7 - Racially Literate Teacher Education: (Im)possibilities for Disrupting the Racial Silence

Summary

Introduction

We decided to present this chapter as a conversation between us, as non- Indigenous educators with 20 years of teaching critical Indigenous studies within university programmes. Most of this conversation is derived from a research yarn conducted at the beginning of 2023 between us and the editors of this book. While yarning is much more than a research method, it has increased in popularity and recognition as a qualitative method thanks to works by Martin (2008), Bessarab and Ng’andu (2010) and Walker et al (2013).

We first met as colleagues at the Oodgeroo Unit, an academic support centre for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (First Nations) students at the Queensland University of Technology in Meanjin (Brisbane), Australia in 2004. Susan (Sue) Whatman (she/ her) is a non- Indigenous woman with Welsh, Scottish, Irish and English ancestry, living and working on Kombumerri People's land on the Yugambeh nation (Gold Coast) in Australia. Juliana (Julie) McLaughlin (she/ her) is from Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, currently living and working on the lands of the Turrbal and Yuggera peoples of Meanjin (Brisbane North). We employ a four- step racial and cultural positionality framework elaborated by H. Richard Milner (2007), which serves to model a process of racial literacy praxis, underscored by tenets of critical race theory (CRT). This four- step racial and cultural positionality framework provides some limits to the many hundreds of examples we could share from decades of teaching critical Indigenous studies in university programs, mostly in teaching, arts and health education.

First, Milner's (2007: 395– 7) non- linear framework acknowledges the breakthrough work of Gloria Ladson- Billings and William Tate (1995) in applying critical race theory (CRT) to education. Milner concurs with Adrienne Dixson (2006) that teacher education, together with the curriculum, policies and texts it comprises, operates on the assumption that most teachers are white. In taking up Derrick Bell's (1980) explanation of interest- convergence, this means that in teacher education, ‘the interests of white teachers take precedence over teachers of color’ (Milner, 2007: 394). Milner articulates a four step, non- linear process for developing racial and cultural positionality, primarily as a tool for researchers.