Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T10:33:06.901Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Moving and Dancing Towards Decolonisation in Education: An Example from an Indigenous Australian Performance Classroom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2015

Elizabeth Mackinlay*
Affiliation:
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, 4072, Australia
Get access

Abstract

In this paper I explore the special type of thinking, moving and dancing place which is opened up for decolonisaton when students engage in an embodied pedagogical practice in Indigenous education. I examine what decolonisation means in this context by describing the ways in which the curriculum, the students and me, and more generally the discipline of ethnomusicology itself, undergo a process to question, critique, and move aside the pedagogical script of colonialism in order to allow Indigenous ways of understanding music and dance to be presented, privileged and empowered. Key questions are: What is the relationship between embodiment and disembodiment and decolonisation and colonisation? In what ways is embodiment more than, or other than, the presence of moving bodies? In what ways is performativity an aspect of power/knowledge/subject formations? How can it be theorised? What could the pedagogical scripts of decolonisation look like?

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Brydon, D. &Tiffin, H. (1993). Decolonisingfiction. Sydne: Dangaroo Press.Google Scholar
Butler, J. (1999). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cary, L. (2004). Always already colonizer/colonized: White Australian wanderings. In Mutua, K. &Swadener, B. (Eds.), Decolonizing research in cross-cultural contexts: Critical personal narratives (pp.6983). Albany, NY: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Cooley, T.J. (1997). Casting shadows in the field: An introduction. In Barz, G.F. &Cooley, T.J. (Eds.), Shadows in the field: New perspectives for fieldwork in ethnomusicology (pp.322). New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dunbar-Hall, P. (1998, November). Field experience as a meansfor theorising music teaching and learning. Paper presented at the National Musicological Society of Australia Conference, Adelaide, South Australia.Google Scholar
Ellis, C.J. (1978). Making music. Aboriginal News, 3, 89.Google Scholar
Ellis, C.J. (1979). Present-day music of the Aboriginal student: A challenge for the educator. Australian foumal of Music Education, 25, 1721.Google Scholar
Ellis, C.J. (1985). Aboriginal music: Education for living. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press.Google Scholar
Ellis, C.J. (1991). Creating with traditions. Sounds Australian, 30, 1314, & 55.Google Scholar
Ellsworth, E. (1992). Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. In Luke, C. &Gore, J. (Eds.), Feminisms and critical pedagogy (pp.90119). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Fox, C. (2004). Tensions in the decolonisation process: Disrupting preconceptions of postcolonial education in the Lao People’s democratic republic. In Hickling-Hudson, A.Matthews, J. &Woods, A. (Eds.), Disrupting preconceptions: Postcolonialism and education (pp.91106). Flaxton, QLD: Post Pressed.Google Scholar
Gatens, M. (1996). Imaginary bodies: Ethics, power and corporeality. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gore, J. (1993). The struggle for pedagogies: Critical and feministdiscourses as regimes of trutb. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Grosz, E. (1994). Volatile bodies: Toward a corporeal feminism. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Gustafson, D.L. (1999). Embodied learning: The body as an epistemological site. In Mayberry, M. &Rose, E.C. (Eds.), Meeting the challenge: Innovative feminist pedagogies in action (pp.249273). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hickling-Hudson, A., Matthews, J. &Woods, A. (2004). Education, postcolonialism and disruptions. In Hickling-Hudson, A.Matthews, J. &Woods, A. (Eds.), Disrupting preconceptions: Postcolonialism and education (pp.116). Flaxton, QLD: Post Pressed.Google Scholar
Holman Jones, S. (1998). Turning the kaleidoscope, re-visioning ethnograph. Qualitative Inquiry, 4 (3), 421439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hood, M. (1971). The ethnomusicologist. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co.Google Scholar
hooks, b. (1989). Talking back Thinkingfeminist, thinking black. Boston, MA: South End PressGoogle Scholar
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar
hooks, b. (1995). Killing rage: Ending racism. New York: Henry Holt and Company.Google Scholar
Huggins, J. (1998). Sister girl: The writings of Aboriginal activist and historian Jackie Huggins. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press.Google Scholar
Kisluik, M. (1997). (Un)doing fieldwork: Sharing songs, sharing lives. In Barz, G.F. &Cooley, T.J. (Eds.), Shadows in thefield: New perspectives on fieldwork in ethnomusicology (pp.2344). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lather, P. (1991). Feminist research in education: Within/against. Geelong: Deakin University Press.Google Scholar
Luke, C. &Gore, J. (1992). Introduction. In Barz, C. &Gore, J. (Eds.), Feminisms and critical pedagogy (pp.115). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mackinlay, E. (2000). Blurring boundaries between restricted and unrestricted performance: A case study of the mermaid song of Yanyuwa women in Borroloola. Perfect Beat, 4 (4), 7384.Google Scholar
Mackinlay, E. (2005). The personal is political is musical: Understanding Aboriginal women’s performance practice. In Mackinlay, E.Owens, S. &Collins, D. (Eds.), Aesthetics and experience in music performance (pp.221233). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press.Google Scholar
McWilliam, E. (1999). Pedagogical pleasures. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Mohanty, C.T. (2003). Feminism without borders: Decolonizing theory, practising solidarity. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Mutua, K., &Swadener, B. (2004). Introduction. In Mutua, K. &Swadener, B. (Eds.), Decolonizing research in cross-cultural contexts: Critical personal narratives (pp.126). Albany, NY: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Omer, M. (1992). Interrupting the calls for student voice in “liberatory” education: A feminist poststructuralist perspective. In Luke, C. &Gore, J. (Eds.), Feminisms and critical pedagogy (pp.7489). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Poka, L. (2000). Processes of decolonization. In Battiste, M. (Ed.), Reclaiming Indigenous voice and vision (pp.150160). Vancouver: University of British Columbia.Google Scholar
Reynolds, H. (1998). This whispering in our hearts. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Rice, T. (1994). May it fill your soul: Experiencing Bulgarian music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Smith, L. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous people. New York: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Weiss, G. (1999). Body images: Embodiment as intercorporeality. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar