Abstract #3096

Abstract: This paper is a theoretical exploration that proposes bringing Indigenist Standpoint Theory (Moreton-Robinson, 2013; Phillips, 2019) into conversation with ‘placestory’ (Davies & Bulfin, 2023; Renshaw, 2021) as a pedagogic intervention towards dis-placing the colonial inheritance (Kostogriz & Doecke, 2007) of English education in Australia. Historically, L1 (English) education in Australia was used to authorise the language, aesthetics and values of the British colonisers in the newly established Nation. This regime tethered Australia to empire linguistically, culturally and institutionally. The colonial inheritance of this legacy continues to haunt English education today, particularly in the persistent study of settler literatures and its ties to cognitive imperialism (Leane, 2016). Today, Australia is awakening to its multilingual and multicultural actuality, particularly related to the languages and cultures of the First Peoples of Australia. This cultural awakening has initiated a reckoning with the violence of invasion and colonisation, with efforts towards reconciliation and repatriation in motion. English education has a significant role to play in contributing to reconciliation and cultivating complex articulations of Australia’s cultural and linguistic identity. This necessarily includes developing proficiency in navigating and contributing to how we make meaning in Australia’s evolving cultural and linguistic landscape. However, the machinery of standardisation assures the survival of cognitive imperialism. Under these conditions, teachers are caught trying to respond to the local needs of the young people they teach while meeting the requirements of the system. In this scenario, I argue teachers need to ‘get political’ in order to find ways to empower students within the networks of power that oppress and exclude. This paper proposes Indigenist Standpoint Theory as an orientation to critically engage in the textual and discursive work of English classrooms and to interrogate how language, text and discourse positions us all in relation to First Nations people. From this starting point teachers and young people can grapple with the complex routes that constitute our current condition but also create opportunities to (re)write and co-author local placestories that speak back to the dominant stories from elsewhere. This approach may dis-place colonial inheritance and contribute to writing a complex postcolonial national imaginary.

Davies, T., and S. Bulfin. 2023. “English education in Australia and restore(y)ing the Nation: Cultivating postcolonial possibility through placestory.” English in Australia, 57(2), p. 53-63.
Kostogriz, A., & Doecke, B. (2007). Encounters with ‘strangers’: Towards dialogical ethics in English language education. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 4(1), 1-24.
Leane, J. (2016). Other peoples’ stories. Overland (online), 225, summer. https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-225/feature-jeanine-leane/
Moreton-Robinson, A. (2013). Towards an Australian Indigenous Women’s Standpoint Theory. Australian Feminist Studies, 28(78), p. 331-347.
Phillips, J. (2019). Indigenous Australian Studies, Indigenist Standpoint Pedagogy, and Student Resistance. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia. Oxford University Press. Doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.257
Renshaw, P. (2021). Feeling for the Anthropocene: Placestories of living justice. The Australian Educational Researcher, 48, p. 1-21

L1 education, reconciliation and justice: Bringing Indigenist Standpoint Theory and ‘placestory’ together as a pedagogic intervention to dis-place the colonial inheritance of English education in Australia.