Chapter 9: Dreaming Futures: An Empirical Analysis of Indigenous Australian Students’ Aspirations, Self-Concepts, and Realities

These quotes encapsulate the devastating impact that nation-states throughout the world have had on the self-esteem and identity of Indigenous peoples. This has contributed to a worldwide phenomenon whereby Indigenous peoples continue to remain the most impoverished groups, trapped in the “Fourth World” within nation-states. Despite decades of reform aiming to “close the gap,” addressing this international issue is still far from our reach, and in fact in a number of countries the gap continues to widen, particularly in regard to educational outcomes. For example, a recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study (Artelt, Baumert, Julius-McElvary, & Peschar, 2003) has demonstrated that Australia is falling behind other industrialized countries in terms of the ever-increasing gap in academic attainments of its best and poorest students, the latter of whom are overrepresented by Indigenous Australians. Yet, as a leading Indigenous politician has emphasized, “Education is the corner stone of social justice, because it is the basis of opportunity…. It is education that can bring about equity— equity of outcomes” (Burney, 2003).