Abstract
There is considerable support in Australia and overseas (especially in the United Kingdom) for decolonization of higher education. Much of this support is based on continuing poor retention and attainment rates of Indigenous higher education students, along with decades of well-founded critique of Eurocentric, masculinist and colonial curriculum and pedagogy. Drawing from a range of Australian examples and first-hand reflections from my journey of writing and teaching on anti-racism within higher education since the late 1970s, this chapter provides an overview of my involvement in efforts to design and deliver Aboriginal higher education and Aboriginal studies, and critical anti-racism curriculum and policy as ‘decolonizing’ moves. I argue against the privileging of curriculum reform in isolation from critical race theory and serious forms of anti-racism amid naive assumptions about the nature of systemic and cultural racisms in Australian universities today. Several pitfalls are highlighted, including a lack of attention to power and governance, culturalist and essentialist representations of Aboriginal people, tokenism, what makes a university a safe and welcoming place for Aboriginal students, racial taxation on Aboriginal staff and becoming an accomplice rather than an ally. These failures point to a range of critical racial and decolonial literacies necessary for the task of decolonizing.