The Pleasure and Pain of Aboriginal Being in the University

Aboriginal education is a relatively recent phenomenon within higher education and its inclusion has given rise to complexity that is at once subjugating and liberating. We offer stories of critical moments in teaching within the university to represent the complexity as a continuum of experience ranging from pleasure to pain. Viewed through a critical theoretical lens the stories told demonstrate how the intersectionality of race and power remains relevant to the position of the Aboriginal academic in teaching Aboriginal studies to primarily white undergraduate students or in the teaching of Aboriginal students at the preparatory level.