Barriers that would prevent a teacher’s ability to achieve AITSL standards 1.4 & 2.

4 are impediments
of interpretation. To design strategy, you must understand the facts and have clarity of their truths.
If you lack clarity, then your interpretation is at risk of coming to a truth that lacks fidelity. Without
fidelity, your strategy (1.4) and understanding (2.4) are impeded by misleading truths that are
inconsistent with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspective. I will present three significant
barriers that mislead teachers and then critically discuss how I will overcome these barriers in the
classroom to teach students a history that promotes reconciliation between Indigenous and non-
Indigenous Australians.

Interpretation of historical sources is critically perceived through the lenses purpose, perspective,
and power (Hicks, 2022). This critical approach enables questions such as who created the sources
and why does it exist the way it is? Purpose seeks to understand why the source was created, was it
lawfully required or perhaps created out of pleasure? Perspective reflects on the beliefs and values
of the source creator and recognises that their perspective is shaped by their nurture or past
experiences. Power examines the authority of the source and its position in relation to the
consequence that source has on history. These three lenses have the potential to shape the way
history is recorded and subsequently what history is learnt (Hicks, 2022).

It is through these critical lenses that we can question the barriers that would impede the fidelity of
the facts which we teach in our classrooms. The three barriers I will examine are Epistemic
Authority, National Identity, and the Master Narrative.

Epistemic Authority recognises that certain peoples of power control what knowledge is
disseminated to the public. Fricker (2016) presents that the content within curriculum has and is
determined by political powers that promote a history of heritage that idealises Australia as having a
Judaeo-Christian past. This was enforced by policy written by non-Indigenous (NI) peoples such as
John Howard, Brendan Nelson, and Christopher Pyne, all of which present a white perspective that
sort to dominate Australian society and silence the Indigenous voice.

The history of “white” heritage birthed the bloke Mick Dundee who was a courageous battler and a
loveable larrikin, an Identity for which Australians could comfortably assimilate with. Odowd (2011)
unpacks a hidden curriculum in NI Australian culture that has constructed the national identity which
was intended to remedy the stigma of the nation’s colonial penal past. Odowd (2011) acknowledges
several epistemic authorities who depict histories of ‘good blokes’ who achieved great contributions
to the nation. The Australian Identity was crafted appropriately for white culture and from this the
Indigenous other was classified as Indigenous Australian or Torres Strait Islander.

The national identity was unfolded meticulously by the Master Narrative, a story of Australia which
elevated from a collective of penal colonies into a federated nation of white success. Excluded from
the narrative was the indigenous history (Odowd, 2011), indigenous ingenuity (Pascoe, 2018), and
the indigenous sovereignty of the land never ceded we call Australia (McCarty & Lee, 2014). Dubbed
as being a cult of forgetfulness on a national scale, the Great Australian Silence was the result of the
master narrative incepted into curriculum that encouraged students to develop the national identity
and a sense of civic duty to the federated nation (Fricker, 2016).

These three barriers are an interdependent influence in shaping NI Australian perspectives about
themselves and Indigenous people. The influence draws on what Nakata (2007) calls the ‘corpus’, a
body of knowledge recorded by whites of Indigenous people in intellectual, government, and
historical texts. Historically, this corpus has been dominated by white perspective, but slowly
indigenous perspective is taking place within the corpus. Nakata (2007) identifies that Indigenous
knowledge systems largely differ to white perspective at cosmological (origins of the universe),
epistemological (how is knowledge known), and ontological (what is being) levels. Battiste (1998)
explains that Indigenous knowledge is transferred orally, and that oral language is a direct and
powerful means of connecting to Indigenous knowledge systems. Nakata (2007) stresses that
Indigenous voice as text within the corpus is not enough to provide fidelity at the Indigenous and NI
Australian Interface because of how language use differs between cultures.

My reflection as a teacher in the classroom, I require knowledge in facilitating the learning of

divergent perspectives. To be brave and walk about beyond the corpus to have a yarn about
Indigenous voice and their stories by inviting Indigenous voice into the classroom to yarn with us.
Ladson-Billings (2017) indicate that pedagogy which approximates the cultural patterns of the
culture which you are teaching improves student performance of learning that culture. Yunkaporta
(2009) developed a pedagogy on the eight ways of Indigenous learning which approximates fidelity
with the Indigenous knowledge system. The eight ways is a pedagogy that shifts the power away
from the corpus for the purpose of reinvigorating the ancestral perspective on learning (Yunkaporta,
2009).

My reflection as a teacher in the community, students will inevitably take this discourse of
indigenous perspective home. Parents who are grounded in a white Australian identity may dismiss
the child’s learning, therefor it is important to teach histographic literacy so that children are able to
share their knowledge in a language that parents can reason with and perhaps change their
perspective as well.

My position toward Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people once believed that I was an intruder
in a place that I was not meant to be. Though this belief still has a place in my feelings, I have come
to understand that my future on this land requires a re-engagement with Indigenous perspective so
that I can accept the place of my birth as a land that I am not from, but have come to, and as a guest
here I am required to engage my host and adapt to their custom as I would if I were visiting a friends
home. My role as a teacher is to wake students from a narrative to a reality and prepare them for
the challenges that will inevitably arise through recognising the lack fidelity in the meta-barrier of
white Australia.