“We’re still being dragged to be white”: Learning from Yolŋu “growing up” their children in two worlds

Motivated by a concern with western, deficit-driven and often invasive early childhood programs being introduced to their community, Yolŋu families in a remote Aboriginal community in north east Arnhemland in Australia are producing longitudinal case studies of their own young children’s development. They have video-recorded their young children’s everyday activities as well as their ways of bringing them up, starting from infancy to two-years-old at the commencement of the study. This chapter draws on family interviews to reflect on what these perspectives mean for the dominant early childhood education and care agenda. This approach unsettles the notion of deficit to focus attention on the needs of the system to be more responsive to and informed by the communities they purport to serve.