ABSTRACT

My experience, as an Aboriginal woman academic within higher education, has been concentrated primarily in the disciplines of Aboriginal Education and Aboriginal Studies and moreover in how these fields of study have resonance with, and are able to inform, Gender Studies, Sociology, Psychology, Australian Studies and Justice Studies, to name a few. It has also been my experience that in teaching undergraduate students, both non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal, although mainly non-Aboriginal, there remains an absence of critical understanding and engagement with the issues that affect Aboriginal peoples. Many of my Aboriginal colleagues in other universities speak of the same experience.1 The Aboriginal contribution to the nation has an extensive history that commences prior to white occupation. This history and the knowledge that accompany it are made subordinate to the dominant story of the white nation and its achievements, its heroes and its significant sites.