ABSTRACT
This chapter will critique the constructs and structures of educational policy in ways that shift their strategic purpose to favour the education of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Using Bacchi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to Be?’ (WPR) post-structural approach to policy analysis, the authors explore the potential of The Uluru Statement for constructing a dynamic and responsive policy framework to challenge the underpinning assimilatory premise of current educational policies, which has infantilised Indigenous students, problematised their families and delegitimated the knowledges and aspirations of First Nations communities. A central contribution of this chapter is to offer a framework for ‘Indigenist Policy Analysis’, which may assist in the decolonisation of education policy. This chapter provides a new set of critical questions that can be asked of education policy – questions that arise from recognition of the sovereignty of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples expressed in the Uluru Statement. The policy analysis in this chapter forms a basis that could underpin a new relationship between schools and First Nations students, a relationship that centres principles of cultural nourishment, high expectations and relational pedagogic practices.
