This article is inspired by long-standing calls to address issues of anti-Indigenous racism and colonialism within higher education. There is a growing trend among universities around the globe to commit to principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), including discussions about how to Indigenize the academy. While EDI and Indigenization…

Policy analysis can be useful for learning about 'what works' in policy. Contemporary policy studies literature highlight that such learning is influenced by power relations in government that shape our ways of knowing the world. This paper offers a critically reflexive narrative account of power relations present during Indigenous higher…

In both academic and policy spaces, learning is often cast as lifelong, dynamic, constructive and in particular, agentic. Despite this focus students' voices are rarely privileged in these spaces -- especially in policy. We respond to this oversight by deploying Foucault's theories of knowledge to explore how students understand themselves as…

In this article, I propose a new conceptual lens for understanding issues of racialised discipline and school exclusion that takes into consideration the foundational carceral logics of the settler colonial state. By bringing together carceral state, settler colonial and critical Indigenous studies literatures I demonstrate how the settler…

Despite extensive impact studies over the past two decades documenting the insipid and debilitating health, social, and emotional impacts of racism on Indigenous peoples in Australia, racism remains a key factor impacting negatively on the lives of Indigenous Australians at all levels of education. Racism experienced by Indigenous early career…

In this Indigenous/non-Indigenous collaboration, we examine discourses of 'community engagement' in Australia's blueprint education policy, "Through Growth to Achievement: The Report of The Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools." While the report addresses the education sector widely rather than being…

With schools known to be sites of harm for many Indigenous peoples, both historically and currently, this paper re-considers 'doing' education another way. As a Gamilaroi woman, educator and researcher, I contemplate the ways Indigenous sovereignty is conceptualised and enacted by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the country now…

In 2022, New Zealand history will shift from an optional to a compulsory subject across all levels of schooling. Teaching about New Zealand's difficult histories has the potential to reconstitute settler-Indigenous relations to show how historical colonial injustice impacts people today, but it raises questions about whose history will be…

An increasing number of Australian universities are committing to Indigenous Graduate Attributes across a wide range of academic disciplines. This paper critiques not only the slow up-take of Indigenous Graduate Attributes in the last 10 years, but also how such attributes may realistically contribute to university students graduating with…

While university participation rates among Indigenous Australians have been on the rise in recent years, parity targets remain elusive. In this context, surprisingly little attention has been paid to how aspirations for higher education are formed and nurtured. Studies tend to focus on barriers to access, often in ways that position Indigenous…

Research within communities that have historically been failed by formalised schooling often describes teachers who have found it difficult to engage with the social and cultural differences of their students. In this article, I present the case of Richard, a teacher whose work entailed a particular set of demands generated by a complex range of…

This paper discusses key questions of pedagogical hope and courage through non-formal educational activities such as football. We look beyond standard assumptions of sports as a vehicle to stimulate social cohesion and prevent anti-social and criminal behaviour among Aboriginal youth to address core philosophical and pedagogical questions that…

In Australia, boarding schools and residential facilities for remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (First Nations) students have long been part of the educational landscape. Policy settings are paying considerable attention to boarding schools and residential colleges as secondary schooling options for First Nations students, particularly…

Descriptions of educational inequality, or 'gap talk', require principles of categorisation that divide humans into groups between which a 'gap' can exist. The principles used in education equity policies to define groups affect the nature of the educational interventions that these policies propose. Drawing on critical discourse analysis of…

For marginalized communities, schooling is mired in social/bodily control, tracking, and cultural erasure circumscribing "difference/culture" as obstacles, as opposed to sites of wisdom, connectedness, and critical consciousness. Authors shape a transformative pedagogical framework across teacher education and partnering schools by…