Indigenous Australian students are over-represented in the population identified as ‘at risk’ of being disengaged from formal education. Research indicates that non-attendance for Indigenous school students increases during year 9. Young people who do not complete school are four times more likely to be unemployed by the age of 24 years (Bean, 2002: p.2), thus potentially compounding poverty in Indigenous families. This paper will use a community engagement project between Flinders University and 40 primary and secondary schools as a point of reflection to unpack education as a site of colonisation. We argue that the lived experiences outlined above can only be transformed when they are deconstructed in the context of Australia’s colonial history and its ongoing lived consequences for Indigenous young people in a settler society. We express positions of Indigenous Australian sovereignties and consider the relationship that Australians may have with the first custodians of this country through teaching a critique of Racialisation theory as process for understanding social constructs of race. Partnerships must also be placed in the context of Australia as a ‘postcolonising’ (Moreton-Robinson, 2003, 2004) settler society where colonising relationships between non-Indigenous and Indigenous Australians are ongoing and reproduced in the present. This critique has informed the training program for the predominantly non-Indigenous mentors, as well as prioritising disengaged Indigenous young people in the program.