Disciplining the Savages: Savaging the Disciplines

'Disciplining the Savages: Savaging the Discipline' provides an alternative reading for those struggling at the contradictory and ambiguous intersections of academia and Indigenous experience. In doing so, it moves beyond the usual criticisms of the disciplines which construct the way we have come to know and understand Indigenous peoples. Nakata, a Torres Strait Islander academic, casts a critical gaze on the research conducted by the Cambridge Expedition in the late 1890s. Meticulously analysing the linguistic, physiological, psychological and anthropological testing conducted, he offers an astute critique of the researchers' methodologies and interpretations. He uses these insights to reveal the similar workings of recent knowledge production in Torres Strait education.