‘The same as everyone else’: how academically successful indigenous secondary school students respond to a hidden curriculum of settler silencing

ABSTRACT

The paper examines how indigenous Māori students who are striving for academic success in state secondary schools are affected by a hidden curriculum of settler silencing. In this hidden curriculum, the meanings and effects of race are muted through state education policies and school initiatives that claim to support Indigenous youth by attending to culture and ethnicity. The schooling experiences of four high-achieving indigenous girls in this paper show how silencing through cultural and ethnic approaches construct indigenous youth identities in ways that maintain white normativity, particularly as they strive to be academically successful. The girls respond to covert attacks on their personhood by appealing to the demands of white privilege. In this respect, the youth open up spaces within the hidden curriculum to ‘speak back’ to state constructions of indigeneity and ethnic and cultural difference.

KEYWORDS:

• indigenous
• white supremacy
• hidden curriculum
• silencing
• racism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Pākehā is the name given to non-indigenous New Zealanders of European heritage. Pākehā and whites will be used interchangably in this article.

2. References to the ‘mainstream’ New Zealand society include many ethnic groups, however, Pākehā (or whites) constitute the largest group, followed by Māori, then Pacific. Māori are also included but do not share the same level or degree of power because Pākehā ways of being and existing in New Zealand society dominate mainstream interests.