Working together: intercultural leadership capabilities for both-ways education

Abstract

This article explores the concept of interculturalism and its complementary relationship with the Aboriginal Australian idea of ‘both ways’. The need for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal staff to learn to be intercultural teachers and leaders, as well as the needs of the system to work interculturally to achieve educational outcomes, is emphasised. This article suggests that in order for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educational leaders to work within an intercultural world, new leadership capabilities must be learned and acquired.

Keywords:

• leadership
• intercultural education
• educational change

Notes

1. Throughout this article, several Aboriginal words are used to describe Aboriginal people: Yolngu, a Yolngu-matha word from north-east Arnhem Land; Bininj, a Kunwinjku word from western Arnhem Land; and Yapa, a Warlpiri word from Central Australia. Likewise a number of terms are used to describe non-Aboriginal people: Balanda (Yolngu-matha and Kunwinjku) and Kardiya (Warlpiri).

2. Not her real name.

3. Under the pretext of responding to a report into child abuse in some Aboriginal communities, the then Federal Liberal Government introduced into Australian Parliament, in August 2007, a package of five Bills that resulted in a comprehensive, compulsory intervention in 73 Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. The Bills included measures to abolish the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP); quarantine 50% of community members’ welfare payments; deploy Australian Federal Police as ‘special constables’ to the Northern Territory Police Force; remove the permit system which governs access to Aboriginal land; acquire 5-year leases over prescribed townships that are part of the emergency response; and negotiate with interested communities on 99-year township leases (Fasoli and Frawley 2009, 75).

4. The organisation of Yolngu society and the management of Yolngu knowledge occur across two language groups and moieties referred to as yirritja and dhuwa. Each moiety holds different knowledge, ceremony and law, and access to and negotiation around each other's knowledge system are complex (Gumbula 2005).