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I could tell her house from the others as soon as I turned down the street--a modest bluestone cottage in an inner suburb of Melbourne, complete with a rambling front [...]

One perpetual concern among Indigenous Australian peoples is authenticity of voice. Who has the right to speak for, and to make representations about, the knowledges and cultures of Indigenous Australian peoples? Whose voice is more authentic, and what happens to these ways of knowing when they make the journey into mainstream Western academic classrooms? In this paper, I examine these questions within the politics of 'doing' Indigenous Australian studies by focusing on my own experiences as a lecturer in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland. My findings suggest that representation is a matter of problematizing positionality and, from a pedagogical standpoint, being aware of, and willing to address, the ways in which power, authority, and voice are performed and negotiated as teachers and learners of Indigenous Australian studies. Keywords: Indigenous Australia studies, voice, representation

Student capacities to actively listen, sense and feel are often relegated to lower order skills in an education system increasingly governed by measurable outcomes. While most school-based pedagogies focus their approach on cognition, this paper considers how we might make sense of the affective experiences that often resist the deep thinking, independent learning and explanation so often required of students. The guiding aim is to explore how affective learning can be better understood through an Indigenous Australian concept ofCountry. We apply the pedagogical work of Elizabeth Ellsworth, along with Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to explore ways in which sensation and affect are already a method of learning, but ones that are substantially under-valued in designed curricula. A series of interviews with senior Aboriginal people are presented to assist in understanding the various ways in which affect can lead to thought. The authors present three case studies to highlight how knowledge can be taught through affective experiences of Country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of doing more with writing and autoethnography as ethical, response-able and decolonizing practice. Design/methodology/approach - This paper is written in a playful, performative and poetic way and engages with the writings and ideas of Helene Cixous and Virginia Woolf as a conversation between them and the author. Findings - This paper suggests that an autoethnographic writing practice which is at once affective, critical and performative, holds the possibilities to engage in decoloniality. Originality/value - Engagement with the past and present legacy of colonial practice in education and ethnography is crucial if the author want to move beyond social justice and decoloniality as metaphor. The writing practice put forward is new and challenging in its push to do this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I take a creative and autoethnographic approach to reflect upon processes of decolonisation in Indigenous Australian studies classrooms. Positioning myself as a non-Indigenous educator, I take the reader on a journey through my search for pedagogy which makes space for the colonial, difficult and messy politics of race, whiteness and knowledge to be actively challenged, deconstructed and reimagined in this context as PEARL. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reflective journal writing is acknowledged as a powerful method for promoting student learning in higher education contexts. Numerous scholars highlight the benefits of reflective writing and journaling for students and teachers in a wide range of teaching areas. There is however, little discussion of how reflective writing is used in teaching and learning in Indigenous Australian studies. This paper explores how reflective writing can help students think critically about the complexities of researching and writing about Indigenous Australian performance. We discuss ways of incorporating and enhancing reflection in teaching and learning Indigenous Australian studies and examine how the use of reflective writing in Indigenous Australian studies can engage rather than educate; democratise rather than dictate knowledge; critically question and reflect upon rather than control and censor what we can know; and actively transform instead of passively inform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are honoured to present this issue of The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education. It is a sentiment we express each time an issue is released but rarely do we unpack what this is exactly. Formerly, the Aboriginal Child at School, The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education has resisted and persisted the tide of state, Federal and global politics which ebb and flow through our work in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education, and Indigenous education more broadly. Appearing sometimes as friend, sometimes as foe, and perhaps many more times as both, such practices, policies and politics present ongoing challenges for us but nevertheless, we are still here searching for and speaking particular kinds of justice into the space for the Indigenous children, their families and communities that matter to us. The current educational climate of neoliberalism — replete as it is with individualism, competition, measurement and accountability — is certainly no different but we are still here — persisting and resisting. We are still on our way to the kind of education we seek for Indigenous peoples at all levels locally, nationally and globally and the papers in this issue represent that search. To quote bell hooks in Teaching to Transgress, a much loved scholar in critical pedagogy, ‘the academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom, with all its limitation, remains a location of possibility’ (1994, p. 207). The ongoing search to move beyond boundaries characterises much of the work that appears in The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education and it is this sentiment which we are honoured to present. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The quest to improve Indigenous people's access, participation and outcomes in education wherever we live in the world involves a concerted effort from all, and across all levels of education from the pre-school to the postgraduate sector. Improvements in these areas, as we have seen in past issues of The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, are closely tied to improving other social and economic indicators in Indigenous lives, such as health, employment, governance and housing. The importance of research in the field of Indigenous education is a fundamental part of understanding the complexity of the issues, the level of constraints, as well as the many possibilities as we move forward in time. And, as practitioners of Indigenous education continue to keep looking for new ideas or examples of teaching and learning practice, AJIE continues to invite descriptions of educational practice and articulations of Indigenous experience from our readership. As educational research and practice have progressively become global, we have sought experiences beyond our Aeotorea/New Zealand and North American colleagues to countries and contexts that are less familiar to us. We are pleased to report that for our efforts in this regard, AJIE is now listed with SCOPUS, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are very proud to present this timely and significant Special Issue of The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, guest edited by Katelyn Barney (The University of Queensland), Cindy Shannon (The University of Queensland) and Martin Nakata (The University of New South Wales). This collection of articles focuses on the activities of the Australian Indigenous Studies Learning and Teaching Network, an initiative funded by the Office for Teaching and Learning. The Australian Indigenous Studies Learning and Teaching Network was formed to bring leaders and early career academics in the field together to build relationships, debate and discuss central issues, and explore and share teaching and learning strategies in the discipline at tertiary level. These discussions at once untangle and re-entangle the processes, pedagogies and politics at play when Indigenous Studies becomes defined as a discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The AIJE has an established tradition of publishing special Supplements to highlight papers on a particular topic. This special edition of the AJIE is an outcome of a 2-year curriculum renewal project funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, which focused on teaching and learning practice in Australian Indigenous studies. The project involved collaboration between academics of Australian Indigenous studies in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and the Northern Territory. The articles in this special edition comprise descriptions of pedagogical innovations and discussions or reflections on the issues engaged in the course of the project by some of the key participants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]