Lessons to learn, discourses to change, relationships to build: How Decolonising Race Theory can articulate the interface between school leadership and Aboriginal students’ schooling experiences

When conversations about Aboriginal student educational success emerge, they are usually focussed on the high levels of underachievement and disengagement. School leadership is seen as critical to contributing to student outcomes. For Aboriginal students, creating inclusive learning environments that support culture and identity, and building trusting relationships with families and community members are also critical goals. As part of the Aboriginal Voices project, this paper uses Decolonising Race Theory (Moodie, 2018) to analyse interviews with four Principals in urban, regional, and rural locations to understand their perceptions and experiences of leading Aboriginal education in schools. From the interviews, three key themes emerged: leading culture, identity and school–community relationships, leading curriculum, pedagogy and teacher development, and leading student participation and achievement. Decolonising Race Theory (Moodie, 2018) is applied as an analytical tool to view these themes through a critical Indigenous lens to understand the Principals’ discourses around Aboriginal student experiences at school and their role in improving outcomes. This revealed contradictory positionings within and between Principal comments, from blaming students and their families for their underachievement, to implementing cultural programmes to build confidence to become self-determining adults. This data provides new ways of thinking through discourses about Aboriginal students and their families, communities, schools, teachers and Principals, and challenges some of the ‘regimes of truth’ that position these groups in particular ways.


Introduction
Global literature indicates that school leadership is a crucial component in improving outcomes for First Nations students (Khalifa et al, 2018). A review of school leadership research found that broadly speaking, schooling systems in settler-colonial countries continue to marginalise First Nations peoples. If this context is not accounted for, social justice and reform is misinformed and consequently, undermined (Khalifa et al., 2018). In Australia, the education reform strategy of closing the gap between Aboriginal 1 and Torres strait Islander students and non-Indigenous students has largely been unsuccessful (Commonwealth of Australia, 2020). This focus on the 'gap' is at odds with research that identifies leadership that builds relationships with their local Aboriginal community as central to success in implementing cultural programmes to support Aboriginal student identity and developing teacher capacity in implementing culturally responsive curriculum and pedagogy (Burgess and Lowe, 2020;Khalifa et al., 2018).
Schools, as institutions of the state, are caught in an uneasy paradox of representing western colonial values and yet dealing everyday with the ongoing deleterious effects of colonisation on Aboriginal students. Ma Rhea's (2018, p. 120) concept the "colonial mind" is one way in which to understand how education reflects and operates within western hegemonic values based on an organisational philosophy of a hierarchical alignment of power. This structure inherently privileges Principals, teachers, and school practices over the aspirations of Indigenous students and their communities (Burgess & Lowe, 2020). This battleground places enormous pressure on principals, schools, and local Aboriginal communities to mitigate these effects to improve Aboriginal student outcomes. Within this context, principals navigating this landscape are often undermined by government-imposed accountability measures focussed on comparing schools through test results and implementing standardised remediation programmes (Trimmer et al., 2019). This is aggravated by the reality that Principals and teachers often lack personal and professional experience of working with Aboriginal communities, limiting their knowledge of culturally appropriate protocols to engage in respectful and reciprocal relationships with families and communities (Lowe et al., 2021a(Lowe et al., , 2021b. Persistent deficit representations and discourses about Aboriginal people propagate misunderstandings and misconceptions between the state, including schools and communities. Various articulations of these discourses appear in government policy documents, strategic plans, and reports (Buxton, 2017;Gillan et al., 2017). Compounding this are the effects of colonisation, racism and power relations which are invisible to the broader community and so efforts to challenge these go largely unheeded (Bodkin-Andrews & Carlson, 2014). Where these discourses are revealed, neo-colonial ideologies position Aboriginal people as responsible for their own disadvantage and so implement policies imbued with discourses of deficiency, responsibilisation and government as 'saviour' . Moreover, there is an obsession with standards that reportedly produce 'good quality' data which are presented as 'common sense' solutions to the 'problem' of Aboriginal student underachievement .
Neo-colonial education ideologies ignore what Aboriginal people perceive as success including future aspirations that are likely to be different from Western hegemonic individualised measures of achievement (Moodie et al., in press). School success is largely equated with educational achievement, post-school tertiary options or gainful employment. This is evident in key government educational policy documents such as the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019) as a document that articulates a national vision of educational goals for young people that clearly aligns education with economic prosperity. Framing employment as the key purpose of education signposts the assimilatory intentions of such policies. Conversely, what counts as success for Indigenous peoples often centres on participation in community life including responsibility for self, others, and Country 2 (Moodie et al., in press). The purpose of schooling therefore includes the importance of culture and language programmes that reaffirm Aboriginal identity and the importance of family, community, and Country (Lowe et al., 2021a(Lowe et al., , 2021b. This focus on collective responsibility, community aspirations and holistic leadership (Ma Rhea, 2018), transcends competition and individual achievement and is therefore at odds with western interpretations of the purposes of schooling, signposting another uneasy paradox for principals and schools to navigate.

Researcher positionality
This paper is a collaborative inquiry by a diverse authorship team of teacherresearchers. Author 1 is a non-Aboriginal educator born and working in Gadigal Country. She has worked in Aboriginal education for 38 years and is parent of Aboriginal children involved in local Aboriginal community organisations and sports. Author 2 is a non-Indigenous scholar of German, Scottish, and Welsh descent, born on Gunditjmara Country. She currently lives and works on Wadawurrung Country and focusses on challenging binary discourses of race to educate other non-Indigenous peoples about positionality and developing more nuanced understandings and skills for cross-cultural work. Author 3 is of Dja Dja Wurrung and Settler descent. He lives on Wurundjeri Country in Naarm and researches ways that the schooling system can be decolonised to support the learning outcomes of all students.

Leadership
The issue of effective, responsive, and respectful leadership has been identified as central to Aboriginal students' educational outcomes (Trimmer et al., 2019). It is argued that school leadership is paramount to fostering student engagement and improving their educational outcomes, and that full partnerships between student homes and schools are necessary for enhancing children's learning . Despite the importance and impact on the success of First Nations students, Indigenous, decolonised school leadership research is an emerging field and has been described as having a dearth of empirical evidence in the literature (Trimmer et al., 2019), which has impacted the scope of this literature review and the appropriateness of older literature in this space.
In a series of systematic reviews on Indigenous Australian education , the role of school leadership in fostering educational outcomes for Aboriginal students in schools was identified as critical to cultivating effective relational frameworks between Indigenous communities and school staff. They provided evidence of the effect of relational leadership in initiating authentic school and community projects and in doing so, advanced understanding of the factors motivating parents to exercise their agency. However, school leaders who are not aware of the contextual factors, such as differences in expectations and values of communities and differences in what is valued systemically and by family and community, have caused tensions and disengagement. The key message of these systematic reviews is that leadership must extend "beyond the school gate" and principals need to act as advocates for the school and the community.
Whether relating to school culture, teaching practice, or educational outcomes, decisive, informed, purposeful, and adaptive leadership is identified as critical to driving change (Eley & Berryman, 2018;Trimmer et al., 2019). In schools with significantly higher Indigenous populations, there has been a considered and centralised collective effort to co-constructing curriculum in ways that empower community leaders, serve individual students, and reflect community aspirations (Lowe et al., 2019). The role of principals in these partnerships is one of being open to shared or both-ways leadership . Both-ways leadership is often used to describe a collaborative, collective and/or shared leadership model between principals and Aboriginal communities based on a deep knowledge of the local cultural context and visible efforts to meet community needs (Trimmer et al., 2019). Priest et al., (2008) note that "An ideal 'both ways' environment places equal value and respect on quality practices from both … Non-Aboriginal and … Aboriginal cultures" (author emphasis) (p. 118). Both-ways leadership and yarning within the intercultural space, where both cultures listen and learn from each other, are noted by  as a necessary precursor for culturally relevant conversations and development of collaborative trusting community relationships. Aboriginal families identify these qualities as being critical to their willingness to engage with the school (Barr & Saltmarsh, 2014).
As leadership directly informs curricular, pedagogical, and teacher professional development, it is critical that leaders respectfully acknowledge cultural identity, knowledges, and community protocols to facilitate the inclusion of these in their school policies and practices. Nakata (2007) argues that leadership is central to influencing the development of genuine understanding and acknowledgement of Indigenous ways of knowing within school, noting that when school leaders engage with, facilitate, and support respectful teaching and learning, the cultural interface is mobilised as a both-ways learning space (Nakata, 2007). The critical issue is the contrast between whether Indigenous communities are brought into strategic leadership discussions to seek their guidance and/or integrated into the core functioning of the school, or in the worst case, ticking the box as a school auditing process. When leaders lack knowledge and understanding of and commitment to local Aboriginal peoples, cultures and contexts, tensions emerge and they struggle to impact student learning and outcomes (Trimmer et al., 2019). Schools hindered by such leadership are seen as sites of low expectations, ineffective teaching and learning and antipathetic attitudes towards Aboriginal communities.
Principals who support and facilitate culture and language programmes in their schools are better able to gain trust and develop authentic relationships with their local Aboriginal community (Lowe et al., 2021a(Lowe et al., , 2021b. Anderson (2010) and Lane (2010) note that where co-leadership between key local language advocates, Elders and the school principal occurred, the likelihood of success is much higher. Where local Aboriginal language/culture experts and Elders were trusted to deliver these programmes, school-community relationships strengthened, and Aboriginal people were encouraged and empowered to take a more active role in other areas of school life (Lowe, 2017).
While state and federal government policies have pressed schools to establish collaborations with Indigenous families and partner with Aboriginal communities, the realities of bringing these to fruition are challenging. As Shay and Lampert (2020) note, this renders problematic understandings of what community, engagement and partnerships mean, does not acknowledge the power imbalance in school-community relationships and offers little evidence that this approach will in fact improve Aboriginal student outcomes.

Context: the Aboriginal Voices project
Aboriginal Voices is a multi-phase project that aims to investigate Aboriginal students, parents, communities, teachers, and principals' experiences and understanding of the educational needs and aspirations of Aboriginal students. Equally important, the project investigates the impact of schooling on Aboriginal students' engagement and success at secondary school, and the experiences of schooling from the family/community perspectives (Moodie et al., this edition, 2021). This project is a cross-sectional case study across six schools in urban, regional and rural areas of NSW. While this project included six schools, only four principals were available for interview. As the direct conduit between staff, the school system, students, families, and the wider community, responsibility for implementing government policy, managing teaching and learning, and overseeing student participation and achievement, principal insights into what constitutes effective education for Aboriginal students is critical to understanding an 'insiders' view of leading in schools.
Schools were chosen to reflect demographic diversity and principals with various levels of experience in Aboriginal education. Information at the time of interviewing, is as follows: Bev is the principal of a regional coastal public high school where 52% of students sit within the bottom quartile of the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (IECSA). Eleven percent of 753 students identify as Aboriginal and 11% have a language background other than English (LBOTE). Bev was recently appointed after the school experienced many years of relieving principals. She is keen to stay at the school for the long term and address Aboriginal student disengagement from learning.
Dean is the principal of a western NSW small rural high school where 56% of students sit within the bottom quartile of the IECSA. Thirty percent of 237 students identify as Aboriginal and 2% have a LBOTE. Dean has been at the school more than 10 years and has good relationships with his local Aboriginal community through implementing local language and culture programmes.
Ron is the principal of a high school located in a largely monocultural middleclass suburb of Sydney. Twenty nine percent of students sit within the bottom quartile of the IECSA and 60% fall in the middle two quartiles. Eight percent of 844 students identify as Aboriginal and 42% have a LBOTE. The school has a targeted access programme and many of the LBOTE students are from areas with high multicultural populations compared to this area. This contributes to the increased diversity of the student population. Ron has been at the school for four years and the recent acquisition of an externally funded programme for Aboriginal boys has lifted the profile of Aboriginal students and Aboriginal education more broadly.
John is the principal of a large multicultural high school in a working-class area in western Sydney. Fifty seven percent of students sit within the bottom quartile of the IECSA. Ten percent of 936 students identify as Aboriginal and 42% have a LBOTE. John has been at the school more than five years and has focussed on building staff capacity in meeting the needs of the culturally diverse range of students and their families.

Methodology
This element of the Aboriginal Voices project draws on a critical Indigenous standpoint through Moodie's (2018 Decolonising Race Theory (DRT) to reveal the complex and nuanced impacts of education on Aboriginal students' experiences of learning at school. This paper focusses on how these impacts are understood by principals and the discourses they apply to describe these experiences. DRT is a distinctly Australian version of critical race theory which recognises "the ontological diversity and the place-based and sovereign claims of Indigenous peoples" (Moodie, 2018, p. 36). This framework consists of seven tenets: logic of elimination, Indigeneity as a political tool for justice, sovereignty and Indigenous futurity, cultural interface, Indigenous methodologies, and relationality and collectivism  and these are described in more depth in an accompanying paper (see Moodie et al., this edition). The themes emerging from principal interviews included responses that covered much of the DRT framework, but the responses were most commonly categorised within the themes of the logic of elimination, the cultural interface, and reparative activism. A brief description of these tenets are: • The logic of elimination acknowledges physical, cultural, political and legal acts of eliminating and/or assimilating Aboriginal people as a 'natural' consequence of progress and to justify widespread theft and exploitation. • Cultural interface draws on Nakata's (2007) work on Indigenous standpoint as a 'position from which to analyse knowledge production and challenge representation' (Burgess et al., 2020). • Reparative activism calls for a commitment to social change that enshrines truth telling, healing, sustainability and well-being by including Aboriginal ways of knowing, being and doing to enact Indigenous aspirations and futures.
The small sample size and the limited responses relating to the other DRT tenets meant that they were not used as part of this discussion paper.

Method
One-to-one interviews were conducted via an invitation from the research team and, after completing an informed consent form (Ethics application, reference 5201600672 Macquarie University), a mutually agreeable time and location was confirmed. Each interview was conducted by a researcher, guided by semi-structured questions, audio-recorded, and transcribed by a third-party transcription service. Pseudonyms are used to protect confidentiality. The interviews gathered reflections and descriptions of experiences, observations, and applications of leadership practices and the conditions by which principals understand Aboriginal students, their families and communities, and the role of cultural programmes in their respective schools. Principals were asked to contextualise their school through identifying the major issues impacting on Aboriginal education in their school as well as identify what they believed to be the common concerns of Aboriginal students and their families, and teachers. The interview questions were deliberately flexible so that principals could develop their own narratives to articulate their understanding and perceptions of key influences, enablers and constrainers on Aboriginal student engagement and achievement, and effective teaching for Aboriginal students.
Interview data was coded in NVivo against a coding tree as described in Moodie et al., (2021). The coding tree provides a structural framework for examining data in order to name the visible and hidden discourses used to describe Aboriginal student learners in schools. Both DRT and the accompanying coding tree enabled the research team to identify both meta-across participant groups-and micro-within interviews and individual statements-data. This was analysed in conjunction with a thorough reading of transcripts by all authors to triangulate findings and reduce the influence of individual researcher interpretations; even though this is an unavoidable condition of social science research practice (Crotty, 1998).

Limitations
The main limitation to the study is the small number of schools involved and therefore limited number of participants in the study. However, while being too small to identify generalisable conclusions, the complex, nuanced and sometimes contradictory recollections of participants provide intricate and multi-faceted understandings of leadership practices in schools and the schooling experiences for Aboriginal people. Further, it must be noted that participant interview responses may not necessarily reveal information that may be detrimental to themselves or their schools as they are attempting to build relationships within and beyond the school. However, this is where a DRT analysis can provide insight into the seemingly contradictory positions that principals are placed when required to support Aboriginal students in the Australian neo-colonial education system, and new ways of thinking through discourses and 'regimes of truth' about Aboriginal students and their families, communities, schools, and teachers.

Analysis and discussion
Three themes, each with leadership as a foundational component, emerged from data analysis: leading culture, identity and school-community relationships; curriculum, pedagogy and teacher development; and student participation and achievement. The DRT tenets of the logic of elimination, the cultural interface and reparative activism focus an Indigenous lens on the discourses used by the Principals to describe Aboriginal students' school experiences.

Leading culture, identity, and school-community relationships
The success of language and culture programmes in the schools was largely dependent on whether schools explicitly advocated for and ensured enough resources were made available for these initiatives. Leadership demonstrated by principals in building necessary relationships and collaborations with the local Aboriginal community and employing the appropriate people to implement these programmes is seen as critical to success (Lowe et al., 2019). Research (Trimmer et al., 2019) indicates that principals who have a deep knowledge of their school community, including its histories, cultures, values, and daily challenges, are able to translate these into meaningful cultural, social, and learning activities for Aboriginal students. The value of such knowledge was reflected in some on-the-ground practices in two schools through the allocation of a specific room or area for Aboriginal students, where belonging and safety for students, parents, and communities is central. The importance of such places, as one parent noted, is when. the kids who are playing up or have problems need this room as it is somewhere that they can chill out while the teachers come down to sort things out … It's a haven for the parents as well. Without this safe room, the parents won't go to the school.
This recognises the importance of the school understanding issues impacting on Aboriginal families and putting in place mechanisms of support.
The four principals noted that some Aboriginal students had limited opportunity to learn about their heritage and culture from families and communities due to various factors such as Stolen Generations, 3 dislocation from Country, and other disruptions as a result of colonisation. They therefore rely on the school for cultural connections, as Bev explained, "we're trying different things to engage them with their culture because there's a lot of Aboriginal kids in out-of-home care, so they don't really know about their family history, they are quite disconnected from their culture". Bev addressed a lack of cultural connection in her school by providing opportunities for students to build cultural identity through contact with local Aboriginal community members. She explained, "we do a lot of building identity and cultural stuff here as well. We have external people who come in and do women's business and men's business …. it builds their identity and self-concept and hopefully improves relationships". Dean was also aware of the importance of Aboriginal community members leading cultural activities as follows: [we want them to] feel like we do value their culture and we're interested in their culture …. these cultural activities serve two purposes; giving the kids an opportunity to engage with their culture, and provide powerful experiences with Elders so they can have really rich meaningful conversations about culture and about school … culture gives them a reason to come to school, and feel excited about coming to school.
Where principals acknowledged and facilitated the connection between culture and identity "not just for their learning needs but also for their wellbeing to build selfconcept", healing through culture and community building recognised the significance of engaging with Indigenous knowledges and experiences as a key to reparative activism. When they encouraged and supported Aboriginal student identity and recognised the importance of Indigeneity for participating confidently in the wider community, opportunities were mobilised for imagining possible futures as Ron noted, "I think the Aboriginal students at this school have the ability to walk in whatever world they want and feel comfortable in, any setting they want". John also enabled this by empowering his students to participate, and lead, it's about giving them ownership of things … if kids feel like they're in charge of it and they own it and they're able to put in place their input and their innovation, then you've got a greater hope of success because they've been valued for their input Where principals emphasised the need for authentic school-community relationships based on trust and respect, they demonstrated understanding of the value of employing Aboriginal community members in key roles in the schools to build community confidence in the school's capacity to meet the needs of their children. John explained, "we employ an Aboriginal woman [in a community liaison role] from the community … she's highly valued and the family's highly valued in the community. Her kids have come here as well … so that in itself contributes significantly".
Bev also noted that building positive relationships with students supports the development of relationships with families, I think part of building relationships with the parents is trying to build that relationship with the kids … Kids know if the teachers know them and they know whether it's genuine. So, once you've won them over, they'll do anything for you. They notice those things because if they go home and say, "oh, yes, she's all right, the principal's all right", then it does make it easy for the parents to go, "oh, okay, well, if she's not that bad, maybe I could go and talk to her".
As John is principal of a school with students from diverse cultural backgrounds, he builds school-community relationships by providing opportunities for parent groups from various cultures to meet with him on their own so they can provide feedback through their distinct cultural lens.
Why do I do that? Because we've got significant minority group numbers here. Those cultures all operate in different ways. We want to value the good points of every culture. Parents all want different things for their kids and their kids all want different things. They all want to be successful, but they all want to contribute in their own way Acknowledging parent cultural diversity and therefore the need to engage with and empower parents on their terms demonstrates a high level of relational leadership that facilitates agency in school decision-making forums. Similarly, acknowledging community values such as collectivism and reciprocity in school structures demonstrates the criticality of these values in talking back to colonisation.
We have our acknowledgement of country first, which is critical … it's not just about student recognition, it's about community recognition. It's about reminders, so what's happening in the place … what are your responsibilities that you need to fulfil … If everybody fulfils their responsibilities, staff and students, people's rights get taken care of. So, it's all about making a contribution as opposed to what can I take out … because when you contribute, we get a greater richness, and everybody is able to benefit from that.
Leadership such as this recognises that Indigeneity moves beyond a racial category to fulfil the critical role of resisting assimilation, reasserting socio-political status and signalling a commitment to change. While the Principals didn't necessarily articulate their role as leaders in this way, their efforts to better understand the significance of local Aboriginal histories and cultures and facilitate genuine relationships and collaborations with their communities, indicate their ability and willingness to envision culturally based pathways to success and Indigenous futurity.
While Principals described the ways in which they attempt to foster development of cultural knowledge and identity construction by Aboriginal students in a variety of ways, deficit discourses emerged as overshadowing their descriptions. "There's a variety of strategies that we've done to embrace their culture, their Aboriginality so that they can feel proud of it and also provide them with the support to achieve academic outcomes to the best of their ability" (Ron). When ability is articulated within a cultural frame as a mediating factor in success, this signposts the logic of elimination as Aboriginal culture is viewed as an impediment to academic achievement . This deficit discourse is used to explain Aboriginal underachievement as a product of an inferior culture and justify western education and its assimilatory intent as the solution to this 'problem'. Subtle but pervasive assimilatory discourses such as these undermine efforts to foster Aboriginal student identity through cultural programmes by positioning these in opposition and/or mutually exclusive to school success. Moreover, Ron situates responsibility for Aboriginal underachievement and disengagement with the parents.
We take them from environments that would have been really difficult for them to overcome and we teach them social skills subscribing to assimilationist views such as "there is no point in having all these whiz bang wonderful experiences for these kids if they get to the end of Year 12 and their educational attainment has not improved".
These discourses indicate a limited understanding of how this positioning undermines the school's efforts to improve Aboriginal student outcomes. It may also manifest in student and community resistance to what schools feel are their best efforts in improving student learning experiences, often reinforcing these discourses in the minds of leaders. The DRT analysis of the data, also makes visible the competing and often mutually exclusive standpoints of recognising that the Aboriginal students require some kind of cultural support and engagement, but that this is a barrier to their success that is only measured in neo-colonial contexts.

Leading curriculum, pedagogy, and teacher development
When Principals recognised the importance of empowering staff in curriculum innovation, effective teaching/learning practices and building connections with community, they were seen by the school and the community as effective and successful leaders. John acknowledged this when he said; "I'm all about providing people opportunities to shine and build their own capacity and lead things. You have to engage people into positions where they've got a strength and a skillset".
Providing staff with opportunities to build relationships and capacity within and beyond the classroom is critical. For instance, Bev had introduced collegial peer classroom observations to gather data about student engagement in their learning to empower teachers to critically evaluate and improve their practice. She emphasised that it wasn't about "watching the teacher (but rather) watching student engagement. It's taking a snapshot then adjusting what we do in professional learning and expectations of staff based on that dataset. As such, it's nonthreatening because it's anonymous". This sense of supporting rather than blaming teachers for student results is critical as John noted, "it's all about developing a sense of self … to build self-concept and understand themselves … to understand that that's another shift into wellbeing as opposed to welfare". This understanding of and concern for staff well-being and empowerment also reinforces the importance of relationships in building a culture of belonging and inclusivity. This empowers teachers to mobilise these experiences in their classrooms creating opportunities for healing, community building and sustainable change.
The DRT tenet of the cultural interface emerged strongly in interviews with the principals through an understanding of the locale of the learner which includes where the learner is coming from, what experiences, cultural knowledge, and skills they bring to the classroom and how they mobilise these. From an Indigenous standpoint, this means valuing the knowledges and lived experiences Aboriginal children bring into the classroom and including these as respected classroom resources for all students. Here, Dean demonstrated his understanding of this, It's understanding where that child is coming from to know how you tailor learning for that child … but for every one of them I treat and manage and deal with them differently to get the best out of them … I think to be a really effective teacher of Aboriginal students, it's about investing in where those kids come from, their cultures, what they're going through, "what's his story?" so that you can use that to engage them.
As Dean noted this as an important element of his responsibility as leader, teachers also felt supported and comfortable about getting to know their students' backgrounds and building this into their teaching practice (Burgess & Evans, 2017). Moreover, when knowledge transmission and production shifts from the school to the community, the foundations of culturally safe learning environments are laid (Lowe et al., 2021a(Lowe et al., , 2021b. This demonstrates principals' trust in the community to educate, nurture and empower their children, as Bev noted here, They (students) did some weaving, and they learnt a traditional skill and made something nice, but the real power of that experience was that for four mornings across four weeks, they sat with a group of female Elders who told them stories about their local community. The weaving was pretty secondary, really. It was a powerful experience. At the same time, we had a boys' group working with an Aboriginal Elder who taught them to play and make their own didgeridoo which they were so proud of. But, again, that was almost secondary to the really rich, meaningful conversations about culture, school and important things like that.
Lessons to learn, discourses to change, relationships to build:… To foster and implement culturally responsive schooling like Dean and Bev, a deep understanding of local community contexts in which schools are situated is critical. Keddie and Niesche (2012) suggest that leaders need to know how to engage in critical situational analysis of Indigenous politics, relations and experience to be effective. Dean noted that including local history and culture into the curriculum is important for "understanding how this kid ticks and what the history looks like through his eyes". Therefore, principals and teachers' efforts in learning about local community histories and cultures is essential for building relationships with community, leading curriculum change and seeking justice through counternarratives that expose colonisation, seek justice, and foster self-determination. These are all key aspects of the DRT category of reparative activism.
Localising the curriculum by privileging local Aboriginal voices in the education of cultures and histories, makes visible the interface between Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledges, and challenges western hegemonic knowledge (re) production (Burgess & Lowe, 2020). From an Indigenous standpoint, critiquing and confronting contested knowledges, and repositioning the community as a key site of knowledge production is critical to engaging with Aboriginal students and communities. Implementing culturally responsive pedagogical approaches enacts curriculum in ways that support and affirm Aboriginality, creates space for Indigenous standpoints and is inclusive of all students (Burgess & Evans, 2017). This highlights the potential role of schools in revealing and contesting power imbalances, hegemonic curriculum content and assimilatory practices to facilitate recourse and reparation.
Building teacher capacity in effective teaching and learning in classrooms was noted by John as the "heart and soul" of teaching "that comes from relational pedagogical capacity of staff members who want to be involved. It's about immersing yourself … that's commitment". To support teacher development in doing this, John leads staff in "regular twilight 4-h professional learning evenings learning how to embed Aboriginal ways of learning into the classroom. The teachers are using the language, using the hand skills, explicitly implementing it and embedding it within their teaching and learning". Where principals supported teacher growth and capacity to empower students and local Aboriginal people to actively participate in knowledge production and transmission, reparative activism is signposted by including Aboriginal ways of knowing, being and doing to enact Indigenous aspirations and futures.

Leading student participation and achievement
It is a common understanding that a principal's key role is to maximise student participation and achievement in schools (Trimmer et al., 2019). Most studies on leadership in Indigenous settings that addressed lowered engagement, achievement and completion were focussed on remote schools that required a targeted approach. These programmes had differing levels of success, and those that were more successful acknowledged family and cultural needs utilising culturally respectful environments to promote positive cultural identity to increase student potential for achievement (Keddie, 2014;Rahman, 2010;Shay & Heck, 2016). Principals who focussed on academic results only, tended to have a deficit perception of students and their families, as well as a sense that any solution is beyond their control. This was evident in Ron's explanation of Aboriginal student results at his school.
They're below average, without a doubt. Our NAPLAN 4 results last year for our Indigenous students were poor. It is a really challenging task to take a teenager and drag them up from a position well below where they should be. I don't want to sound defeatist; we do our best but that's the context we work in … what's happening in their life? They may have been moved around from place to place, they may have been in four or five different schools, and we know from the research that it has a massive impact on the student's learning, that sort of transient nature of their education. So sometimes you feel like you're dealing with the issues here with both hands tied behind your back.
Where deficit and assimilatory discourses subvert Aboriginal reality, the logic of elimination emerges through discourses such as "the context we work in" and "drag them up". This negative perception of Aboriginal students' lives, reflects Ron's belief that responsibility for Indigenous underachievement rests with parents and communities, ostensibly absolving the school of responsibility. This further implies that Aboriginal students will only be successful if they assimilate into the western education system.
Even so, Ron was also aware of the impact of racism on Aboriginal students. He observed that, "they've got the whole racism thing to deal with, so they've probably got the fears that there are going to be barriers put in their way when they do go to university or the workforce", and yet he failed to recognise the barriers he fosters through poor understanding of Aboriginal lived experiences. This disconnect created frustration as he said, "you're dealing with the issues here with both hands tied behind your back", without recognising the role of the systemic forces, and his own power in contributing to this. These narratives of Indigenous deficiency consequently destabilise efforts to interrogate racism and also highlight the connection to the DRT tenet of the logic of elimination.
Alternatively, Bev, Dean and John focussed more on the strategies to mitigate against these forces. Dean recognised the impact of the current neo-liberal obsession of metric-driven data, noting that "people are more than happy to quote statistics, but there are faces to those statistics … remember the human element of improvement, and not to get caught up with the mathematical, statistical side of things". John signalled the inherent tensions standardisation has created in improving Aboriginal student outcomes. I want to differentiate between standards and expectations. I don't want any of my teachers to have the attitude that our Indigenous kids cannot reach the 1 3 Lessons to learn, discourses to change, relationships to build:… standards that our non-Indigenous kids can reach … So, we expect the best for them, and we aim to give them the best, and to get them to university.
Also demonstrating an informed and critical analysis of the problem of comparing Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educational achievement, Bev acknowledged the ongoing impact of the history of exclusion and poor treatment of Aboriginal children in schools, and the challenges schools have in addressing this.
There is that whole historical thing that lots of people who were these kids' parents' age, they didn't have a good experience at school and so there's more of an inclination to actually let the kids stay home from school and not participate in things. "Because that was my experience, now my kid's going through it, why would I make them suffer through that". So, building that connection to community is a real challenge for us.
Bev and Dean's recognition of the tension between western versions of success via standardised testing and Aboriginal family aspirations for their children, signposts the importance of understanding the cultural interface and how it applies in schools. While Aboriginal parents want their students to be successful at school so they can access the economic benefits of doing so, they also want their children to be confident in their identity and participate in culture and community (Burgess & Lowe, 2020). This awareness of the DRT tenet of the cultural interface as a potential site of tension, and the need to incorporate Aboriginal students' learning locale in teaching and learning via relationship building, demonstrates an understanding of the intersection between western and Indigenous ways of doing, knowing and being. It highlights the precariousness for principals, teachers, students and their families of working in this space and for moving beyond the neo-colonial pressures of assimilatory policy and practice to effect genuine change.

Conclusion
The DRT framework has provided a deep analysis of leading practices that enhance, inhibit, and explicate Aboriginal students learning experiences and relationship to education more generally. As it is derived from an Indigenous standpoint, this framework has uncovered new ideas, reinforced those which are more commonly understood, and provided a unique understanding of the complexities, contradictions and nuances of discourses principals use when leading Aboriginal education in their schools.
When principals acknowledged and enacted substantial respectful relationships with students, their families, and the community, everyone benefited, including the principals, students, and wider-school community. In this context, the tenets-cultural interface, reparative activism and the logic of elimination-all contributed to a nuanced understanding of the complex work of the principals in their efforts to improve Aboriginal students' educational achievements through prioritising culture, identity, belonging and well-being. While all principals acknowledged and made genuine efforts to incorporate cultural programmes into the school to support Aboriginal identity and build confidence, deficit and assimilatory discourses were still evident, particularly in viewing culture as a potential impediment to academic success and in relegating the responsibility of poor achievement with families and communities. Moreover, while most principals indicated genuine efforts to involve parents in the school, there was no evidence of both-ways or shared leadership in relation to decision making and/or collaboration about school structures and policies which drive change. The application of DRT through this focus demonstrated the importance of understanding how the cultural interface operates in order to commit to reparative activism within the schools.
The pervasive undermining presence of neo-colonial policies and practices that constrain principals and teachers in a cycle of measurable, comparable outcomes, continue to render Aboriginal students as deficit despite everyone's best efforts. The effects of comparing students and schools was noticeable in the way in which principals felt it necessary to highlight the positive things happening in their school and superficially engage with the role of schooling in the continuing dominance of western hegemonic education systems. The application of DRT in this case highlighted the constant tensions between schools and principals who want to do better to support their Aboriginal students, and the neo-colonial education systems, structures, and attitudes that seek to continue to assimilate and erase the Indigeneity from the students.
Finally, the application of DRT in this context has provided a nuanced analysis that helps to define and articulate the complex interfaces between Aboriginal students and the neo-colonial education systems, structures, and expectations that are placed on them. It highlighted the contradictions between the need to provide culturally responsive school leadership, but at the same time reinforce neo-colonial expectations of academic success. Ultimately, this demonstrates the limitations inherent within the school leadership examined in this paper where any cultural responsiveness was motivated by an assumption of limitations within the children and an overarching desire for Eurocentric defined measures of success.
Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions.

Conflict of interests
There is no conflict of interest with this paper.
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