The dominant culture in Australian education has, from its inception, been programmatically designed to instil British cultural norms and values into the isolated colonial population. The recruitment of Indigenous teachers has only a relatively recent history, and prior to the 1960s, teaching was not a career open to Indigenous men and women. Most Indigenous children could only receive a formal western education on church missions by White ‘teachers’ and clergy, to third grade, primary level. The standards reached under these conditions were comparatively poor, and would not fit pupils to reach the standard necessary for admission to teachers’ colleges.3 Like many of the older Indigenous teachers in the study, Barry, grew up during these years. As he remembers: