ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects on eleven years of performative truth-telling by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people through a transition unit, Telling Histories, offered at Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, 1998–2009. Part theoretical analysis, part structural description detailing the conjunctural assemblage comprising this singular curriculum, the chapter highlights how performative practice can provide opportunities for First Nation 'truth telling' within the western academy. It is dedicated to describing how Telling Histories contrasts with mainstream academic forms of study. A key feature of the Telling Histories workshops was that there was a separation of form and content, or to frame it differently, between platform and utterance. By framing workshops performatively, students felt they were being offered speaking positions that enabled them to take on voices, to ‘key’ their discourse in ways usually reserved for other more authorised voices—historians, state authorities or teachers.
