Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T06:20:47.226Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Decolonising Gender: Stories by, About and with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2017

Sandra Rennie
Sandra Rennie*
Affiliation:
School of Education, The University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Australia
*
address for correspondence: Sandra Rennie, School of Education, The University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Australia. Email: [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

‘What is my story? Like you, I have many’, wrote feminist academic Sara Ahmed (Ahmed, 2010, p. 1). She asks, what is yours, what is mine? and begins her story at a table. ‘Around the table a family gathers’, she says, ‘Always we are seated in the same place. . .as if we are trying to secure more than our place’ (Ahmed, 2010, p. 1). In this paper, I draw upon Ahmed's work on willfulness and diversity work in higher education to explore the gendered stories of pathways through university shared with me by Indigenous Australian students. In the stories told in this paper, the table becomes the university space and the family becomes the students. The stories become more than securing place; they are stories which talk of willful resilience, resistance and persistence within that place called higher education. Grounded in my doctoral work with seven female Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, this paper specifically focuses on the gendered nature of such willfulness to consider the ways in which Indigenous Australian students negotiate pathways and success through university within/against Western colonial and patriarchal institutions.

Keywords

DecolonisinggenderstoriesAboriginalTorres Strait Islanderwomen
Type
Research Article
Information
The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , December 2018 , pp. 83 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahmed, S. (2009). Embodying diversity: problems and paradoxes for Black feminists. Race Ethnicity and Education Online, 12 (1), 41–52.Google Scholar
Ahmed, S. (2010). Feminist killjoys (and other willful subjects). Scholar and Feminist Online, 8 (3), 1–11Google Scholar
Ahmed, S. (2012). On being included: Racism and diversity in institutional life. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ahmed, S. (2014). Willful subjects. Durham and London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Chilisa, B. (2012). Indigenous research methodologies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Department of Education, Training and Employment. (2011). Yarning circles. Brisbane, QLD: Author. Retrieved from https://harlaxtonss.eq.edu.au/Supportandresources/Formsanddocuments/Documents/yarning-circles.pdf.Google Scholar
Kinane, S., Wilks, J., Wilson, K., Hughes, T., & Thomas, S. (2014). Can't be what you can't see: The transition of aboriginal and torres strait Islander students into higher education. Final Report. Australian Government. Office for Learning and Teaching, Department of Education. Sydney, NSW.Google Scholar
Kovach, M. (2009). Indigenous methodologies: Characteristics, conversations, and contexts. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Leavy, P. (2007). The practice of feminist oral history and focus group interview. In Hesse-Biber, S. & Leavy, P. (Eds.), Feminist research practice (pp. 149–186). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Martin, K. (2003). Ways of knowing, ways of being and ways of doing: A theoretical framework and methods for indigenous re-search and Indigenist research. Voicing Dissent, New Talents 21C: Next Generation Australian Studies Journal of Australian Studies, 76, 203–214.Google Scholar
Martin, K. (2008). Please knock before you enter: Aboriginal regulation of outsiders and the implications for researchers. Teneriffe, Qld: Post Pressed.Google Scholar
Martin, K. (2009, September). Thinkin’ you know. . .getting’ it wrong. . .and us missin’ out – Aboriginal worldview and knowledge, English literacy – great expectations or grating obsessions? Paper presented at the National curriculum perspective conference. . .What a Difference a Good Start Makes. Melbourne, Victoria.Google Scholar
Martin, K. (2014). The more things change, the more they stay the same: Creativity as the next colonial turn. In Reid, A., Hart, P., & Peters, M. (Eds.), A companion to research in education (pp. 293–296). Heidelberg: Spinger Dordrecht.Google Scholar
Mitchell-Whittington, A. (2016). UQ bake sale ends in online rape, death threats. brisbanetimes.com.au Queensland. Retrieved April 6, 2016 from http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/uq-bake-sale-ends-in-online-rape-death-threats-20160406-go02pm.htmGoogle Scholar
Sium, A., & Ritskes, E. (2013). Speaking truth to power: Indigenous storytelling as an act of living resistance. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2 (1), i–x.Google Scholar
Smith, L.T. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples (2nd ed.). London: Zed Books Supporting learning resource. Brisbane, QLD: Queensland Government. Retrieved from https:harlaxtonss.ed.edu.au/Supportresources/Formsanddocuments/Documens/yarning-circles.pddGoogle Scholar
Whiteduck, M. (2013). ‘But it's our story. Read it’: Stories my grandfather told me and writing for continuance. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2 (1), 72– 92.Google Scholar