Decolonising memories: Indigenous Australians' memories of starting school

This chapter draws on data from a research project conducted during 2010-2012, which explored memories about starting school in Australia. The data consist of over ninety Australian participants' recollections of starting school between 1928 and 1995. The participants were immigrants to Australia. (n=37), as well as Indigenous (n=11) and non-Indigenous (n=50) Australians. Intergnerational aspects of starting school have been addressed by involving different generations of the same family (Turunen & Dockett, 2013). Recollections of starting school were collected during autobiographical narrative interviews. A smaller component of the research project specifically sought Indigenous Australians' memories of starting school. This chapter examines those memories in light of oral communication traditions within Indigenous culturesin Australia and in response to the influences of colonisation on Indigenous Australians' experiences of schooling. It highlights the importance of decolonisation in both the sharing and dissemination of Indigenous memories of starting school.