Disturbances and Dislocations

One of the biggest debates in Australian Indigenous education today revolves around the many contested and competing ways of knowledge about Indigenous cultures and the means by which Indigenous intellectual traditions and knowledges make the journey into mainstream educational settings. Grounded in Bakhtin’s theories of dialogue and voice, this book explores the polyphonic nature of power relations, performance roles and pedagogical texts in the context of teaching and learning Indigenous Australian women’s music and dance. In this discussion, the author focuses on her experiences as a lecturer in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland and her involvement in this educational setting with students and guest lecturers/performers. The performance classroom is examined as a potential site for disturbing and dislocating dominant modes of representation of Indigenous women’s performance through the construction, mediation and negotiation of Indigenous knowledge from and between both non-Indigenous and Indigenous voices. This book contains a CD with video clips illustrating the ways in which an embodied approach to teaching and learning happens in this classroom context.