempts to develop curriculum content with
epistemic authenticity, higher order cognition, or
potential student engagement with the shared
history between colonial groups and Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander peoples. The primary purpose of
this initial investigation by Lowe and Yunkaporta
(2013) was to provide ACARA with a detailed analysis
of the F10 curriculum as it was progressed through
the stages of consultation. The authors had hoped
that robust discussion with ACARA, its Aboriginal
Reference Group, and with other key stakeholders
would afford them a diagnostic methodology to test
the quality of the embedded Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander cross-curriculum content. However
as noted in its supplementary introduction to the
paper, ACARAs response was to simply add to the
overall quantum of content without articulating an
overarching purpose or providing a commentary on
how this additional content would address these
concerns, or the efficacy of the curriculum to even
meet ACARAs own content standards as set out in
its own Shape Paper (ACARA, 2011).
The examination by Lowe and Yunkaporta (2013)
provided detailed evidence of the inability and/or
unwillingness of ACARA to construct meaningful
learning for and about Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander students and their communities. It concluded
that ACARA had exercised a tight control over the
developmental processes for the inclusion of the
cross-curriculum priority content, with the effect of
both narrowing the breadth and cognitive depth
of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content, and
overlooking those elements that would have afforded
teachers the capacity to contextualise content such
that students could begin to understand the worldspace inhabited by Australias Indigenous peoples.
Further, the exclusion of this content disabled the
potential for students to appreciate the realities and
consequences of invasion and colonisation, and the
consequent preservation of the colonial status quo in
respect to the key functions of the state.
Lowe and Yunkaporta (2013), have argued that
the ACARA curriculum had not met either the
pedagogic or quality standards required to fulfil the
promise of providing all students with deeper
understanding and appreciation of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people (ACARA, 2011, p. 22).
78
Secondly, the cultural and cognitive analyses

confirmed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
peoples concerns that these documents had not met
the promise of developing curriculum that supported
education excellence for Indigenous students within
a setting that promoted respect and the promotion
of cultural identity. However, instead of calling for
another revision of curriculum content, I would
contend that a deeper examination is required of the
Shape Paper, to better understand the reasons why
Indigenous content is underwhelming in its presence
and quality, how it fails to address key epistemic
constructs, how it is cognitively unchallenging, and
how it has failed to deliver on the wide range of
socio-political issues that impact Indigenous students
in schools. ACARAs response to the many complaints
about content to simply add to the quantum of
content did not placate their many critics both
from outside and from within its own Indigenous
advisory group (Austin & Hickey, 2011; Lowe &
Yunkaporta, 2013; Nakata, 2011).
Yunkaporta:
I have to state here as a matter of protocol that you
may be senior enough (culture way) to challenge the
senior Aboriginal people involved in ACARA and the
advisory group, but I am not as yet. So although I
was happy enough to analyse the curriculum content
for that other publication, Ill leave the overall
critique and recommendations to you in this yarn.
Speaking of which, do you have any recommendations? I know this is a problem with non-Aboriginal
people when we raise these issues it is a barrier
for them that they cant see clear actions to take or
recommendations to follow. The first barrier is that
they feel blamed and insulted historically/culturally
and therefore get defensive; the second barrier is
that they dont know what they can do about it
they dont know what we want, get a bunch of
mixed messages and therefore feel helpless. So, any
recommendations?
Lowe:
I will share those in the final section of the yarn. But
for now, I will say that there is a need for the crosscurriculum priority rationale and framework to be
redrafted to address the epistemological, ontological,
historical, cultural and linguistic issues raised in
earlier iterations of the national curriculum. A
re-examination of The Shape of the Australian
Curriculum Version 3 (ACARA, 2011b), the ACARA
statement on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

cross-curriculum priority (ACARA, 2011a), and KLA
[key learning area] course specific rationale statements, would demonstrate that teachers have not
been enabled by the curriculum to develop sequenced
learning that attends to student needs, indicating the
need for a complete redrafting. We need documents
that support all teachers and students to be better
able to have a deeper understanding of the Indigenous
experience and the significance of the reconciliation
of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians
(Reconciliation Australia, 2010).
Loynes:
Within a multi-layered landscape of knowledge (i.e.
curriculum), sometimes the problem isnt access to
Indigenous content, but appropriateness of content.
Although the curriculum acts as a guide in what is
necessary to cover for the topic, pedagogical practices
must include critical thought so that ignorant and
uninformed opinions from teachers, students,
resources or syllabus can be transformed from
damaging statements to valuable learning opportunities. The unquestioned use of curriculum content
reinforces a repetitive cycle of ignorance and
confusion. Reclaiming Indigenous knowledge in the
curriculum is not a process of picking and choosing
it is about being critically aware of all the layers of
the curriculum landscape. Enforcing a narrow state
of awareness through curriculum limits critical
thinking and independent learning, which are
optimal learning orientations no matter what culture
you come from.
Yunkaporta:
So it seems we are not saying anything new here,
that these issues have been raised during the development of the national curriculum and can be found
in earlier iterations. It seems that all the elements are
in place for genuine and effective curriculum reform,
and all the best knowledge and research is available
for consideration. However, things are always more
complicated than this, particularly in areas that
are policy-driven rather than research-driven or
community-driven. We will keep this in mind as we
now move into the complexities of extrapolating
future directions and seeking solutions.
79
Fourth layer Layers of landscape

Yunkaporta:
IN THIS LAYER we will employ our Indigenous orienta-
tions to landscape, our complex thinking, pattern

recognition and holistic cognition that exemplify
our land-based and community-centred modalities.
We will apply these skills (extremely useful intellectual skills that are unfortunately not recognised
or utilised in the curriculum) to an envisioning of
future directions and solutions. This will sit within
the context of national and colonial realities we have
articulated so far. Having said that, I must suggest at
this stage that Loynes has already indicated a future
direction for us, not in the content she has included
but in how she has structured it and her culturalintellectual process for doing this. She has utilised
her own Indigenous knowledge (that many would
consider to be lost or dead) to produce an analogy
and conceptual framework to guide the creation
of an innovative academic text. I have observed
Loynes over a number of years and watched her
apply ancient Indigenous memorisation techniques,
thinking processes and intellectual traditions (along
with contemporary critique) to her school work
with much success. Although her cultural work is
invisible to most (as it does not contain anything
photographable or primitive or collectible or
contemptible) it has integrity and real utility for
the future. Indigenous knowledge production is an
important part of the future, and the reclaiming and
reimagining of dynamic intellectual traditions rather
than just another rearranging of static artefacts and
performances is going to be crucial for our survival.
I would table this yarn itself as an example of a way
forward.
Loynes:
The river builds and grows stronger travelling
through all layers of the landscape
When you are aware of both sides of the story, the
agency to make a choice appears. As powerful as
the force of the river is, there are limitations on the
directions any given flow might be able to take
within the constraints of the landscape. The agency
of Indigenous and ultimately all students within
the schooling environment of curriculum, content
80
and pedagogical practices of educators, is limited by

forces beyond the learners control. Agency for us is
a balance of disempowerment and empowerment, a
common situation found in institutions regulated
through disciplinary consequences. This fine balance
can easily change, as there is often a mismatch
between mature and informed pedagogical practices
and immature and uninformed curriculum content
regarding the lost voices of recent history.
Brown:
Solutions will not be found in content, in the
inclusion of more exotic cultural items, but in the
mature and informed pedagogical practices Loynes
calls for earlier. How exactly can curriculum inform
these mature practices, when it is so grounded in
oppositional frameworks and denial of historical and
social realities? In seeking solutions to Indigenous
curriculum issues, consideration must be given to
the complexity and disjuncture inherent in existing
within formal learning engagements as a site where
Indigenous and Western knowledge, forms of
knowledge and ways of knowing are continually
posited in opposition to one another. Mark McKenna
(2003, p. 136) writes, the dispossession of Aboriginal
people, both historically and in the present day, lies
at the heart of Australian consciousness and identity,
and is connected to every aspect of our past. Why
then is the past and its implications in the present
almost wholly denied in both curriculum and policy
considerations of Indigenous disadvantage? These
considerations always omit certain significant
aspects of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lived
realities, including the persistent impacts of colonialism. Despite the diversity of Indigenous Australia,
a number of common themes emerge as significant
from an Indigenous academic standpoint, signifying
a need for both policy and theoretical considerations
of Indigenous educational disadvantage to take into
account the persistent legacy of colonialism.
Furthermore, in a policy environment that
emphasises the importance of statistics and
numbers, there is an extremely limited body of
research giving voice to Indigenous high school
students and primacy to their experiences within
formal educational environments (Craven et al,

2005; Lingard, Creagh & Vass, 2012). While evidence
based in statistics is important, a more holistic view
of the issues informing the gap needs to be paralleled
by what Indigenous people identify as significant
in our own life-worlds in relation to these issues. So
I strongly recommend that professional research and
teacher research in these areas become part of the
process of ongoing curriculum development and
implementation.
Backhaus:
Historically, I believe research method in Indigenous
education has contributed significantly to the lack
of awareness, development and educational
achievement amongst our people. The emphasis
within this yarn on a need for a curriculum and
pedagogy informed by Indigenous Australian lived
realities also needs to be cognisant of the type of
research that informs this advocacy. If we want to
advocate improvements to education curriculum
and pedagogy we need to be aware not only of the
qualitative foundations of our research aims but
also the measurable outcomes of research analysis
that can assist in this process. The predominant focus
on qualitative research and minimal use of quantitative analysis by Indigenous researchers undertaking
Indigenist research, ultimately limits the strength
of their position and avoids or negates critical
engagement through a major form of research
method (Walter & Anderson, 2013). We need to
explore dialogue that provides space for both empirically minded research capacities and culturally
relevant curriculum and pedagogy. As Indigenous
researchers, avoiding one side of research method
and adopting a singular approach privileges
knowledge and disengages the critical lens of
Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers alike.
My thoughts within this arise from questioning
the need to develop a critical lens over research
method and analysis as an Indigenous researcher
developing knowledge for policy and educational
practice. Simply highlighting a method on the
basis of its weakness, to articulate our position and
perpetuate our historical victimhood at the hands
of policy makers, is not good scholarship. Isnt that
the same deficit logic we are arguing against? It
influences our capacity to enact real change twofold.
Firstly, the lack of engagement with quantitative
measures to articulate our position reinforces our
lack of full engagement with a wider discourse,
rendering stagnant our capacity to open up critical

dialogue at the cultural interface. Secondly, I believe
it becomes a research fallacy where we fail the needs
of those we advocate for by presenting an imbalanced story of our people to an audience that I
imagine wants to help. In my formative experience
of engaging with Indigenous research through literature reviews, there appears to be a lack of, as Martin
Nakata (2013, p. 291) puts it a review and evaluation by us; rather there is a focus on the failures
and pitfalls of governments, their policies and
programs, and their social institutions and practices
and away from our own shortfalls (Nakata, 2013).
Yunkaporta:
Any cursory examination of the literature reveals
more than enough of our shortfalls I can assure
you, however you are right to raise this issue here, at
a point where I imagine the blood of many readers
would be boiling with indignation. As Indigenous
academics, wherever we seek to address imbalances
in our representation, particularly in challenging
the subjective colonial narratives and qualitative
commonsense rhetoric that drives the most
draconian Indigenous policies, we are accused of
being unbalanced, subjective, lacking empirical
evidence this is how the invisible machinery of
racism and neo-colonialism protects itself. Indeed,
sometimes our Indigenous academics will reproduce
intellectually soft offerings while invoking culture
or victimhood to excuse their academic indolence,
but this is what they have learned in their education,
what the curriculum has taught them about their
culture. This is not what we are doing here. The
academics for this paper have been selected for
balance myself and Brown for the sociology/
critique side of things, while you represent statistical/evidence-based rigour and Lowe, as a recently
retired Board of Studies Inspector, represents the
policy expertise of a government insider. Loynes
keeps us honest and makes us try harder with her
genius, experience and integrity. The caution you
provide here is important though no doubt our
innovative text will be dismissed or enshrined
by many as an exotic Indigenised artifact, thus
detracting from our messages, also because of the
cultural and political choices we have made here
that may be seen as focusing on the failures and
pitfalls of government rather than the statistics of
dysfunction in our communities that people are
generally more comfortable with.
81
Lowe:
overall narrative about Australias relationship
I will be glad to contribute to a focus on failures and
with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
pitfalls of government right now, as my experience
peoples.
of the literature has been quite the opposite. While a

number of education researchers (Ladson-Billings,
Brown:
1995; Timperley & Alton-Lee, 2008) have identified
The last proposition is the most problematic. In
the clear link between curriculum content, teaching
order for that to work we would need to develop an
practices, student assessment, and teacher effec-
honest overall narrative about Australias real
tiveness, fewer have spoken of the direct and negative
relationship with its First Peoples, one that does not
impact of curriculum, grounded in colonial episte-
fail to confront the realities of racism. Currently this
mologies and imagery on teacher practice (Amosa
narrative does not exist in the public consciousness.
& Ladwig, 2004), even amidst overwhelming calls
I would propose Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a
for a renewed focus on teacher quality. Yet for
framework that needs to be applied to an analysis of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, there
curriculum and education policy in general. Without
are long-term negative effects on engagement and
this, the underlying issues will never be addressed
achievement associated with teacher knowledge
and we will continue to reproduce the old inequities
and practice that is grounded in a curriculum that
through our schooling institutions. Critical race
ignores, trivialises, or worse, delegitimises Indigenous
theory, originating from critical legal scholarship
knowledge, languages, connectedness and experi-
within the United States, seeks to reveal the persistent
ences (Kanu, 2005). These negative effects will
salience of race within society and the correlation of
continue to be exacerbated until curriculum writers
this persistence with the inequity experienced by
and teachers attain some kind of clarity about the
racialised groups (Gillborn, 2005; Ladson-Billings,
purpose and the depth of learning required for cross-
1998, 2009; Parker & Lynn, 2002). It also serves to
curriculum content in the new curriculum. In light
illuminate the invisibility of whiteness and its associ-
of this, I suggest the following four propositions to
ation with power and privilege (Dei, Karumanchery
inform the re-writing of the ACARA rationale, and
& Luik, 2004; McIntosh, 1989; Rogers & Mosley,
cross-curriculum framework. These may form the
2006). Over the last decade and a half CRT has
basis for identifying elements of a new approach:
transcended its legal grounding and has now been
a) That curriculum content must be sequenced
developed by scholars particularly in Western
across the mandatory years of learning, be rich
nations, who seek to better understand the dynamic
and enduring in its depth, be of consequence,
between matters of race, whiteness, power and
and be an authentic exposition of the lived
inequality (Ladson-Billings, 1998; Parker & Lynn,
experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
2002). It has also increasingly gained traction within
Islander people (Gay, 2002).
educational considerations of these issues (DeCuir &
b) That the curriculum must be written in a way
Dixson, 2004; Gillborn, 2005; Ladson-Billings, 1998,
that supports quality pedagogic practices that
2009; Lpez, 2003; Smith-Maddox & Solrzano,
are responsive to the cultural needs of minority
2002).
students (Bergeron, 2008; Berryman & Bishop,

2011; Castagno & Brayboy, 2008; Demmert,
Lowe:
2011) and responsive to the home cultures of all
As Backhaus rightly pointed out earlier, critique is
students.
important but it is not enough on its own.
c) That curriculum and pedagogic practices must
Following critical evaluation using CRT or any other
enable the establishment of learning partner-
framework, I suggest that the overarching rationale
ships with Aboriginal students and community
for curriculum development be reoriented so that it
(Biddulph, Biddulph & Biddulph, 2003; Goos,
sets itself the task of innovatively developing KLA
2004; Howard, Perry & Butcher, 2006).
curriculum, such that when sequenced across a
d) That curriculum content must enable teachers
childs overall learning trajectory, students are
to develop innovative and locally contextualised
empowered to engage in questions of great import to
responses to the content where possible, while
the reconciliation of this state with its First Nations
otherwise situating diverse identities within an
communities. The following five challenges provide
82
a developmental framework through which to

advance a new curriculum rationale for the inclusion
of Indigenous content in the national curriculum.
1. Challenge: The establishment of a national
curriculum that when sequenced across
F Year 10, opens discussion on issues such as:
invasion and colonisation, genocide, dispossession and massacres, social justice and socioeconomic inequality.
2. Legitimacy: The development of higher order
learning sequences that address the Indigenous
experience, and that challenge and enrich the
current discourses on nation building.
3. Authenticity: Establishes curriculum that links
to the real or lived experiences of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander peoples. For example,
content must attend to the role of Indigenous
agency in challenging the common indictment
of welfarism, dependency and victimhood.
4. Non-deficit epistemologies: Establishes strong
protocols to ensure that Aboriginal-specific
content is not situated within a deficit culture
defined by student under-achievement, social
dysfunction and myths of primitivism.
5. Quality pedagogy: the development of sample
curriculum content and outcomes that
promote, model and define culturally responsive
curriculum and pedagogy.
Brown:
Culturally responsive pedagogy is important, but it
must not be confused with cultural awareness, which
is usually grounded in deficit logic and tokenistic
Indigenised content. Thus it only serves to lower
expectations for Indigenous students. Cultural
responsiveness is more about dealing with lived
realities, a task that requires a more complex
framework for understanding the world. To that
end, I propose that an application of the cultural
interface as a conceptual framework for curriculum
designers, policy makers and teachers would go a
long way towards reconciling the Australian
curriculum with Australian reality. The Cultural
Interface is the nexus at which Indigenous and
Westernised knowledge forms interact (Nakata,
2007a, 2007b). It is a corporeally inhabited space,
but also an epistemological nexus shaped by
political and social factors, including the historical
and current propensity of these two positions to
be framed in opposition to one another (Anderson,
2009; Donald, 2012; Nakata, 2007a). Martin Nakata
asserts that in fact, Aboriginal and Torres Strait

Islander Australians inhabiting this space experience
both simultaneously. In signifying the complexity of
this space, he describes it as a
multi-layered and multi-dimensional space
of dynamic relations constituted by the intersections of time, place, distance, different
systems of thought, competing and contesting
discourses within and between different
knowledge traditions, and different systems of
social, economic and political organisation.
(Nakata, 2007b, p. 10).
Nakata (2007b, p. 213) then asks how are Indigenous

students, academics and researchers in the disciplines to navigate the complexities of Indigenous
experience within such contested spaces?
Increasingly an academic presence is emerging that
articulates the experience of inhabiting this space
through the development of these perspectives
into standpoints which can critically engage with
the epistemological convergence occurring at the
Cultural Interface (Bunda, Zipin & Brennan, 2012;
Donald, 2012; Moreton-Robinson & Walter, 2009;
Moreton-Robinson, 2003a; Rigney, 2001; TuhiwaiSmith, 2012). A theorisation of the Interface by
Indigenous researchers thus provides a way of
accounting for the realities of Indigenous participants within our research while simultaneously
assisting us with making sense of our experience
within the same space.
Yet the Cultural Interface; as it affects the lived
realities of those who exist within it, is not for the
exclusive consideration of Indigenous researchers,
rather it is an employable framework that transcends
current conceptualisations of Indigenous and nonIndigenous relations and knowledge forms (Nakata,
2007a). A theorisation of the Cultural Interface
provides non-Indigenous researchers, policy makers,
teachers and the like with an intelligible framework
to better understand the Indigenous experience and
their own position within it (McGloin, 2009; Nakata,
2007a; Yunkaporta & McGinty, 2009). In this way I
think the Cultural Interface as a framework addresses
a lot of the concerns that Backhaus outlined earlier.
People speaking a common language of Cultural
Interface would not see Indigenous curriculum
reformers as attempting to decentre a dominant
epistemology, or provide a critique of Western
knowledge systems, but rather as employing
Indigenous standpoints to re-evaluate the Indigenous
student experience, in order to take into account the
83
complexities of this experience, which are not

contended with in policy seeking to remedy
Indigenous disadvantage.
Loynes:
The living voices of Indigenous people, particularly
Indigenous students, need to be respected and
included in curriculum. Indigenous people hold a
strong presence in Australias past, present and
most definitely future. How though can we learn
about past Indigenous voices, when we are not
aware of those that remain unheard today? Being
an Indigenous student, in my experience, can be
both empowering and disempowering. While we
are recognised as knowledge holders amongst our
families, friends, communities and landscapes, we
remain unrecognised by a curriculum that fails to see
the powerful force that we Indigenous students are.
We are the future Elders, ever present within the
landscape no matter where we live, but our living
identities and realities are not regarded as authentic
Aboriginality by this curriculum that relegates real
Aborigines to the past and to the remote interior or
northern fringes of the continent.
Lowe:
So far we have argued quite strongly that there is
little capacity in the current national curriculum to
support teachers to develop high quality learning
and engaging educational experiences that will
resonate with genuine needs and interests of all
students. I have suggested that the ability to advance
this outcome is limited by a deeply flawed rationale
and framework developed to support the inclusion of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cross-curriculum
content. The rationale has elevated a narrow view
of culture and identity as a kind of harmoniously
primitive Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
experience of people moving haphazardly across a
harsh landscape, forsaking unimagined artifacts
which now await anthropological interpretation by
advanced beings. I would argue that these views
have become deeply entrenched and commonly
presumed as facts of Australias national pre-historic
heritage, that they have in turn influenced the
very focus of curriculum development to one of
pre-historic anthropological investigation and sociological surveillance. It is little wonder that the current
conceptualisation of the curriculum rationale has
spawned curriculum content that is largely inappropriate to the task of assuring the wider community
84
that teachers will be enabled to develop quality

teaching and learning that allows students to achieve
an authentic understanding of the peoples who have
lived and prospered on their sovereign lands here
for millennia. In place of the current singular
statement that conceptually narrows the past and
present realities of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Peoples, I propose that the curriculum
rationale be more appropriately expressed in the
form of questions to stimulate a search for answers
and solutions. By way of example, I offer the
following seven stimuli for inquiry:
1. Who are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people and how are they constructed within the
framework of the Australian Curriculum and
education policy (implicitly, not just explicitly
through the three-part definition)?
2. How is the question of Indigenous place within
the nation, and sovereignty dealt with?
3. Who determines the construct of Indigenous
identity and whose interests are served by this
construct?
4. What explicitly is the national narrative about
Australia and its national legitimacy?
5. What is the national narrative about invasion,
colonisation and postcolonial statehood?
6. How are historical and contemporary interactions between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal
Australia constructed and represented?
7. What clarity does the curriculum bring to the
task of reconciling the relationships between
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australia?
Yunkaporta:
I see those as provocation questions rather than the
kinds of core questions that are generally used to
normalise dominant values in education policy
circles. For example, the core questions that currently
dominate policy and programs are as follows:
How can we educate Indigenous people so they

can achieve parity in educational outcomes, and
therefore engage equally with the workforce and
wider economy?
How can we improve Indigenous attendance and

retention rates?
What are we going to do about Indigenous

misbehaviour/non-compliance in school?
There are premises behind these questions that
most people have not examined and about which
there has been no informed consultation for any
Australians. In the first question, How can we educate
Indigenous people so they can achieve parity in

educational outcomes, and therefore engage equally
with the workforce and wider economy? the greatest
assumption is about we. Who is this we? The subsequent assumptions could be illuminated best by
further questions. Is this workforce the only possible
or desirable pathway for survival and happiness? Is
the free-market economy the only, best or most
sustainable economy possible for Aboriginal communities and the wider community? How do reading,
writing and calculation test results provide a measure
of value? Does the phrase educational outcomes
really refer to learning at all? Where does this
education system come from and what is its purpose?
The second question, How can we improve
Indigenous attendance and retention? is a major
policy and funding focus at the time of this yarn.
Assumptions there include the idea that school is
the only possible site of education, that the problem
of low attendance rests with family and community
capacity issues, that students must be changed or
controlled in some way to ensure compliance. The
same assumptions underlay the third question,
What are we going to do about Indigenous misbehaviour/non-compliance in school?
As a way of having the community shape the
curriculum to inform policy, rather than the current
situation which is the exact reverse of that, I propose
that education communities begin to create more
productive core questions by reframing these with
aspirational logic rather than deficit logic. For example,
instead of the second question about Indigenous
attendance deficits, a more useful and aspirational
question might be, How can we make school a place
where students want to be? But arguably, all of these
questions might be best replaced with a deeper one,
getting to the pivotal socio-economic and historical
reality with, How can education, the economy and
the workforce be presented, (or even transformed), as
a system that will encourage Indigenous communities, students and families to invest their lives in it?
Currently, Indigenous hearts and minds have
not been won, and there is very little evidence of
community buy-in to the projects of Western development and globalisation. Aspirations to a lifestyle
enjoyed by an elite minority of the global population,
who are using up most of the worlds resources to
do it, are goals that our communities might not yet
be convinced of as real possibilities for the majority
of the seven billion people on the planet, (six billion
of whom did not exist a century ago). Perhaps those
who have seen their land base taken and destroyed

may be more attuned to these realities, the impossibilities of economic aspirations based on the illusion
of infinite growth and limitless resources. Historically,
any trust in the investment of time and resources
and delayed gratification in Western education and
economy by Indigenous people has been eroded,
and denial of this history in curricula and media
is not helping to mend the relationships and
systems current generations have inherited. How can
we convince our Indigenous communities that it is
suddenly safe, sustainable and possible to invest as
equals in education, the economy and the workforce?
If we genuinely believe this to be true, do we have
evidence to support the claim?
Lowe:
Some of these questions could be seen as a beginning
point for Australian curriculum authorities to
rethink current practice in respect to the placement
and purpose of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
content in the mandatory curriculum. The national
curriculum first needs to support students to learn
with and know Aboriginal people instead of just
knowing about them. Secondly, the curriculum needs
to achieve a pedagogic balance through a genuine
engagement with decolonising discourse. Thirdly, it
must be underpinned by an internal Indigenous
methodology that reinforces the process of critical
curriculum development. This would provide a
benchmark to ensure that curriculum was being
written to aid the growth of purposeful social,
cultural, political and economic oversight by an
informed citizenry.
Yunkaporta:
I agree with what a lot of the conservative pundits
are currently proposing for the national curriculum
that we need to be examining the benefits of
Western civilisation and Judeo-Christian culture,
but for quite different reasons, I am sure. I believe
these things should be scrutinised quite closely,
researched by students through open sources,
peeling back the layers and allowing the young to
interrogate and make meaning around the realities
of the Anglo-sphere into which they have been
born. For me, an Aboriginal or Indigenous perspective
in the curriculum really involves an honest study
of the colonys history, the ongoing effects of
neo-colonialism and the global impacts of the
project of Westernism. But this does not just benefit
85
or liberate Indigenous people non-Indigenous

people are in dire need of this knowledge as well. As
I posited earlier, Indigenous people have been the
lab-rats of modern history, and now all of the
displacement, disempowerment and exploitation
that has been trialled on us is being rolled out for
everybody else as well.
More and more, so-called non-Indigenous people
are losing access to resources, land, authentic
identities, equality, freedom of thought, privacy. Most
social mobility for them is now trending downwards.
Human identity today is so far removed from relationships with place and people, that their sovereignty,
autonomy and agency have become irrelevant,
invisible, strange to them. Through schooling they
have been fooled into believing that as human beings
they are too stupid, selfish and savage to manage
their own affairs and therefore need a representative
government. All the so-called differences of
Indigenousness and non-Indigenousness, all the
ridiculous political allegiances and opinions and
cultural wars are merely sleight of hand. We are all in
the same boat. Forget even about your liberation is
bound up with mine my cause is yours. Our
struggle for self-determination is your struggle for
self-determination. Our struggle to maintain or
reclaim place-based regional identities should be
yours as well. These are not Aboriginal issues they
are human issues. I just want to be human again.
Dont you?
Backhaus:
I wasnt going to share my story before, but I will
now. I was born in Papua New Guinea to a Kalkadoon
(Australian Aboriginal) man and a Parama Island
woman. Prior to my birth Papua, which included
my mothers place, was annexed to the Queensland
mainland and was governed as part of the Australian
continent. This effectively meant my identity at that
time was whole and connected within colonial
definitions of Indigenousness. However at a point in
history this identity was cut in half when Australia
could no longer continue its colonial expansion
through an illegitimate claim to mainland Papua
New Guinea. The United Nations would not allow
Australias illegal annexation of Papua to stand
(although it was no more or less legitimate than the
colonisation of the Australian continent itself) and
so my mothers island was severed geo-politically
from the other Torres Strait Islands. So when as a
small child I landed in Australia, I was an Indigenous
86
Australian but I was also not. My resistance to this

false disconnection ensured both aspects of who I
was could find claim within my Australian lived
reality. What resonates within this yarn is how
Indigenous ways of knowing and learning were once
whole and connected and then through arbitrary
colonial definitions were halted. But these definitions only have power over us if we permit them to,
if we fail to resist. As humans, the process of resistance
in culturally responsive curriculum and pedagogy
reorientates the authority of our highest ways of
knowing and learning towards the centre of
education, allowing us all the power to assert the
most basic of human rights self-definition.
Yunkaporta:
Few would deny that the world is facing a time of
crisis and change in which new narratives and new
solutions and new systems will be needed. Our
current students will be the ones who have to build
these adaptive systems together. Our job is harder
we have to show them how to do it. We have to show
them, using tools that dont exist yet for jobs, skills,
language and industries that dont exist yet, within
an education system and curriculum still grounded
in a 19th century model of knowledge and society.
This generation were teaching now, regardless of
ethnicity, is a marginalised group. They are marginalised by the non-realities of what were trying to
teach them, which they are smart enough to resist
but not informed or skilled enough to challenge
effectively. They need not only our empathy, but
also our unconditional love and support. Above all,
they need us to speak and act from our truth, absent
assumptions, agendas, opinions and anger. They
need us to build a curriculum with them that is
grounded in that truth and which will enable them
to seek their own.
Loynes:
Travel down the river again not in your time but in
mine. Experience the layers of the landscape, learning
from all forms of knowledge holders in school and
community alike. Recognise the relationship between
the river and its environment as flexible and
independent yet symbiotic and dynamic. Changes in
our aspirations, sense of awareness and levels of
agency are eternal in the river of learning; a learners
journey does not end at the sea nor begin as rain on
the mountains, so neither should the curriculum
landscape be limited in that way.
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Winanga-y Bagay Gaay: Know the rivers story

All in-text references underlined in blue are linked to publications on ResearchGate,

Available from: Vincent Backhaus

POINT AND COUNTERPOINT

Winanga-y Bagay Gaay: Know the rivers story

CURRICULUM PERSPECTIVES VOL. 34, NO. 3

practice; the mountains are the curriculum policies

POINT AND COUNTERPOINT

children growing up speaking these as first languages,

case is a communal yet subjective body of knowledge,

Yet it must also be acknowledged that such processes

CURRICULUM PERSPECTIVES VOL. 34, NO. 3

POINT AND COUNTERPOINT

responsibilities in following up and protecting our

connections to England and Scotland. My passion

my fathers side. Residing at various times in my

Ro wade. Mo erea Kiwai osio buro from Parama

life on Gadigal, Wurrundjeri, Nyoongar Boodjar

CURRICULUM PERSPECTIVES VOL. 34, NO. 3

and currently Boonwurrung country has offered

POINT AND COUNTERPOINT

CURRICULUM PERSPECTIVES VOL. 34, NO. 3

POINT AND COUNTERPOINT

First layer Mountains to sea

policies, issues and realities that have historically

CURRICULUM PERSPECTIVES VOL. 34, NO. 3

Tertiary Admission Rank). Despite the deficit logic, I

POINT AND COUNTERPOINT

state-supported repression by rendering it invisible

the opposite of progress. We provide a false narrative

CURRICULUM PERSPECTIVES VOL. 34, NO. 3

POINT AND COUNTERPOINT

primitivism and that once the Indigenous person

states that the virtue of the white nation is

You cant separate curriculum debate in Australia

School curriculum has been an essential policy

CURRICULUM PERSPECTIVES VOL. 34, NO. 3

POINT AND COUNTERPOINT

outcomes of First Australians developed over 40 years

radical left or new-age operators either, as they

CURRICULUM PERSPECTIVES VOL. 34, NO. 3

POINT AND COUNTERPOINT

(Gunstone, 2013). The first document specifically

its stuff that I learnt, so long ago. Its like

The students who are chosen to attend these special

that at all. Some students are; they do have

This community concern is reflected in the literature.

trouble with the stuff that we are learning, but

Nelly: Youd be wrong. For example in school

if they get more practice with learning that it

A few days before this interview took place, both

they have to have special help for Aboriginal

kids, its like they dont believe we can do it

It seems clear that the inferred messages students

on our own. That annoys me, I know some

CURRICULUM PERSPECTIVES VOL. 34, NO. 3

POINT AND COUNTERPOINT

identities and the creation or intensification of national

CURRICULUM PERSPECTIVES VOL. 34, NO. 3

POINT AND COUNTERPOINT

Second layer Water shapes river banks

responses to the implementation of the curriculum.

CURRICULUM PERSPECTIVES VOL. 34, NO. 3

6 Point&Counterpoint

6 Point&Counterpoint