This special issue of the Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, titled ‘South-South Dialogues: Global Approaches to Decolonial Pedagogies’, aims to contribute to the field of Australian Indigenous Studies and Education by further diversifying the perspectives, conversations and conceptual tools to engage with Indigenous pedagogies. Through a south-south conversational and conceptual approach, this special issue expands the conversation of Indigenous pedagogies internationally and conceptually from a global south location. At the same time, this special issue means to be a re-iteration of the first ‘South-South Dialogues: Situated Perspectives in Decolonial Epistemologies’ conference held in November 2015 at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, which displayed a south-south conversation lead by local and global Indigenous perspectives. This special issue further theorises what many local and global scholars view as implied in Indigenous education: that the mainstream field of education can be re-examined using a decolonial viewpoint, one that is led by the views of Indigenous peoples and people of colour from the ‘global south’. This issue also responds to a re-awakening of decolonial theories that have been embodied in ‘Southern Theory’ (Connell, 2007), Indigenous Standpoint Theory (Nakata, 2007), coloniality/decoloniality (see, for instance, Maldonado-Torres, 2007), among others that continue to re-examine the conditions in which colonisation continues to be epistemologically exerted and continue to propose ways to contest it. This re-invigorated conversation is one that can be addressed by a genuinely horizontal intercultural dialogue lead by the southern perspectives. This was, one way or another, what was observed and lived in the ‘South-South Dialogues’ conference that felt like the starting point of a newer form of knowledge production and pedagogy.

We are very pleased to bring you Volume 47, issue 2 of The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education. The theme of this year's NAIDOC week was ‘Because of her we can’ so it is appropriate that the first article in this volume focuses on the gendered stories of pathways through university by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. Using Ahmed's work on ‘wilfulness’, Rennie explores the resilience, resistance and persistence of seven female Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander higher education students and considers the ways they negotiate pathways and success through university. Bright and Mackinlay also draw on the concept of ‘wilfulness’ to report on the successes and failures of a research project exploring mentoring programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander preservice teachers. They suggest that tensions are always present between the need to comply with the expectations of a Western academic institution while engaging in a wilful pursuit of the kinds of resistance that may be necessary in attempts at decoloniality. Also drawing on a decolonial lens, McDowall explore how preservice teachers position themselves and how they consider their relationships and ethical responsibilities in the field of Indigenous education. Pre-service teachers in different context are the focus of Torepe and Manning who examine the lived experiences and various challenges confronting this group of experienced Māori language teachers working in English-medium, state-funded schools.

This is a reflective opinion piece, on our efforts in Australia to achieve alignment between the goals of Indigenous self-determination, Indigenous studies programmes and decolonising theory for an open and critical dialogue in south–south scholarship agendas. In this spirit, extant approaches to Indigenous studies in the Australian higher education context are questioned, the scholarship recruited for this is challenged, and its advocated role in the education of all students is raised as a major concern.

‘What is my story? Like you, I have many’, wrote feminist academic Sara Ahmed (Ahmed, 2010, p. 1). She asks, what is yours, what is mine? and begins her story at a table. ‘Around the table a family gathers’, she says, ‘Always we are seated in the same place. . .as if we are trying to secure more than our place’ (Ahmed, 2010, p. 1). In this paper, I draw upon Ahmed's work on willfulness and diversity work in higher education to explore the gendered stories of pathways through university shared with me by Indigenous Australian students. In the stories told in this paper, the table becomes the university space and the family becomes the students. The stories become more than securing place; they are stories which talk of willful resilience, resistance and persistence within that place called higher education. Grounded in my doctoral work with seven female Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, this paper specifically focuses on the gendered nature of such willfulness to consider the ways in which Indigenous Australian students negotiate pathways and success through university within/against Western colonial and patriarchal institutions.

In her recent work, Sara Ahmed explores wilfulness as a negative charge made by some against others, thinking about the relationship between ill will and good will, the particular and the general, and the embeddedness of will in a political and cultural landscape. In Ahmed's reading, wilfulness is a characteristic often ascribed to those who do ‘not will the reproduction of the whole’ (2011, p. 246) — those who are deemed wayward, wandering, and/or deviant. Using Ahmed's discussions, in this paper, we report on the successes and failures of a research project exploring mentoring programs in enhancing the recruitment and retention of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander preservice teachers. We think about the tensions always present between two faces of such a project: the need to reproduce modes of compliance to the expectations of a Western academic institutional regime; and the wilful pursuit of the kinds of wayward resistance and critique that may be potentially undermining and self-sabotaging as well as wholly necessary as attempts at decoloniality. We report on both the successes of the program and the continuing failure to address issues of colonialism. In doing so, we position Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research as a performative doubleness which needs wilfulness in order to ‘stand up, to stand against the world’ (Ahmed, 2011, p. 250) of colonial reproduction in neo-liberal times.

This study argues that western societies have to learn from the cosmological vision of first peoples. In the Brazilian context, despite the genocide of these peoples, there still remains a rich variety of cultures, keeping their traditions and lifestyles based on the concept of buen vivir, in Spanish, or Tekó Porã as the Guarani people say. From a decolonial intercultural approach, we can learn a sustainable way of life from indigenous peoples, and create relevant policies and educational frameworks. Principles of buen vivir such as cooperation and reciprocity are incorporated by Paulo Freire in his dialogic pedagogy. Freire has incorporated these principles due to his engagement with social and communitarian movements. For this reason, his pedagogical proposal is not limited to school contexts only; it is rather linked to community and social praxis. This political transformation of educational praxis involves changes in the modern-colonial matrix of power and knowledge. Deconstructing racism and the myth of universality is necessary for recognizing epistemic rationalities developed by indigenous communities, in order for us to establish with them critical dialogue and mutually enriching interaction. In this sense, the newly introduced term neologism ‘conversity’ indicates intercultural dialogue resulting from the recognition of indigenous peoples and social movements as producers of legitimate knowledge and autonomous organisation.

Our work as educators is entangled in questions of how colonisation privileges particular epistemologies and ontologies, ethical responsibilities and the reproduction of privilege or exclusion through education. Working with preservice teachers as they shape their social and ethical responsibilities allows the opportunity to effect social change on a larger scale as they move into their own classrooms. Students often begin the course seeking some form of knowledge about Indigenous peoples, yet this knowledge can be seen to represent a form of epistemic violence.

In this research project, I use a decolonial lens to consider the reflective writing journals of preservice teachers as they consider their relationships and responsibilities in the field of Indigenous education. The purpose is to explore how preservice teachers position themselves in this field and whether their engagement with these stories, theories, voices and knowledges leaves them with an inability to remain indifferent to their ethical responsibilities. In this paper, I invite you to walk with me through a landscape where we consider preservice teachers’ writings, Moreton–Robinson's possessive logic, transformative education and the concept of diffraction.

This article discusses the concept of Vivir Bien (Living Well) (VB) and its role as a decolonising project in connection with the Political Constitution of the Plurinational State of Bolivia (2009) (BC) and subordinated legislation. This subordinated legislation was enacted to implement in a more specific manner the general legal principles contained within the BC. The paper uses these legal texts within the framework of decolonial thinking to prove that the adoption of the concept of VB represents a legal and an epistemological shift that radically contests the dominant Western paradigm of modernity/coloniality. This shift has many facets; however, this article concentrates on two of them in order to characterise its radicalism: (a) the constitutional acknowledgment of the colonial difference, which is understood here as the pervading and living legacy of European colonialism in social organisations and the production of knowledge, and (b) the constitutional and legislative requirement of engaging in an ongoing intercultural dialogue as a vehicle for the achievement of a society based on the concept of VB. This article concludes that the confluence of these two facets marks the epistemological shift and is important in the advancement of the intercultural and decolonising project represented by the concept of VB.

This article draws on data from a research study (Torepe, 2011) that investigated the lived experiences of six Māori teachers who recently graduated from the Hōaka Pounamu (Graduate Diploma in Immersion and Bilingual Teaching) course at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. The primary objective was to gain a deeper understanding of the lived experiences and various challenges confronting this group of experienced Māori language teachers working in English-medium, state-funded schools. This article describes the qualitative research methodology that was underpinned by a Kaupapa Māori narrative research philosophy. It then explains why the study's findings support and strengthen those of previous studies conducted in Australia. Most notably, they draw attention to the concept of cultural taxation and the Crown's principles for action on the Treaty of Waitangi. Given the large number of Māori children attending Australian schools and similar challenges confronting Indigenous Australian teachers, this research will be of interest to an Australian audience.

In 2008, Ecuador reformed its Constitution after a prolonged period of economic, social and political crises. The momentary rupturing of power structures, that had limited political participation to small clusters of elites, opened participatory spaces for historically marginalised social groups to engage in the process of constitutional drafting. As a result of this unprecedented political shift in participation and inclusiveness, alternative notions of cultural, social and economic rights surfaced. This progressive constitutionalism is thus a novel attempt at overcoming legal formalism in favour of a Living Law, a law that embraces the contextual settings where it will be applied by scrutinising the historic power structures that have moulded it. Good Living as a legal principle underlines the enactment of a Living Law.

This article draws upon historical evidence and theoretical insights to critique the New Zealand government's negative response to a popular petition developed by students of Otorohanga College. The petition called for the New Zealand Land Wars to become a ‘prescribed course of study’ (topic) in New Zealand schools. This article consequently reviews the status of Māori histories in New Zealand schools from 1877 to 2016. This review is followed by a critique of the New Zealand government's response to the petition. This will be of interest to an Australian audience grappling with issues relating to the teaching of Indigenous peoples’ histories in schools.

Addressing our growing planetary crisis and attendant symptoms of human and human-ecological disconnect, requires a profound epistemological reorientation regarding how societal structures are conceived and articulated; named here as the collective work of decolonisation. While global dynamics are giving rise to vital transnational solidarities between Indigenous peoples, these same processes have also resulted in complex and often contradictory locations and histories of peoples at local levels which unsettle the Indigenous–non-Indigenous binary, providing new and necessary possibilities for the development of epistemological and relational solidarities aimed at increasing social–ecological resilience. The International Resilience Network is an emerging community of practice comprised of Indigenous and settler–migrant peoples aimed at increasing social–ecological resilience. This article narrates the story of the Network's inaugural summit, and provides an overview of contextual issues and analysis of particular pedagogical aspects of our approach; foregrounding ruptures between ontology and epistemology that inevitably occur when culturally and generationally diverse groups who are grounded in different daily realities and related agency imperatives come to share overlapping worldviews through learning ‘in place’ together. Developing pedagogical practices for naming and negotiating associated tensions within the collective work of decolonisation is, we argue, a critical step in enabling practices conducive towards the shared goal of increased human–ecological resilience.

Cinema is an art form widely recognised as an agent to change the social condition and alter traditional norms. Movies can be used to educate and transform society's collective conscience. Indigenous Australian artists utilise the power of artistic expression as a tool to initiate change in the attitudes and perceptions of the broader Australian society. Australia's story has predominately been told from the coloniser's viewpoint. This narrative is being rewritten through Indigenous artists utilising the power of cinema to create compelling stories with Indigenous control. This medium has come into prominence for Indigenous Australians to express our culture, ontology and politics. Movies such as Samson and Delilah, Bran Nue Dae, The Sapphires and Rabbit-Proof Fence for example, have highlighted the injustices of past policies, adding new dimensions to the Australian narrative. These three films are just a few of the Indigenous Australian produced films being used in the Australian National Curriculum.

Through this medium, Australian Indigenous voices are rewriting the Australian narrative from the Indigenous perspective, deconstructing the predominant stereotypical perceptions of Indigenous culture and reframing the Australian story. Films are essential educational tools to cross the cultural space that often separates Indigenous learners from their non-Indigenous counterparts.

This paper takes us into the Writing Borderlands, an ambiguous in-between space borrowed from Anzaldúa's concept of Borderlands, where we as PhD students are in a constant state of transition. We argue that theorising from a decolonial position consists of not merely using concepts around coloniality/decoloniality, but also putting its core ideas into practice in the ‘doing’ aspect of research. The writing is a major part of this doing. We enact epistemic disobedience by challenging taken-for-granted conventions of what ‘proper’ academic writing looks like. Writing from a universal standpoint — the type of writing prescribed in theses formats, positivist research methods and ‘proper’ academic writing — has been instrumental in promoting the zero-point epistemologies that prevail through Northern artefacts of knowledge. In other words, we write to de-link from the epistemological assumption of a neutral and detached observational location from which the world is interpreted. In this paper, we discuss the journey we take as PhD students as we attempt to delink and decolonise our writing. Traversing the landscape of the Writing Borderlands, different features arise and fall. Along the way, we come across forks in the road between academic training and the new way we imagine writing decolonially.

In this paper, I further develop Rodolfo Kusch's concept of ‘negation’. I argue that it is an affirmative tool that enables us to sense and feel the other sides or domains of what we call reality and allows us to approach a plateau negated as a horizon of possibilities for conviviality and coexistence. Kusch's concept of negation brings forth an image of the emotions as being intimately interconnected to the values and ethos that form the basis of our behaviours. This paper also argues that Kush's concept of negation must be considered together with Kusch's development of ‘estar’ as a philosophical concept which underpins ‘América profunda’ ways of being in the world (or the multiverse). Finally, I propose that this ‘estar’ requires a ‘corazonar’ of our ways of bringing forth ourselves and our territories to life.

School-based gardens (SBGs) are contributing to improvements in many areas of education, including nutrition, health, connectedness and engagement of students. While considerable research has been conducted in other parts of the world, research in Australia provides limited understanding of the impact of SBGs. The aim of this paper is to give a reflective viewpoint on the impact of SBGs in Australia from the perspective of an Aboriginal philosophical approach called Dadirri. The philosophy highlights an Australian Aboriginal concept, which exists but has different meanings across Aboriginal language groups. This approach describes the processes of deep and respectful listening. The study uses photovoice as a medium to engage students to become researchers in their own right. Using this methodology, students have control over how they report what is significant to them. The use of photovoice as a data collection method is contextualised within the Aboriginal philosophical approach to deep listening. For the first author, an Aboriginal researcher (Clague), the journey is to find a research process that maintains cultural integrity and resonates with the participants by affirming that a culturally sensitive approach to learning is important.

This paper is a meditation on the idea of South-South dialogue, beginning with the South-South Dialogues: Situated Perspectives in Decolonial Epistemologies symposium held at the University of Queensland in 2015. I interrogate the concept of South-South dialogue, apposing it to the Cartesian ‘I think’, and then question the plausibility of the concept. On the basis of a Gadamerian conception of understanding, I suggest that what passes for South-South dialogue is in fact more likely to be North-South or even North-North dialogue. This is buttressed by an examination of Valentin Mudimbe's Parables and Fables. I go on to suggest, however, that by staying within the realm of the concept, in what could be called a Cartesian paradigm, Mudimbe misses the important role that South-South dialogue can play. Drawing on the work of Sara Motta, Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions and the concept of hunhu, I claim that the promise of South-South dialogue is the creation of spaces in which humanity is fostered.

This paper explores how the colonial hegemony of racism in Australia could be disrupted in schools by introducing mandatory reporting of racism by teachers in Australia, and addresses the benefits and risks of mandatory reporting of racism. Using Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as a case study, the ongoing prevalence of racism in schools is established. I then draw on the literature associated with teachers’ mandatory reporting of child abuse and neglect to construct racism as a form of emotional abuse of children. The complexity of racism as evidenced from the literature limits the mandatory reporting to interactional racism by teachers as an antiracist practice. The justification for mandatory reporting covers the emotional stress caused by racism to students and can also be extended to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff in schools. The evidence of learning success where antiracism strategies have been introduced in schools, the opportunity to normalise bystander antiracism by teachers, and the alignment of this reporting initiative with the professional standards of teachers together support a case for mandatory reporting of racism in schools. The arguments against mandatory reporting of racism draw on the generative practices of teachers integrating antiracist discourses in schools.

This paper reports on an Action Research project that investigated the integration of Aboriginal and Western knowledge into science learning in a Montessori classroom in regional Queensland, Australia. Drawing on the local knowledge of fauna of community members, the study explored the teaching of science to 12-year 8–9 students in an Aboriginal independent high school in Queensland. The overall study covered 83 lessons that included an initial Short-beaked echidna study. It applied thematic analysis to data to explore the effect of this integrated approach on students’ pride in heritage, cultural knowledge, learning and the Linnaean zoology taxonomy. Results revealed that the contextualisation of Aboriginal and Western science knowledge strengthened students’ Aboriginal personal identity as well as identities as science learners and status of local Aboriginal knowledge.