| Papers & Workshops |
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Michele Collins
School of Indigenous Australian Studies, James Cook University, Yarrabah Campus, Queensland, Australia
This paper will firstly pay homage to Phillip Stewart, the first qualified Indigenous teacher in Queensland; a member of the Stolen Generations who grew up on Palm Island. It will then endeavour to offer some insights to the things he taught me as I worked for him through the last five years of his life. Based partly on a personal journey, the paper will explore some of the western discourses that can be challenged through living and working in the (for me) cross-cultural setting of an Aboriginal community in Far North Queensland in the 1990's, and some of the ways in which the tenacity of western discourses reveal themselves. It concludes with a call for non-Indigenous Australians in particular, to personalise their knowledge of, and commitment to, Indigenous Australian and Indigenous issues.
RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
5-9 July 2000