Remote Aboriginal culture(s) and Western culture(s) are two of the most diverse culture groups on earth. In the context of these two fundamentally different world views, Aboriginal formal schooling is facing a major dilemma. Simply put this dilemma is that while most Aboriginal parents have a deep desire for their children to ‘grow up Aboriginal’, they also want their children to succeed in Western schooling and to perform successfully in some aspects of white culture, thereby reducing dependency on white expertise in their communities.

Aboriginal Studies is now being taught at Year 12 level in South Australian schools as an externally moderated, school assessed subject, accredited by the Senior Secondary Assessment Board of South Australia.

It is a course in which students learn from Aboriginal people through their literature, their arts, their many organizations and from visiting Aboriginal communities. Current issues about Aborigines in the media form another component of the study.

The structures of a traditional school curriculum, time-table, and teaching practices can, by their very nature, be destructive of Aboriginal identity and traditional Aboriginal education, even when, on the surface, the content of the school curriculum is Aboriginal. This article explores the idea that the processes of reading and writing and making books, movies and videos can also be very destructive of Aboriginal identity when these things are controlled by the imagination of white educators and media makers.