Proposing Indigenist Standpoint Pedagogy and ‘placestory’ together as an intervention to dis-place colonial inheritance in subject English in Australia

At the time of Federation, education in and of English played an important role in establishing British literary traditions, language conventions and aesthetics as the normative cultural reference point for contemporary Australia. The colonial inheritance of this legacy continues to haunt subject English today. This paper proposes Indigenist Standpoint Pedagogy alongside placestory as a pedagogic orientation to critically engage in the textual work of subject English and to interrogate how knowledge is (re)produced in-place within networks of power and cultural dominance. From this starting point, teachers and young people can grapple with the complex routes that constitute our current transcultural condition but also create opportunities to co-author local placestories that illuminate the ways diverse histories, cultures and languages are entangled and implicated. This approach may contribute to the unsettling of colonial inheritance and contribute to re-writing a complex narrative of postcolonial Australia.