Australian Indigenous studies: research and practice.

Carey, Michelle

Australian Indigenous studies: research and practice

Terry Moore, Carol Pybus, Mitchell Rolls and David Moltow 2016

Peter Lang AG, Bern, Switzerland, 286pp, ISBN 9783034322454 (pbk)

Reviewed by Michelle Carey, Murdoch University <m.carey@murdoch. edu. au>

Australian Indigenous studies: research and practice is an important and timely intervention into the scholarship currently informing the design and delivery of Indigenous studies in school curricula. Aimed primarily at school teachers and guided by the Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority and the Australian Institute for School Teaching, the book offers a critical response to the ideological orthodoxies evident in both contemporary Indigenous studies curricula and approaches to teaching Indigenous students and their dependence on one-dimensional, culturally over-determined representations of 'the Indigenous' as they are promulgated by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. These representations and their continued reproduction --across various educational, governmental and other sites--typically construct indigeneity as radically different from and incommensurate with its non-Indigenous other, and it is this static binaristic notion of indigeneity that Australian Indigenous studies challenges. In making its alternative case for intercultural Indigenous studies, the book calls upon readers to complicate conventional understandings of indigeneity as a mode of identity construction and to recognise that it is simultaneously informed and made ambiguous by location-specific cultural, historical and other experiences, diverse intersubjective interactions and other intersecting layers of identity.

By taking this approach, Australian Indigenous studies aims to contribute to the 'development of an interculturally inclusive Australian citizenry' (p.8) and to develop in teachers 'a certain sensibility or disposition' (p.9) that enables them to engage with and learn from Indigenous people as complex multi-dimensional human beings.

The combined expertise of the four scholars (three of whom have considerable experience in tertiary Indigenous studies) who have contributed to this text is evident in the insights they bring to their discussion and the breadth of scholarship they draw upon to make their case. While citing texts that many who read in the area will be conversant with, Australian Indigenous studies also introduces to the discussion on Indigenous studies curriculum development and the teaching of Indigenous students a range of source material less familiar to this area of inquiry. It is because of this that the book expands the usual parameters of these discussions, articulating aspects of them that are often minimised or ignored. For example, in Chapter 10, 'Marginalising and privileging structures', the inclusion of feminist scholarship, philosophy, contemporary political commentary and media reports extends the usual analysis of the power structures Indigenous people negotiate from whiteness to also include 'normative Aboriginally' and its marginalisation of those least able to approximate its masculinist authenticating ideal. Rather than reproducing normative Aboriginality, an interculturally inclusive Indigenous studies critically engages with this trope, including those otherwise excluded by its authorising power.

Keeping in mind its target readership, the book has a practical dimension, with the authors providing a range of learning sequences to assist in the development of the newly oriented Indigenous studies they advocate. The book's real value is that it moves beyond being a textbook on the teaching and learning of Indigenous content: it is a sophisticated argument for the imperative to rethink the pedagogical, political and intellectual work of Indigenous studies and the way indigeneity is constructed within this.

Although targeted at the school sector, Australian Indigenous studies contributes to the growing body of work that problem-atises the teaching of Indigenous studies in tertiary contexts, and the binaristic terms in which it too frequently takes place. The book's final chapter specifically addresses the present-day complexities of the politics of teaching Indigenous studies in Australian universities. In so doing, it highlights the problems exacerbated by those within the academy who choose to defer to an ideology of 'culture' instead of defending Indigenous studies as an intellectual enterprise. The authors argue that this ideological deference results in a sapping of the vitality of the discipline, and the progressive alienation of scholars from the teaching of Indigenous studies and the teaching of Indigenous content more generally. Even before universities moved to metrics-based 'outcomes' measurements as a way of supposedly determining an individual's productivity, some institutions recognised the need for more robust and scholarly programmes, and commenced recruiting appropriately qualified and skilled staff. Soon enough, the question of 'what is Aboriginal Studies?' began to be asked, and who should or even could teach into these programmes. It was, and in some institutions continues to be, a period of anguish, sensitivity and considerable stress for both Indigenous and other staff. Some non-Indigenous (and a few Indigenous) staff, recognising that the politics were against them, retreated to the safety (and we use that word purposefully) of their substantive discipline such as anthropology, history, English literature, law, and so on... Many of those who stayed within these programmes did and do so under some duress, (p.274)

The authors argue that whether through the attrition of staff or the more recent trend in some universities to disband integrated discipline-based programs in favour of cobbling together programs from 'the bric-a-brac of other disciplines' (p.280), potentially irretrievable damage to Indigenous studies is being done. Not only does this undermine the discipline's capacity to prepare students for the world of work (as future educators and as other professionals) in order that they can negotiate Indigenous diversity in all of its complexity, it disregards 'the role... [Indigenous studies] plays in institutional life' (p.280). Apropos of the book's aims, it could be added that such a move also erodes the ability of Indigenous studies to contribute to the cultivation of an interculturally sophisticated public discourse on Indigenous and other matters.

The full title of the book suggests that it addresses both teaching and research practice in Indigenous studies. While the book's contribution to research on the teaching of Indigenous studies is clear, what it has to say about research as its own discrete scholarly activity is less so. This point notwithstanding, it is the book's focus on teaching that prompts the realisation that research is now also required into new external factors potentially impacting on the design and delivery of Indigenous studies and other Indigenous content. One possible example includes Reconciliation Australia's Reconciliation Action Plans (RAPs). RAPs are constructed in the binaristic terms that Australian Indigenous studies critiques. Given that a number of Australian schools and universities have established RAPs, and given also the prominence they commonly afford to the inclusion of Indigenous content in curricula, the possible impact of these on Indigenous studies is worthy of examination. This is research to which the insights offered in Australian Indigenous studies could meaningfully contribute.

In places there is an unevenness in the writing, the fact of the book's multiple authors slightly more obvious than one might intend. Overall, however, Australian Indigenous studies is a book written with a great deal of care for its subject matter. For the contribution it makes to the way educators across all education sectors think about the teaching of Indigenous studies, it deserves close attention.