The Decolonial Imperative—Text and Context: A Response to Amani Bell and Gulwanyang Moran

Research is not innocent, Linda Tuhiwai Smith tell us (2013). As a critical form of knowledge production about Indigenous people, research has been forged in the body of imperialism and the practice of colonialism and must now be the object of decolonisation. The revealing responses to this work of two contemporary academics, one Indigenous (Gulwanyang Moran) and one non-Indigenous (Amani Bell), have elicited my reflections on the significance of this work being understood through our subjectivities and everyday lives amidst the broader socio-political context. This contemplation has drawn me to consider how this work was both produced out of and through dynamic contexts of Indigenous resistance and activism, weaving through lives, thoughts and experiences, of those within and outside of the academy. My particular position as a settler, non-Indigenous academic in Aboriginal Education at a time of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander challenge to the coloniality of research and education becomes the prism through which I explore the limits of my initial reading of the work and the ongoing imperative of decoloniality in the institutions of research and education.