This PDF looks at the potential usefulness of applying Critical Education Theory in architectural education. Using the experience of working in community design in the Maori world, it begins with a critique of normative conceptions of history and moves on to an analysis of education (of indigenous peoples) as cultural assimilation or cultural imperialism. In particular, it focuses on the idea of nationalism - of "one nation" as imperialistic when seen against the aspirations of the colonised for cultural soocial and economic autonomy, It challenges the conception of cultural pluralism which pervades western democracies as a myth designed to maintain the cultural integrity of the status quo power and its regime of cultural dominance. It interrogates the concept of sovereignty against a background of "democracy" and locates it in a demand for constitutional reform which redefines democracy in terms of dual autonomies. It suggests that the imposition of western constitutional forms was an act of colonisation which resonates today and that colonisation itself was an "crime against humanity". It calls for the ability of indigenous peoples to develop regimes of autonomy through the medium of critical education and asks how a pedagogy might be developed which supports their calls for cultural sovereignty.