Empowerment and Desubalternising Voices through Education – A Case Study of Diasporic Indigenous Chakma in Melbourne

This study is the first that investigates Indigenous Chakma’s lived experiences of diaspora in Melbourne. Within it, the role of educational affordances and achievements in maintaining and preserving Chakma culture and tradition in a multicultural yet assimilationist society are problematised. Findings suggest that the shifting positions of these Bangladeshi Chakmas are dictated not just by historical and dominant discourses of oppression, but also by their own intellectual and philosophical metamorphosis over time. The participants were vocal about their growth as individual and cultural beings and attributed such growth to factors beyond politics and economics and across time and space.