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Moving and Dancing Towards Decolonisation in Education: An Example from an Indigenous Australian Performance Classroom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2015

Elizabeth Mackinlay
Elizabeth Mackinlay*
Affiliation:
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, 4072, Australia
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Abstract

In this paper I explore the special type of thinking, moving and dancing place which is opened up for decolonisaton when students engage in an embodied pedagogical practice in Indigenous education. I examine what decolonisation means in this context by describing the ways in which the curriculum, the students and me, and more generally the discipline of ethnomusicology itself, undergo a process to question, critique, and move aside the pedagogical script of colonialism in order to allow Indigenous ways of understanding music and dance to be presented, privileged and empowered. Key questions are: What is the relationship between embodiment and disembodiment and decolonisation and colonisation? In what ways is embodiment more than, or other than, the presence of moving bodies? In what ways is performativity an aspect of power/knowledge/subject formations? How can it be theorised? What could the pedagogical scripts of decolonisation look like?

Type
Research Article
Information
The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education , Volume 34 , 2005 , pp. 113 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2005

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