14 - Counter-Storytelling as Critical Praxis

Summary

Introduction

The late Mohawk scholar Patricia Monture (1990: 185) once described her experiences of law school as a perpetual feeling that she was ‘missing something’. Initially, Monture assumed that there was something lacking within, and that if only she changed, then law school would become fulfilling. Later, she realized that the ‘greatest obstacle’ was not herself, but the ‘very structure of the institution and the program’ (Monture, 1990: 185). As a young, Indigenous woman pursuing a legal education, Patricia Monture's words left an indelible impression on me. They put into words feelings that, until that point, I had been unable to articulate.

My journey began in 1991 at the T.C. Beirne School of Law at the University of Queensland. As the state's oldest and most prestigious law school, it emanated wealth and power. I was fascinated by the grandiose library, and it was exciting to read judgments whose pages bore the annotations of generations of students. It was also a time of promise. In April, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1991) had released its ground- breaking treatise on the intersections between Indigenous peoples and the criminal justice system. The following year the High Court had rejected the racist mythology of terra nullius in the Mabo case (1992) and paved the way for Indigenous peoples to seek recognition of their native title.

But, like Patricia Monture, I soon developed the ever- present feeling that something was missing. Mirroring Monture's experience, it would be some time before I realized that the most formidable barrier was not myself, but an institution that had erased Indigenous people. At the time, Indigenous scholars were yet to secure a foothold in Australia's law schools. Their works never appeared in the prescribed readings for my courses and although we occasionally studied cases that involved Indigenous parties, their stories had been effaced and their names reduced to monikers for legal rules.

This chapter draws upon the work of Wendy Leo Moore (2008) and others who argue that law schools are ‘white spaces’. In such locations, Black people are ‘typically absent, not expected, or marginalized when present’ (Anderson, 2015: 10). While such spaces are usually considered by whites to be unexceptional, they are often understood by Black people to be ‘off limits’ (Anderson, 2015: 10).