ABSTRACT
Ensuring that all families are included in democratic, communicative and participatory formal education remains one of the most difficult social questions around the world. Different groups live, understand and realise differently, groups that may be large in number such as working class people, or few in number such as Indigenous peoples in first and second world countries. If however close working relationships are established between marginalised and dominant groups, then systems of schooling and teaching can be altered to respect diversity and plurality. Changing policy and practice does not occur easily and requires committed and painstaking effort over long periods of time. For example, the notion of Indigeneity is difficult to grasp for non-Indigenous people and may be interpreted differently by different Indigenous communities. It can be taken to include questions of origin, ideas regarding connections with the land, cyclical rather than linear time, the centrality of family and community rather than individuals, the role of Elders and other community members as knowledge holders and story tellers and the practices of law and lore. These notions constitute a different world view to dominant neoliberal concerns and explain why many Indigenous children find formal schooling alienating. Conversely, they provide avenues to meaning that non-Indigenous children may appreciate and adopt in full or in part as they try to come to grips with the complexities of school knowledge. This chapter argues that a rigid curriculum and approach to learning about ourselves and our place in the universe is inherently undemocratic and inequitable, whereas a more flexible framework that allows for diverse viewpoints in formation can be self-regulating as it seeks to respect the knowledges of all children from all backgrounds. Creative, action-orientated thinking about Indigenous education and its place in the intended curriculum makes the enacted curriculum more responsive to the needs of all groups of children and ultimately provides the opportunity for evolving curriculum of a new type.
