Talkin’ bout a revolution: the call for transformation and reform in Indigenous education

Abstract

The areas of concern (‘goals’, ‘domains’ and ‘priority areas’—whatever policymakers wish to call them) relating to Indigenous education have not changed since the first National Indigenous education policy in 1989. Deficit discourses, discursive trickery and the inability to report progress continues to demoralise and ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students remain at the lower rungs of educational outcome indicators maintaining societal and institutional constructs. In this paper, I argue that there is a need to dramatically reform the approach to Indigenous education transforming the hegemonic positioning assumed by the coloniser. Essentially, this would take a revolution: a r..