| Summary: | One of the many fascinating problems raised in recent
issues of the
Australian Journal of Indigenous Education
(AJIE)is that of Indigenous autonomy in education.
Although opinions differed about the extent to which
Indigenous people currently exercise educational autonomy
in various situations, there was wide agreement that there
ought to be Indigenous control or ‘ownership’ of all
knowledge relating to Indigenous life and culture, past and
present. Sister Anne Gardner, then Principal of
Murrupurtyanuwu Catholic School in NT, explained (1996: 20)
how she decided to ‘let go, to move away from the dominant
role as Principal’, in order that Indigenous persons could
take control. She had been helped to this conclusion by
reading Paulo Freire, Martin Buber and Hedley Beare, and,
within the NT itself, ‘people of that educational calibre,
such as Beth Graham, Sr Teresa Ward, Fran Murray, Stephen
Harris, all pleading with us to allow education to be owned
by Aboriginal people’. Sr Gardner held that ‘Aboriginal
people never act as “leader”, a view shared by her
designated Indigenous successor, Teresita Puruntayemeri,
then Principal-in-Training of Murrupurtyanuwu Catholic
School, who wrote (1996: 24-25) that ‘for a Tiwi peron it
is too difficult to stand alone in leadership’. One way to
share the burdens of leadership is, she suggests, to
‘perform different dances in the Milmaka ring, sometimes in
pairs or in a group’.
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