Therefore the provision of mandatory education was extended to Indigenous Australians in a highly-limited form, reflecting opinions on Indigenous Australians’ limited capacity for knowledge. Consequently, the provision was only for the bare minimum amount of schooling; that is, an education that did not usually surpass the 3rd or 4th grade (Beresford, Partington and Gower, 2012 p. 92). It should be noted that this education was not offered to simply teach a limited curriculum, but to also effectively ‘colonise the mind’ (Tur, 2016) of Indigenous Australians by instilling Western beliefs, culture and language. However, the Whiteness of this education, interlaced with the overt racism of schools and the greater community, as evident in Aunty Tur’s recount of her school experience (Tur, 2010), reinforced Indigenous Australians’ feelings of disenfranchisement towards what was seen as the ‘white man’s process’ of education (Grey 1974, cited in Beresford, Partington and Gower, 2012 p. 100). This is an issue still present in Australian schools today, and one which Focus Areas 1.4 and 2.4 of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) standards seek to…
