For at least 20 years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, leaders, educators and mental health workers have been calling on governments, institutions, professional bodies, educators and practitioners to embrace culturally appropriate methodologies of practice in order to address the significant social and health disparities experienced by Indigenous peoples. Psychology as a discipline of knowledge and as a profession has the capacity to be at the forefront of these endeavours. Despite much well-intended rhetoric and some important exceptions, to date these calls have yet to be fulfilled. In this chapter we argue that a seismic shift is required in the culture and practice of psychology whereby the definitions of knowledge construction and education are de-colonised, challenged and contested. This is articulated within theoretical frameworks offered by Foucault, and Nakata’s Cultural Interface Theory, situated within Freire’s critical pedagogy. Evidence from the Australian Indigenous Psychology Education Project (AIPEP) and the decolonised curriculum of the Bachelor of Behavioural Science at the University of Notre Dame, Australia (Fremantle campus) demonstrates how psychology education can meet the needs not only of Indigenous students, but that can address the unearned privilege of the non-Indigenous settler, and therefore deconstruct the truth claims that serve to reinforce racialised divisions that maintain social inequality.
The information contained on this website has been sourced by the Australian Indigenous Psychology Education Project (AIPEP) and AIPEP 2. The first AIPEP was funded by the Australian Government Office of Teaching and Learning. AIPEP 2 is part of the Transforming Indigenous Mental Health and Wellbeing Project, funded by the Million Minds Mission Grant. The views expressed in this website do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Government Office of Teaching and Learning or the Million Minds Mission Grant.
Several of the images used throughout this website are credited to Chris Lewis