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students are exposed to no aspects of Indigenous Australian histories or cultures, or any
positive representations.
7.12 Category 9: Representations in Social Studies Curriculum
7.12.1 Discourses of Indigenous Australians as monocultural.
Rather than positioning students as having no prior or background knowledge on the topic of
Aboriginal life prior to British colonisation, the first activity for Unit 7: Aboriginal life in
Living history (Gurry, 1987) requires students to identify what they know, or think to be
correct in a way that engages students in active thinking and re-thinking processes.
Interestingly, in this chapter Aboriginals are also overtly referred to as “Australians” (Gurry,
1987, p. 99) rather than only as Aboriginals, Aborigines or Australian Aboriginals. Rather
than viewing Indigenous Australians as some type of exotic ‘Other’, this chapter clearly
communicates to students that Indigenous Australians are the first inhabitants of Australia—
long before British colonisation. For example, a question reads: “One way of starting this
investigation will be for you to test yourself—how much do you know about Australians
before the arrival of the Europeans?” (Gurry, 1987, p. 99).
All of the thirty questions that make up the first activity, position Indigenous Australians as
the topic of focus, not mediated through an understanding of any other cultures, for example
a dominant non-Indigenous culture; nor are Indigenous topics included as legitimized through
any other cultural knowledges. Sample questions, which students answer true or false to with
the accurate answers presented throughout the chapter, include:
3 Aborigines used to wander aimlessly all year—they were nomadic
11 Aborigines in all parts of Australia lived in the same way
23 Aboriginal ceremonies were for amusement only
26 Aborigines could only pass on their history and culture in story form (Gurry,
1987, p. 99)
Through these types of questions, Indigenous Australians are clearly positioned as having a
variety of characteristics, qualities and features attributed to them, rather than through a
monocultural view of traditional Indigenous Australian lifestyles.
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