Reparative Activism in Teacher Education: Hard Learning to Become First Nations’ Allies

As non-indigenous educators, we argue that educators across all Australian sectors must learn to become fit to act as allies of First Nations peoples. We must learn to listen to First Nation voices—directly and from storying media—to build knowledge and understanding so we can work respectfully with indigenous colleagues, communities and students, and educate non-indigenous students and colleagues about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. We tell two stories of our learning as teacher-educators working with First Nations colleagues. In analysing our stories, we consider strategies for culturally responsive teacher-education practice and list further resources to support such practice. We see capacitating younger generations to learn to live justly with one another and the planet as a core responsibility of education professionals, which should underpin our work with colleagues, students, and people in community spaces where students live. Non-indigenous teachers, as beneficiaries of colonialism’s historical legacies, owe responsibility to build current and future teacher understandings that support reparations for landgrabs and associated genocidal actions that make ‘settler-colonial’ Australia possible. Our chapter takes on this ethical responsibility to contribute towards inter-generationally-informed and socially-just citizenry—in the process changing our subjectivities, practices, relations and institutions.