Cinders in Snow? Indigenous Teacher Identities in Formation

Abstract

The identity work engaged in by Indigenous teachers1 in school settings is highlighted in a study of Australian Indigenous teachers. The construction of identity in home and community relationships intersects with and can counteract the take up of a preferred identity in the workplace. In this paper we analyse data from interviews with Indigenous teachers, exploring the interplay between culture and identity. We foreground the binary nature of racial assignment in schools, demonstrate how this offers contradictory constructions of identity for Indigenous teachers, and note the effects of history, culture and location in the process of forming a teaching ‘self’.

Notes

1. We use the term ‘Indigenous’ here to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people working in Australian schools, although most of our informants to date are from Victoria, NSW and Queensland, who do not use the term ‘Indigenous’ when identifying themselves and their communities, preferring ‘Aboriginal’, ‘Koori’ or ‘Murri’..

2. This research has been funded by the ARC Discovery Program, 2004–2007 and includes Indigenous consultant researchers Laurie Crawford and Lee Simpson. We acknowledge their assistance in the analysis of data and editorial review of this paper

3. See Reid and Green (2002), however, for a discussion of the response of the NSW Department of School Education in the 1920s in the situation where ‘half‐caste’ Aboriginal students had successfully finished secondary education and were offered teachers' college scholarships on their academic merit.

4. ‘Not quite White’ refers to, and plays on ‘NQR’ (Not Quite Right) the Victorian cut‐price supermarket chain that provided brand name goods that somehow missed out on the full packaging, or whose packing was inadvertently damaged. The goods are identical on the inside but on face value they looked ‘not quite right’, and were deemed not saleable in the major chain stores.