We are very pleased to bring you Volume 47, issue 2 of The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education. The theme of this year's NAIDOC week was ‘Because of her we can’ so it is appropriate that the first article in this volume focuses on the gendered stories of pathways through university by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. Using Ahmed's work on ‘wilfulness’, Rennie explores the resilience, resistance and persistence of seven female Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander higher education students and considers the ways they negotiate pathways and success through university. Bright and Mackinlay also draw on the concept of ‘wilfulness’ to report on the successes and failures of a research project exploring mentoring programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander preservice teachers. They suggest that tensions are always present between the need to comply with the expectations of a Western academic institution while engaging in a wilful pursuit of the kinds of resistance that may be necessary in attempts at decoloniality. Also drawing on a decolonial lens, McDowall explore how preservice teachers position themselves and how they consider their relationships and ethical responsibilities in the field of Indigenous education. Pre-service teachers in different context are the focus of Torepe and Manning who examine the lived experiences and various challenges confronting this group of experienced Māori language teachers working in English-medium, state-funded schools.

‘What is my story? Like you, I have many’, wrote feminist academic Sara Ahmed (Ahmed, 2010, p. 1). She asks, what is yours, what is mine? and begins her story at a table. ‘Around the table a family gathers’, she says, ‘Always we are seated in the same place. . .as if we are trying to secure more than our place’ (Ahmed, 2010, p. 1). In this paper, I draw upon Ahmed's work on willfulness and diversity work in higher education to explore the gendered stories of pathways through university shared with me by Indigenous Australian students. In the stories told in this paper, the table becomes the university space and the family becomes the students. The stories become more than securing place; they are stories which talk of willful resilience, resistance and persistence within that place called higher education. Grounded in my doctoral work with seven female Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, this paper specifically focuses on the gendered nature of such willfulness to consider the ways in which Indigenous Australian students negotiate pathways and success through university within/against Western colonial and patriarchal institutions.

In her recent work, Sara Ahmed explores wilfulness as a negative charge made by some against others, thinking about the relationship between ill will and good will, the particular and the general, and the embeddedness of will in a political and cultural landscape. In Ahmed's reading, wilfulness is a characteristic often ascribed to those who do ‘not will the reproduction of the whole’ (2011, p. 246) — those who are deemed wayward, wandering, and/or deviant. Using Ahmed's discussions, in this paper, we report on the successes and failures of a research project exploring mentoring programs in enhancing the recruitment and retention of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander preservice teachers. We think about the tensions always present between two faces of such a project: the need to reproduce modes of compliance to the expectations of a Western academic institutional regime; and the wilful pursuit of the kinds of wayward resistance and critique that may be potentially undermining and self-sabotaging as well as wholly necessary as attempts at decoloniality. We report on both the successes of the program and the continuing failure to address issues of colonialism. In doing so, we position Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research as a performative doubleness which needs wilfulness in order to ‘stand up, to stand against the world’ (Ahmed, 2011, p. 250) of colonial reproduction in neo-liberal times.

Our work as educators is entangled in questions of how colonisation privileges particular epistemologies and ontologies, ethical responsibilities and the reproduction of privilege or exclusion through education. Working with preservice teachers as they shape their social and ethical responsibilities allows the opportunity to effect social change on a larger scale as they move into their own classrooms. Students often begin the course seeking some form of knowledge about Indigenous peoples, yet this knowledge can be seen to represent a form of epistemic violence.

In this research project, I use a decolonial lens to consider the reflective writing journals of preservice teachers as they consider their relationships and responsibilities in the field of Indigenous education. The purpose is to explore how preservice teachers position themselves in this field and whether their engagement with these stories, theories, voices and knowledges leaves them with an inability to remain indifferent to their ethical responsibilities. In this paper, I invite you to walk with me through a landscape where we consider preservice teachers’ writings, Moreton–Robinson's possessive logic, transformative education and the concept of diffraction.

This article draws on data from a research study (Torepe, 2011) that investigated the lived experiences of six Māori teachers who recently graduated from the Hōaka Pounamu (Graduate Diploma in Immersion and Bilingual Teaching) course at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. The primary objective was to gain a deeper understanding of the lived experiences and various challenges confronting this group of experienced Māori language teachers working in English-medium, state-funded schools. This article describes the qualitative research methodology that was underpinned by a Kaupapa Māori narrative research philosophy. It then explains why the study's findings support and strengthen those of previous studies conducted in Australia. Most notably, they draw attention to the concept of cultural taxation and the Crown's principles for action on the Treaty of Waitangi. Given the large number of Māori children attending Australian schools and similar challenges confronting Indigenous Australian teachers, this research will be of interest to an Australian audience.

This article draws upon historical evidence and theoretical insights to critique the New Zealand government's negative response to a popular petition developed by students of Otorohanga College. The petition called for the New Zealand Land Wars to become a ‘prescribed course of study’ (topic) in New Zealand schools. This article consequently reviews the status of Māori histories in New Zealand schools from 1877 to 2016. This review is followed by a critique of the New Zealand government's response to the petition. This will be of interest to an Australian audience grappling with issues relating to the teaching of Indigenous peoples’ histories in schools.

Cinema is an art form widely recognised as an agent to change the social condition and alter traditional norms. Movies can be used to educate and transform society's collective conscience. Indigenous Australian artists utilise the power of artistic expression as a tool to initiate change in the attitudes and perceptions of the broader Australian society. Australia's story has predominately been told from the coloniser's viewpoint. This narrative is being rewritten through Indigenous artists utilising the power of cinema to create compelling stories with Indigenous control. This medium has come into prominence for Indigenous Australians to express our culture, ontology and politics. Movies such as Samson and Delilah, Bran Nue Dae, The Sapphires and Rabbit-Proof Fence for example, have highlighted the injustices of past policies, adding new dimensions to the Australian narrative. These three films are just a few of the Indigenous Australian produced films being used in the Australian National Curriculum.

Through this medium, Australian Indigenous voices are rewriting the Australian narrative from the Indigenous perspective, deconstructing the predominant stereotypical perceptions of Indigenous culture and reframing the Australian story. Films are essential educational tools to cross the cultural space that often separates Indigenous learners from their non-Indigenous counterparts.

School-based gardens (SBGs) are contributing to improvements in many areas of education, including nutrition, health, connectedness and engagement of students. While considerable research has been conducted in other parts of the world, research in Australia provides limited understanding of the impact of SBGs. The aim of this paper is to give a reflective viewpoint on the impact of SBGs in Australia from the perspective of an Aboriginal philosophical approach called Dadirri. The philosophy highlights an Australian Aboriginal concept, which exists but has different meanings across Aboriginal language groups. This approach describes the processes of deep and respectful listening. The study uses photovoice as a medium to engage students to become researchers in their own right. Using this methodology, students have control over how they report what is significant to them. The use of photovoice as a data collection method is contextualised within the Aboriginal philosophical approach to deep listening. For the first author, an Aboriginal researcher (Clague), the journey is to find a research process that maintains cultural integrity and resonates with the participants by affirming that a culturally sensitive approach to learning is important.

This paper explores how the colonial hegemony of racism in Australia could be disrupted in schools by introducing mandatory reporting of racism by teachers in Australia, and addresses the benefits and risks of mandatory reporting of racism. Using Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as a case study, the ongoing prevalence of racism in schools is established. I then draw on the literature associated with teachers’ mandatory reporting of child abuse and neglect to construct racism as a form of emotional abuse of children. The complexity of racism as evidenced from the literature limits the mandatory reporting to interactional racism by teachers as an antiracist practice. The justification for mandatory reporting covers the emotional stress caused by racism to students and can also be extended to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff in schools. The evidence of learning success where antiracism strategies have been introduced in schools, the opportunity to normalise bystander antiracism by teachers, and the alignment of this reporting initiative with the professional standards of teachers together support a case for mandatory reporting of racism in schools. The arguments against mandatory reporting of racism draw on the generative practices of teachers integrating antiracist discourses in schools.

This paper reports on an Action Research project that investigated the integration of Aboriginal and Western knowledge into science learning in a Montessori classroom in regional Queensland, Australia. Drawing on the local knowledge of fauna of community members, the study explored the teaching of science to 12-year 8–9 students in an Aboriginal independent high school in Queensland. The overall study covered 83 lessons that included an initial Short-beaked echidna study. It applied thematic analysis to data to explore the effect of this integrated approach on students’ pride in heritage, cultural knowledge, learning and the Linnaean zoology taxonomy. Results revealed that the contextualisation of Aboriginal and Western science knowledge strengthened students’ Aboriginal personal identity as well as identities as science learners and status of local Aboriginal knowledge.

This article reports on what happened when a Rumaki pūtaiao kaiako (Science) teacher at a New Zealand high school trialled the use of creative narratives with her Year-10 students as a way of developing their understanding of the human digestive system. These students were members of the school's Māori immersion unit, and creative narratives were in part utilised as a bridge between science discourse and the cultural knowledges these students brought to their learning. In this case study, students developed ‘Tomato Pip’ narratives through four versions, which told the story of a tomato pip travelling through the human digestive system. Word-count data based on these versions and from a summative test were analysed and correlations found between test scores and three categories of word-count total (total words, total science words and total discrete science words). A discourse analysis of one student's narratives identified two distinct voices in these texts: the personal narrator and the emerging biologist. Questionnaire and focus-group data indicated that the use of creative narratives was both motivational to these students and effective as a bridge into science discourse mastery. It is argued that the findings have implications for disciplinary literacy theory, Indigenous education and science instruction.

In a policy landscape dominated by forces that seek to continually reshape education according to market logics, there are particular impacts on the seemingly intractable crisis of Indigenous education policy making. Entrenched discourses of deficit result in education policy continually being ‘done to’ communities, with little heed paid to the effects of such efforts on the learning opportunities available to young Indigenous learners, particularly those living in remote communities. This paper examines the contemporary network of policy levers that come to shape how literacy policy is framed for Indigenous Australians through narratives of failure and crisis. In doing so, we ask what learning is made (im)possible and what are some of the ‘flattening’ effects on literacy curriculum and pedagogy as a result? Further, this paper seeks to open up the conversation around what learning is possible when the policy landscape is unflattened, when policy is ‘done with’ communities, and when pedagogical practices are opened up, rather than closed down.

In Australia and Europe, government agencies and not-for-profit organisations (NFPOs) have had long involvement in the funding and provision of community disability services. Significant change has occurred in Australia over the past two decades in the way government funds are expended, with marketplace mechanisms increasingly being used. As a consequence of economic and governance imperatives, funding of services via NFPOs has changed significantly with a move away from the provision of grants to the contracting of these organisations for the provision of services. In 2013, a new national policy, the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), was introduced that has impacts for the provision of disability services for children and their families. In particular, Indigenous families are likely to experience barriers in accessing services. This paper reviews the impact of international changes in policy and associated funding models and considers the impacts and research implications of Australia's initial experience of implementation of the NDIS.

There are acceptable ways of studying Indigenous issues as a non-Indigenous scholar. Still, the role and identity of the scholar is important and debated within the study of Indigenous issues. The purpose of this article is to accept, but explore the premise of a distinction between Indigenous and non-Indigenous. I claim the possibility of taking a decentred space within Indigenous studies and move towards a methodological and theoretical foundation that is informed by scholars with different stances and backgrounds. A key approach is the intersectional approach to privilege. Neither privilege/oppression, Indigenous/non-Indigenous, nor insider/outsider are binary relations. From Indigenous methodologies such as kaupapa Māori, I emphasise, in particular, the local starting point, arguing that this is the way to transfer relevant issues to a bigger context.

The education of Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander students in Australian universities has received considerable attention in both the literature and government policy in the 21st century. The participation and graduation rates for Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander students in higher education Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programs have remained low and are becoming a particular focus in universities across Australia. This paper reflects on the life and contribution of David Unaipon, the enrolment data from a small sample of universities across Australia and the literature to discuss potential strategies for improving the access to, participation in and graduation from higher education STEM courses.