Indigenous Culture

The discourse of whiteness has severely impacted on the educational outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (herein referred to as Indigenous Peoples). The discourse is based on an ontology founded on overt racism, discrimination, prejudice, exclusion and dispossession and towards all Indigenous Peoples. Subsequently, the history of Indigenous Peoples experiences in relation to education is extremely negative. They have been denied the right to the same education as non-Indigenous students, frequently expelled and continually forced to deny their cultural identity. The discourse of whiteness has resulted in pedagogies and pedagogical practices that are overly racist and not inclusive of Indigenous Peoples culture. To improve future educational outcomes it is necessary to decolonise Australia and rewrite the curriculum so that it is inclusive for all students.

This essay will analyse the contested concepts of social inclusion and exclusion in education. While there are numerous social groups whom experience the impact of educational inclusion and exclusion the essay will particularly focus on what these concepts entail for indigenous students within the Australian schooling system. The essay will examine the multifaceted nature of social inclusion and exclusion in education by utilising the contested grounds, which substantiate debate surrounding these concepts. Relying on a number of academic literature and evidence to explore discourse surrounding how policy which governs institutions, pedagogy and curriculum, has constituted social inclusion and exclusion within Indigenous contexts. As well as how intergenerational experiences and issues have disadvantaged the outcomes of Indigenous students in engaging in a ‘Eurocentric’ education environment. Concluding the essay will discuss practical suggestions, which would in theory enhance the effectiveness of the current education policy and teacher practice towards including indigenous cultures and learners within the classroom. Considering mechanisms to increase the potential to include and engage a broader scope of indigenous learners across the board.

The Australian Curriculum currently is struggling with incorporating indigenous perspectives as a key focus in the curriculum properly. It is lacking the ability to normalise indigenous knowledge and instead represents

“In what ways did Indigenous peoples resist the non-Indigenous settlement of Australia in the frontier period and how did non-Indigenous peoples retaliate? In your answer, discuss and analyse the initial and ongoing impact on Indigenous communities.”

For the last 200 years Indigenous people have been victims of discrimination, prejudice and disadvantage. Poor education, poor living conditions and general poverty are still overwhelming issues for a large percentage of our people and we remain ‘as a group, the most poverty stricken sector of the working class’ in Australia (Cuthoys 1983).

In this essay we will try to provide a brief overview of educational issues of Aboriginal communities in Australia and Victoria and the elements that influence the educational outcomes of young Aboriginal people, such as culture and contemporary challenges. In addition to this, the inclusion of Aboriginal content in the Victorian curriculum and classroom practices will be explored as well as contemporary government policies.

Teachers in Australia have the responsibility of catering to the learning needs and abilities of the students in their classroom. Additionally they are also responsible for catering to the unique cultural backgrounds of each student, in particular the cultures of Indigenous Australians. The teacher can cater to the diverse and complex Indigenous cultures by creating a learning environment that is based on effective student engagement for Aboriginal students. Studies have shown that Aboriginal students are currently not academically achieving as well as non-Aboriginal students (What Works: Core Issue 5). Closing the academic performance gap is considered a national priority. As a result, the Aboriginal Cultural Standards Framework has been developed to ensure that schools are delivering the best possible education to all students, specifically those who identify as Aboriginal. During term 3, 2017, I completed my final practicum at Baler Primary School in a year 4 classroom. The students in my class came from a diverse range of cultural backgrounds, many of which identified as Aboriginal. Throughout this essay I will use examples from my final practicum at Baler Primary School in South Hedland to discuss how to make learning engaging, accessible and culturally responsive for Aboriginal students.

Through my life, I have seen several different approaches to Indigenous people’s rights and importance in Australia. I have been fortunate enough to visit Ayers Rock and undertake a tour which allowed me to see Aboriginal culture in art and drawings as well as hearing Dreamtime stories from guides. I have also witnessed family friends who have been severely racist and disrespectful of Indigenous heritage and history. I also was lucky to work with some Indigenous students who were in Reception during my Professional Experience 1, and I was able to see first-hand how a culture clash can affect a student’s behaviour. I feel that even before entering this course, I have had the privilege of being able to observe both positives and negatives

Embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives in the curriculum has now become a high priority amoungst schools across the nation. The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) (2013), recognises “that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures cross-curriculum priority is designed for all students to engage in reconciliation, respect and recognition of the world’s oldest continuous living cultures”. By including this, the curriculum will continue to see Indigenous culture throughout school become part of the norm. Furthermore Indigenous Australian perspectives can and should be included in the classroom and any barriers that arise can be overcome.

Education is fundamental to growth, the growth of the individual, and the growth of a nation. Anthropologically this can be seen from the earliest of developments of human societies where practices emerge to ensure the passing of accumulated knowledge from one generation to the next. In the centuries since the invasion and colonisation of Australia in 1788, colonist authorities and governments have dominated the making of policies regarding most major aspects of Australian life, including the lives of Indigenous Australians. The enactment of these policies and legislation, whether targeted at society as a whole or directly at education, has had significant and most often negative causal impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, resulting in not only poor educational outcomes, but the loss of cultural identity, the development of serious issues in health and wellbeing, and the restriction of growth of Aboriginal communities. Moreover, there has been an ongoing pattern of the adoption of ill-informed policies in Australia, resulting in these poor outcomes and cultural decimation. Aboriginal people have developed a wariness, a mistrust, and even an attitude of avoidance to engage with non-Indigenous officials and those who they associate as their representatives, i.e. personnel working within

As a future educator, it will be my job to continue acknowledging, valuing and teaching Indigenous origins, histories and cultures using the Australian Institute for Teaching and School (AITSL) standard 2.4 and the Australian Curriculum. This will give my future students a better understanding that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were the first custodians of our Australian land and of their origins. They lived in Australia 60,000 years before the British settled in 1788. I will teach an Australian historical time line prior to 1788.

The last twenty years has seen these themes played out in both policy and practice. Indigenous self-determination had played a big part in educational policy since the 1970s but by 2012 Marcia Langton in her Boyer Lectures attacked the concept as a “vaporous dream” (Schwab, R.G., 2013,p. 212)with critiques fuelled by the Little Children Are Saved Report. Langton saw Noel Pearson’s Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy as an alternative model focused on outcomes but incorporating Indigenous art, culture and sport. This is actually a “top down”

Attempts to Indigenise the curriculum runs the risk of implying the application of an ‘impoverished’ version of Indigenous pedagogy and the promotion of corrupted understandings of Indigeneity (Williamson and Dalal, 2007). Cultural Competence aims to incorporate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and culture into both tertiary and professional work spaces around Australia, to add depth and a richer understanding into Non-Indigenous peoples lives. As a part of Indigenous studies within the Australia curriculum, students must aim to decolonize knowledges as a method for emancipating colonised people and Indigenous ways of knowing. Historically, throughout education there has minimal acknowledgement of other ways of learning, education has been a tool of colonisation and furthered Indigenous people’s oppression. Globally this is a commonality amongst most colonised populations, being an assertion of a “definitive rejection of ‘being told’...what we are, what our ranking is in relation to the ideal of humanities and what we must do to be recognised as such” (Mignolo, 2009, p. 161).

Additionally, it was informative to watch the SBS Broadcast, Awaken: Talking Country, highlighting Aboriginal people’s connection to country and their views of authority and responsibility of their own lives, culture and identity (AWAKEN: Talking Country, 2014). I realised culture is an important building block in Aboriginal child’s identity because it reflects and acknowledges who they are. As future educator, considering culture and identity is essential and should not be based on historical stereotypes casted upon Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as discussed by Mallard from Curtin University (Mallard, 2017). Also, reading about colonisation, I realised Indigenous Australian were marginalised, evident in the loss of language, beliefs and social structure and loss or dilution of culture (Harrison & Sellwood, 2016, p. 49). This knowledge is essential because I now understand cultural sensitive and inclusive teaching strategies must consider the local community and cultural setting, linguistic background and histories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

The group most affected by European exploration of the "New World" were the indigenous natives. After Columbus landed in America, Spain lost no time sending Conquistadors to the "New World". When they arrived and saw all of the gold being used by some of the native civilizations, such as the Aztecs, Mayans, and Inca, Spain knew they had hit the jackpot. Treated in the beginning as Gods, the European power took advantage of the situation and bled the natives dry. When the indigenous natives had enough, Spain simply started conquering them for it. On top of European powers taking the indigenous natives' natural resources, they brought new diseases from Europe that decimated the local populations. As time went on other European nations,