White women writing: two teachers as orang puteh in complex borderlands

Framed as portraiture, this narrative inquiry helps in understanding a potentially contested arena. As two women reflecting on our multiple positionings as teacher educators, we share situated memories as explanations for recommendations about working in cultural borderlands. Sited in Australia, but inviting conversation with others in similar circumstances wherever they may be, the stories embrace a tangled web of intentions, empathy, privilege, advocacy and opportunity. Having sought previously to foreground both Indigenous and academic voices in a form of border crossing, we now also consider our own voices as orang puteh (white people) and interrogate our own privileged research positioning. In this alternative presentation, findings relate to woven threads of Respect, Partnership, Advocacy and Identity.