‘We wanted to be boss’: self-determination, Indigenous governance and the Yipirinya School

ABSTRACT Much historical scholarship on Indigenous education policy focuses on attempts to assimilate Indigenous peoples. Meanwhile, educational policy debates tend to focus on achievement, framed by deficit. Rarely considered are strategic political actions by Indigenous groups to remodel schooling. This paper examines how Indigenous groups have embraced opportunities to construct new Indigenous futures through schooling, and have built modern Indigenous governance in the process. Through a case study focusing on the successful effort to establish the Indigenous-controlled Yipirinya School for town camp children in Alice Springs (Mparntwe), Australia, between 1976-1983, I show how Indigenous educators and their allies built community-controlled schooling to support a self-governed multicultural Indigenous community. On reclaimed Indigenous land, these visionaries overtly challenged the constraints of settler colonial state-led policies of self-determination and later self-management. They were central to constituting a new Indigenous political leadership in Alice Springs which saw control of schooling as central to Indigenous futures.