Abstract
Drawing on a broader study that focused on examining principal leadership for equity and diversity, this paper presents the leadership experiences of ‘Jane’, a White, middle-class principal of a rural Indigenous school. The paper highlights how Jane's leadership is inextricably shaped by her assumptions about race and the political dynamics and historical specificities of her school community. A central focus is on Jane's tendency to deploy culturally reductionist understandings of Indigeneity that position it as incompatible or incommensurable with White culture/western schooling. The paper argues the central imperative of a leadership that rejects these understandings and engages in a critical situational analysis of Indigenous politics, relations and experience. Such an analysis is presented as imperative to supporting representative justice in that it moves beyond merely according a voice to Indigenous people to a focus on better understanding, problematising and remedying the racial relations that contribute to Indigenous oppression.
Notes
1. Corroborees are traditional and often sacred ceremonies where Indigenous Australians gather for singing, dancing and story-telling.
2. The executive director of schools is a departmental administrative position with the Queensland state government.