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Truth-Telling the Dark Tourism of Australian Teacher Education

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Resisting Neoliberalism in Higher Education Volume I

Part of the book series: Palgrave Critical University Studies ((PCU))

Abstract

Dark tourism has emerged from places that give testimony to the human capacity to eliminate political and cultural difference through genocide. Often within a truth and reconciliation framework, such places allow participants to walk through history and serve to give hope that these pogroms will never happen again (but of course they do). This chapter draws from my experience of visiting such places and as an Aboriginal teacher educator tour guide, truth-telling the realities of colonialism in contemporary Australian teacher education. It explores current challenges in designing and teaching ‘truth telling’ dark tours from Aboriginal standpoints within teacher education where, increasingly, the pre-paid ‘student experience’ dictates curriculum and pedagogical destinations and triggers institutional surveillance, demanding that the tour guide be less provocative, and more performative.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Chris Andersen, “Critical Indigenous Studies: From Difference to Density”. Cultural Studies Review 15 (2009) 80; Tracey Bunda, Lew Zipin and Marie Brennan, “Negotiating University ‘Equity’ from Indigenous Standpoints: A Shaky Bridge,” International Journal of Inclusive Education 16 (2012) 941.

  2. 2.

    Meaning ‘empty land’; lands deemed unoccupied by Europeans in “discovery” claims – see Robert J. Miller, Jacinta Ruru, Larissa Behrendt and Tracey Lindberg, Discovering Indigenous Lands: The Doctrine of Discovery in the English Colonies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

  3. 3.

    David Lloyd and Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonial Logics and the Neoliberal Regime,” Settler Colonial Studies 6 (2016) 109; 109.

  4. 4.

    Donna J. M. Phillips, Resisting Contradictions: Non-indigenous Pre-service Teacher Responses to Critical Indigenous Studies, Unpublished Thesis (Ph.D.) (Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology, 2011).

  5. 5.

    Donna J. M. Phillips, “Resisting Contradictions”.

  6. 6.

    Linda T. Smith, Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples (London/New York: Zed Books, 1999).

  7. 7.

    John Lennon and Malcolm Foley, Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster (London: Cassell, 2000).

  8. 8.

    Bunda et al., 946.

  9. 9.

    Bunda et al., 941–2.

  10. 10.

    Bunda et al., 942, Original italics.

  11. 11.

    Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society 1 (2012) 1; 2.

  12. 12.

    Martin Nakata, “The Cultural Interface,” The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 36 (2007) 7; Sandra R. Phillips, Jean Phillips, Susan L. Whatman and Juliana M. McLaughlin, “Introduction: Issues in (Re)Contesting Indigenous Knowledges and Indigenous Studies,” The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 36 (2007) 1.

  13. 13.

    Bronwyn L. Fredericks, “Utilising the Concept of Pathway as a Framework for Indigenous Research,” Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 36 (2007) 15.

  14. 14.

    Donna J. M. Phillips, “Resisting Contradictions”, 46.

  15. 15.

    Clare Land, Decolonizing Solidarity. Dilemmas and Directions for Supporters of Indigenous Struggles. (London: Zed Books, 2015), 86–87.

  16. 16.

    Gary Foley, “Foreword,” in Clare Land, Decolonizing Solidarity. Dilemmas and Directions for Supporters of Indigenous Struggles (London: Zed Books, 2015) ix; x.

  17. 17.

    Foley, x.

  18. 18.

    Lennon and Foley, Dark Tourism; Phillip R. Stone, “A Dark Tourism Spectrum: Towards a Typology of Death and Macabre Related Tourist Sites, Attractions and Exhibitions,” Turizam 54 (2006) 145; Phillip R. Stone and Richard Sharpley, “Consuming Dark Tourism: A Thanatological Perspective,” Annals of Tourism Research 35 (2008) 574.

  19. 19.

    A. V. Seaton, “Guided by the Dark: From Thanatopsis to Thanatourism,” Journal of Heritage Studies, 2 (1996) 234; 236.

  20. 20.

    Phillip R. Stone, “A Dark Tourism Spectrum”.

  21. 21.

    Carolyn Strange and Michael Kempa, “Shades of Dark Tourism. Alcatraz and Robben Island,” Annals of Tourism Research 30 (2003) 386; 394.

  22. 22.

    Phillip R. Stone, “A Dark Tourism Spectrum”.

  23. 23.

    Deborah Bird Rose, “Anthropocene Noir,” Arena Journal 41/42 (2013) 206; 211.

  24. 24.

    Rose, “Anthropocene Noir”, 211–212.

  25. 25.

    Patrick Wolfe, “Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8 (2006) 387.

  26. 26.

    Hannah Arendt. Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil (London: Penguin Classics, 2006).

  27. 27.

    Linda T. Smith, Decolonizing methodologies, 89.

  28. 28.

    Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “R-Words: Refusing Research,” in Humanising Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with youth and Communities, ed. Django Paris and Maisha T. Winn (Thousand Oakes, CA: Sage, 2014) 223.

  29. 29.

    Rose, “Anthropocene Noir”.

  30. 30.

    Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, Sharon Stein, Cash Ahenakew and Dallas Hunt, “Mapping Interpretations of Decolonization in the Context of Higher Education,” 4 (2015) 21.

  31. 31.

    Richard Frankland, Muriel Bamblett and Peter Lewis, “‘Forever Business’: A Framework for Maintaining and Restoring Safety in Aboriginal Victoria,” Indigenous Law Bulletin, 7 (2011) 27; 28.

  32. 32.

    Frankland et al., 28.

  33. 33.

    Irene Watson, “Settled and Unsettled Spaces: Are We Free to Roam?” in Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Critical Engagement, ed. Aileen Moreton-Robinson (North Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2007), 33–46.

  34. 34.

    Stone, “A Dark Tourism Spectrum”, 148.

  35. 35.

    Wolfe, “Settler colonialism”, 383.

  36. 36.

    Rose, “Anthropocene Noir”, 21.

  37. 37.

    Tuck and Yang, “R-Words: Refusing Research”.

  38. 38.

    Darya Maoz, “The Mutual Gaze,” Annals of Tourism Research 33 (2006) 221.

  39. 39.

    Martin Marker, “Indigenous Knowledges, Universities, and Alluvial Zones of Paradigm Change,” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, (2017), 2.

  40. 40.

    Phillips, “Resisting Contradictions”, 26.

  41. 41.

    Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor”, 2.

  42. 42.

    Dwayne T. Donald. “Forts, Curriculum, and Indigenous Métissage: Imagining Decolonization of Aboriginal-Canadian Relations in Educational Contexts,” First Nations Perspectives 2 (2009) 1; 5.

  43. 43.

    See for example Thalia Anthony, “Why are So Many Indigenous Kids in Detention in the NT in the First Place?” August 4, 2016.

  44. 44.

    Deborah Bird Rose, “Nourishing Terrains - Department of the Environment and Energy.” (n.d.).

  45. 45.

    Lyndon Murphy, Who’s Afraid of The Dark? Australia’s Administration in Aboriginal Affairs. Unpublished Dissertation for Master of Public Administration (The University of Queensland: Centre for Public Administration, 2000); 6–7.

  46. 46.

    Darya Maoz, “The Mutual Gaze”, 224.

  47. 47.

    Donald, 2.

  48. 48.

    Donald, 2.

  49. 49.

    Donald, 3.

  50. 50.

    Maoz, 223.

  51. 51.

    Stone, “A Dark Tourism Spectrum”.

  52. 52.

    See for example Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Phnom Penh (n.d.).

  53. 53.

    Marker, 2.

  54. 54.

    See for example, Peter Hohenhaus, “Darkometer - Dark Tourism – The Guide to Dark & Weird Places Around the World”.

  55. 55.

    See for example, Shahak Shapira, “Yolocaust – The Aftermath”.

  56. 56.

    Maoz, 229.

  57. 57.

    Rose, “Anthropocene Noir”.

  58. 58.

    Bunda et al., 945.

  59. 59.

    Bunda et al., 944.

  60. 60.

    Mat Jakobi, “A Stab in the Dark. Anonymous Student Evaluations of Aboriginal Teacher Educators,” Teachers College Record, Commentary, 21 September, 2016.

  61. 61.

    bell hooks. “Critical Interrogation: Talking Race, Resisting Racism”, para 2.

  62. 62.

    Andreotti et al.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Victoria University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Mat Jakobi

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  1. Mat Jakobi
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Correspondence to Mat Jakobi .

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  1. School of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Dorothy Bottrell

  2. School of Education, University of the Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore, QLD, Australia

    Catherine Manathunga

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Jakobi, M. (2019). Truth-Telling the Dark Tourism of Australian Teacher Education. In: Bottrell, D., Manathunga, C. (eds) Resisting Neoliberalism in Higher Education Volume I. Palgrave Critical University Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95942-9_5

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