'Are you calling me a racist?': teaching critical whiteness theory in Indigenous sovereignty

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between critical whiteness theory and Indigenous sovereignty in the university classroom. Based on the author's extensive and problematic experience of teaching Indigenous content to non-Indigenous students, it demonstrates how critical whiteness theory can be used to shift the pedagogical focus from the racialised oppression of Indigenous Australians to the white middle-class subject position that is a direct product of this oppression. After critically examining the responses of a range of students (who identified variously as Australian, American, African, Asian, Anglo, Koori, male, female, hetero and 'straight') to the challenge of locating their own position within racialised networks of power, I present Indigenous sovereignty as the only ground on which subjective differences can be usefully and ethically negotiated in a ‘postcolonising' Australia.