The aim of this document is to provide some direction and support to new non-Aboriginal teachers in remote Aboriginal community schools in the Northern Territory. It is intended to accompany the school-based induction, and will hopefully lead to the development of more relevant school-based documents. Many are not only new to Aboriginal community life, but may be in their first position in a classroom after graduating. I have found through my experiences as a teacher in the same situation and then as a mentor to new teachers, that the feeling of being totally overwhelmed, followed closely by distress and panic, is very common. These feelings may be acknowledged by other staff, but are frequently not put into perspective, identified and dealt with as a part of culture shock.

The Aboriginal Education Policy (AEP) (New South Wales Department of School Education [NSW DSE], 1996) attempts to create a holistic approach to Aboriginal education for all students. This is done through emphasis on Aboriginal community involvement and incorporating Aboriginal content and perspectives in all stages of schooling. The policy is based on principles which express Aboriginal students' entitlement to the opportunities and understandings which come from education (NSW DSE, 1996: 8). The assumptions and values of the NSW DSE are shown by the emphasis placed on particular aspects of Aboriginal education. The practical impUcations of this policy are that teachers need to become more aware of Indigenous issues, and develop empathy for the past and continuing effects of colonisation.

One of the many fascinating problems raised in recent issues of the Australian Journal of Indigenous Education (AJIE) is that of Indigenous autonomy in education. Although opinions differed about the extent to which Indigenous people currently exercise educational autonomy in various situations, there was wide agreement that there ought to be Indigenous control or ‘ownership’ of all knowledge relating to Indigenous life and culture, past and present. Sister Anne Gardner, then Principal of Murrupurtyanuwu Catholic School in NT, explained (1996: 20) how she decided to ‘let go, to move away from the dominant role as Principal’, in order that Indigenous persons could take control. She had been helped to this conclusion by reading Paulo Freire, Martin Buber and Hedley Beare, and, within the NT itself, ‘people of that educational calibre, such as Beth Graham, Sr Teresa Ward, Fran Murray, Stephen Harris, all pleading with us to allow education to be owned by Aboriginal people’. Sr Gardner held that ‘Aboriginal people never act as “leader”, a view shared by her designated Indigenous successor, Teresita Puruntayemeri, then Principal-in-Training of Murrupurtyanuwu Catholic School, who wrote (1996: 24-25) that ‘for a Tiwi peron it is too difficult to stand alone in leadership’. One way to share the burdens of leadership is, she suggests, to ‘perform different dances in the Milmaka ring, sometimes in pairs or in a group’.

Certainly in the past, and arguably continuing into the present, music education in schools has been and is often perceived as the exclusive domain of the so-called ‘talented and able’ with a distinct bias towards middle class West-centric society. Yet we are constantly reminded that education ought to address issues of inclusivity, access and equity for students, no matter what their background or history (Smith, 1995). In fact effective music education experiences often provide another means of access to learning areas such as language or maths for children excluded by their apparent lack of literacy or numeracy skills (Campbell, 2000).

A growing number of Native scholars are involved in decolonising higher education through a range of processes designed to create space for Indigenous realities and Indigenous ways of managing knowledge. Basing their educational approaches on Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies, they are developing Indigenist approaches within higher education. Ward Churchill (1996:509), Cherokee scholar, explains that an Indigenist scholar is one who: