One of the biggest debates in Australian Indigenous education today revolves around the many
contested and competing ways of knowledge about Indigenous cultures and the means by which
Indigenous intellectual traditions and knowledges make the journey into mainstream educational
settings. Grounded in Bakhtin's theories of dialogue and voice this book explores the
polyphonic nature of power relations performance roles and pedagogical texts in the context of
teaching and learning Indigenous Australian women's music and dance. In this discussion the
author focuses on her experiences as a lecturer in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Studies Unit at the University of Queensland and her involvement in this educational setting
with students and guest lecturers performers. The performance classroom is examined as a
potential site for disturbing and dislocating dominant modes of representation of Indigenous
women's performance through the construction mediation and negotiation of Indigenous knowledge
from and between both non-Indigenous and Indigenous voices. This book contains a CD with video
clips illustrating the ways in which an embodied approach to teaching and learning happens in
this classroom context.
