ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief outline of Indigenous knowledge, and Indigenous Australian Social-Health Theory. Drawing on the notion of research as pedagogy put forward by Dr Linda Payi-Ford, students are encouraged to seek knowledge and inform themselves about the peoples they will work with—in this case, Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The basic aim of this chapter is to encourage students of social work to consider non-populist histories and world-views, to reflect on their own assumptions, and to be open to change. Engaging with the decolonisation process, students are encouraged to find counter-narratives to the common coloniser myths about Indigenous Australians—this will transfer across to their social work learning. Indigenous Australians in the helping professions selectively use their knowledge of the history of dispossession, oppression, violence and eugenic policies enacted in the process of colonisation in their praxis.
