Abstract

This paper offers a consideration of culture and the way it informs health and education policy in Northern Territory settings concerned with 'closing the gap' in services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. The authors argue that culture is drawn upon to construct essentialist or binary relationships and is in turn, mediated by a 'glossed over' cross cultural, or cultural sensitivity approach to education in the fields of Indigenous education and health. Sociology offers a framework for negotiating practice in the gap between ideology and identity. Both authors bring their New Zealand research and practice experience to this analysis as they do to their work in these fields, first in New Zealand and now in the Northern Territory; drawing upon the Treaty of Waitangi, difference, cultural safety and cultural sensitivity approaches to education to argue their position.