As a young man training as an opera singer in the conservatory tradition, Dr Te Oti Rakena learned all about lives of the great Western composers.

But one example of what he wasn’t taught, was that the music practices of the Indigenous Sami people of northern Europe were once deemed ‘witchcraft’ and suppressed, and that Sami have subsequently struggled to reclaim those practices.

“I only learnt about this recently, but it was profound for me,” says Te Oti (Ngāpuhi, Ngati Ruanui, Kāi Tahu), an associate professor in The University of Auckland’s School of Music, “because it parallels stories of Indigenous people in Canada, of Indigenous people in Australia, and of course Māori.”

The Sami story is among the contributions to a new textbook Te Oti has edited, which foregrounds Indigenous experiences and research in music teaching. Decolonising and Indigenising Music Education: First Peoples Leading Research and Practice, produced with the International Society of Music Educators (ISME), is a first in field, he says, in its telling of stories largely left out of current music curricula.

“They’re stories that we’ve never heard, and that we should know. I know the dates associated with Haydn, with Beethoven, their histories and their struggles in Western...