Unsettling Discourses of Cultural Competence

Abstract

Discourses on cultural competence are fraught with complications and there are concerns about the hidden assumptions behind the constructof cultural competence. This article draws on poststructuralist theories to demonstrate how educators can confront and challenge prevailing discourses of cultural competence by enacting an ethics of resistance. Enacting an ethics of resistance and working in harmony with Aboriginal families and communities challenges and disrupts dominant “regimes of truth” and constructions of cultural competence that sometimes work to disadvantage groups of people. This paper is a provocation for educators to construct counter-discourses to current conceptualizations of cultural competence.