• DOI:10.1080/03050060302549
• Corpus ID: 145806981

Indigenous Education: Addressing current issues and developments

@article{May2003IndigenousEA,
  title={Indigenous Education: Addressing current issues and developments},
  author={Stephen Andrew May and Sheila Aikman},
  journal={Comparative Education},
  year={2003},
  volume={39},
  pages={139 - 145}
}

• S. May, S. Aikman
• Published 1 April 2003
• Political Science
• Comparative Education

This special issue of Comparative Education focuses on current issues and developments in both the theory and practice of indigenous education from around the world. It draws together indigenous and non-indigenous authors who are recognised as leading authorities in the field of indigenous education, by indigenous and non-indigenous peoples alike, and explores a range of widely differing national contexts where indigenous educational initiatives are being pursued. The papers comprise a combination of 'traditional' academic articles, more informal commentary, and autobiographical statements. This departure from usual academic conventions was not taken lightly. It arises from a direct concern to include the actual voices of indigenous writers, alongside a specific attempt to situate western academic discourse, and its conventions, as only one of a number of epistemological traditions, albeit an extremely powerful and influential one. This is not an attempt to delegitimise or 'dumb down' academic enquiry, but it is an attempt to problematise its often unquestioned normative ascendancy and use. Indeed, the hegemonic construction and imposition of western knowledge and the concomitant delegitimation of indigenous knowledges, particularly via education, is a central concern of all of the authors represented here, as well as a consistent feature in wider debates on indigenous education and indigenous political entitlements. In this latter respect, while all the authors are concerned with formal education for indigenous peoples, the primary focus of this issue, their discussions are also inevitably situated in relation to larger indigenous struggles for democracy, social justice and self-determination, of which they form a part. These struggles relate, in turn, to the consistent social, political and educational minoritisation and marginalisation, even evisceration, of indigenous peoples, along with their languages and cultures, as the result of (predominantly European) colonisation.