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Everyday Reconciliation in Primary Schools: New Celebrations and Ongoing Silences

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Everyday Reconciliation in Primary Schools: New Celebrations and Ongoing Silences Everyday Reconciliation in Primary Schools: New Celebrations and Ongoing Silences Messages children receive and interpret about reconciliation, Australian history and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and cultures, and race, racism and whiteness December 2018 A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Australian National University. © Copyright by Talia Avrahamzon 2018 All Rights Reserved i Declaration I, Talia Avrahamzon, declare that, this thesis, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original, except as acknowledged in the text, and that the material has not been submitted, either in whole or in part, for a degree at this or any other university. This thesis contains extracts from jointly authored papers arising from this thesis in which I made an equal contribution to and is used here with the permission of the other authors. This thesis does not exceed 115,0001 words in length, exclusive of footnotes, tables, figures and appendices. Signed ………………………………… Date ……………………………. 1 Approval for additional words was granted by the Associate Dean College of Arts and Social Science, ANU. ii Dedication I dedicate my PhD to Edin, Noah and Mika. It was always about you, with you, for you, and to find ways to work together to create a better world for now and the future. To Edin thank you for your deep interest in the topic and for playing your guitar and singing Ed Sheeran during the busiest of days to make me stop and catch my breath. To Noah for counting my words and for ensuring everyday ended with cuddles and puzzles and for your gentle but strong courage. To Mika for constantly dancing and singing very loudly, making sure I joined it, but for also making me realise how important this work is when just the other day you told me you wished your skin was lighter. Thank you for always grounding me and being three of my most important teachers who give me laughter, love and hope in bucket loads. I also dedicate this work to my mum and dad. You taught me to respect, to learn, to question, to be courageous, to listen and to love. You instilled in me both a passion and responsibility to be active in social justice. Thank you for the endless encouragement to dream big dreams, chase them and keep creating them, especially during the past 5 years. Your unconditional love and support was an essential ingredient in the completion of this particular dream. iii Acknowledgements Acknowledgement to Country I wish to acknowledge that the research in this thesis and the writing of this thesis occurred on Ngunnawal Country and I pay my respects and gratitude to this Country for nourishing me, my learning, my growth and my family during my PhD. I wish to acknowledge the Custodians, and pay my respect to their Elders past, present and future. This country continues to be their Country, never ceded, and I stand in solidarity listening and learning how to live on and with this Country. I am humbled by the generosity of the Custodians toward me being on their Country. Other Acknowledgements It has been an enormous privilege to undertake a PhD that I was and continue to be deeply passionate about. No matter how isolating a PhD can be at times, it is far from being a solo effort. This has been a journey not just for me, but for so many who supported me, and I sincerely thank you all for being part of it. To all the children, teachers, Principals, and Directorate staff in the study, I am deeply grateful to your willingness to let me take a glimpse into your everyday. My respect, admiration and appreciation for teachers, school leaders and education policy-makers has grown exponentially during the year I was in the field. To the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, parents, and educators, thank you for entrusting your experiences with me. It was and is a privilege to listen and learn about living and schooling on Ngunnawal Country from you and I honour your diverse experiences and stories including your Countries, wherever they may be. To my Advisory Group. Uncle Vic Chapman – maayubaa nginda – I was fortunate to have you as my school Principal growing up in the 1980s. Your influence in my life has been profound and continues to this day. It was an honour to have had the opportunity to share time with you during the past few years continuing to learn from you. To Scott Gorringe, thank you for sharing your Mithaka approaches to intercultural understanding, for introducing me to Schein and to the workshop we delivered. To Ginibi Robinson – bugalwan - you became my research iv partner, my mentor, my advisor, and my friend. Your incredible strength, courage and humour grounded me and provided direction and I am forever grateful for your endless generosity of being part of this journey with me. To my Panel. Jerry Schwab, you suggested Bourdieu and Ortner well before you were my supervisor and I am grateful to your commitment to be my supervisor even after your retirement. I missed your open door and friendly smile around the corridors these last months but am indebted to your detailed reading of my chapters, our discussions about the complexities of this space, and your endless encouragement for me to pursue the way I wished to write this thesis. To Sharon Bessell, for your constant offers to meet face to face to work through my confusions and for supporting me from the beginning of my PhD to navigate some of the intricacies of academia. To Gawaian Bodkin-Andrews – dadjariguru – for your constant push for me to question my standpoints and navigate how to challenge epistemic racism in my approach, analysis and writing. Thank you for always coming from D’harawal Country to Ngunnawal Country for my panel meetings and for making time to meet at UTS and in Toronto. Finally, to Julie Lahn for stepping in as Chair during the last months, and for the support you gave also as HDR convenor. To all of you for your detailed constructive feedback and endless belief in the research and me. I have been the envy of many a peer and it’s been an honour having you as my panel. I also wish to acknowledge the contribution of previous panel members who were involved in the study earlier on. To the Board and staff of the Sir Roland Wilson Foundation for the amazing opportunities the scholarship created – travel, collaboration, networking, access to senior public servants and industry. It has been an experience of a lifetime and has opened paths not only for me but also for the research to be shared. To Ken Henry for always being open to listen and share your experiences. To Joan Uhr for your care, advice, and continued interest in the topic even after your retirement. To Michael Lye for your support, honesty and integrity in navigating being both an academic and a public servant within a controversial space. To Leon Donovan and Brian Stacey for your leadership, mentoring and encouragement of me to continue to question the paradoxes I was seeing in the office and on the ground and to apply for the scholarship. To the staff and scholars at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, especially those who offered to read my work, suggested readings and theorists, invited me to present lectures, were happy to be roped in (!) to co-organise events across the ANU, hung out with me on weekends at the office, and to those who knew to drag me out for a coffee to get a break from the screen. A particular thank you to Tracy Deasy, Denise Steele, Jerry Schwab, Deidre v Howard-Wagner, Kaely Woods, Mandy Yap, Janet Hunt, Will Sanders, Elizabeth Ganter, Francis Markham, Annick Thomassin, Kirrily Jordan, Julie Lahn and Sam Faulkner. To the Thursday lunchtime women weavers. To Kaely for being my in-house IT woman and PhD bestie. To Deirdre for creating new and exciting pathways. To Hilary Bek for her careful copyediting of the thesis. To the many policy makers and change makers that I was privileged to meet along the way who expressed an interest and shared your advice and knowledge, even if it was just over coffee. It was this interest that made me realise the importance of ensuring the applicability of the thesis to those on the ground and to keep it real especially: Coralie McCalister, Heidi Yates, Jodie Griffiths-Cook, Geoff Richardson, Toni Bauman, Andrea Kelly, Fiona Pederson, Asmi Wood, Glen Howard, Liana Dobson, Patrick Chapman, Tim Rowse, Mick Dodson, Bill Fogarty, Tony Dreise and Peter Yu. To my national and International research colleagues, friends and mentors, particularly Dr Jessica Walton, Dr Melinda Herron, Dr Ciara Keenan, and Professor Daniel Bar-Tal. It has been a privilege to meet and learn directly from the people behind the work that I use so often. I am indebted to the opportunity Professor Bar-Tal afforded in writing a book chapter together early on, and for my time in Belfast at Queens University, meeting with Professor Paul Connolly and learning about school ethnographies on race and racism and reconciliation in intractable conflicts. Closer to home, I am just as grateful to the opportunities offered at ANU to meet with other Indigenous Studies scholars and academics across campus particularly through the NCIS research labs and conferences, some of whom became writing partners and good friends - Annick Thomassin, Mandy Yap, Annie Te One, Kaely Woods, Catherine Holmes, Claire Rafferty, Ben Wilson, Corinne Walsh, Simone Georg, Melissa Lovell, Maeve Powell, Sam Provost, Siddarth Shirodkar, Katy Smith, and Tess McGirr.
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