Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Aboriginal Australian Rehabilitation Queensland'

This study examines the processes associated with indigenous recovery from alcohol and drug misuse within the context of an Aboriginal rehabilitation centre on the mid-north coast of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Benelong's Haven is an Aboriginal owned and controlled non-government organisation that was established in 1974 by Dr. Val Carroll (Bryant), O.A.M. Many of the residents, who originate from NSW and other states in Australia, are referred to the centre through the justice system as an alternative to a gaol sentence. The treatment programme is based on Alcoholics Anonymous and psychotherapeutic meetings involving residents reconstructing shared stories about their past experiences with alcohol and drugs. Importantly, substance use is depicted as undertaken in groups, therefore recovery must come from within the group. This is combined with an emphasis on Aboriginal spirituality, where culture becomes a form of symbolic healing that is employed by residents to assert their independence from white Australian society and develop a renewed sober status. Group solidarity and compliance with the rules is emphasised over resistance to staff, despite oscillating periods of discipline and nurturance. One of the essential problems of the treatment process is whilst many residents perceive they have experienced transformation in the programme, upon returning to their home communities some find it difficult to maintain their new status, where substance use continues amongst friends and relatives and where their position as Aboriginal Australians is stigmatised in the larger Australian society. However, those that return to substance use are not viewed as having failed by staff, nor that treatment has been unsuccessful. Rather, they are encouraged to return to the treatment programme and engage in a life long process of recovery. In examining the efficacy of alcohol and drug treatment programmes, studies must account for indigenous understandings of recovery, which are embedded in the larger racial, political and socio-economic history of Aboriginal and white Australian relations.

Globally, the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes is rising. The most affected populations are those that have undergone recent and rapid transition towards a Western lifestyle, characterised by energy-dense diets and physical inactivity.¶ Two major hypotheses have attempted to explain the variation in diabetes prevalence, both between and within populations, beyond the contributions made by adult lifestyle. The thrifty genotype hypothesis proposes that some populations are genetically well adapted to surviving in a subsistence environment, and are predisposed to develop diabetes when the dietary environment changes to one that is fat and carbohydrate rich. The programming hypothesis focuses on the developmental environment, particularly on prenatal and early postnatal conditions: nutritional deprivation in utero and early postnatal life, measured by low birthweight and disrupted child growth, is proposed to alter metabolism permanently so that risk of diabetes is increased with subsequent exposure to an energy-dense diet. Both hypotheses emphasise discord between adaptation (genetic or developmental) and current environment, and both now put forward insulin resistance as a likely mechanism for predisposition.¶ Diabetes contributes significantly to morbidity and mortality among Australia’s Indigenous population. Indigenous babies are more likely to be low birthweight, and typical patterns of child growth include periods of faltering and rapid catch-up. Although there have been numerous studies in other populations, the programming hypothesis has not previously been tested in an Australian Indigenous community. The framework of the programming hypothesis is thus expanded to consider exposure of whole populations to adverse prenatal and postnatal environments, and the influence this may have on diabetes prevalence.¶ The present study took place in Cherbourg, a large Aboriginal community in southeast Queensland with a high prevalence of diabetes. Study participants were adults with diagnosed diabetes and a random sample of adults who had never been diagnosed with diabetes. Data were collected on five current risk factors for diabetes (general and central obesity, blood pressure, age and family history), in addition to fasting blood glucose levels. A lifestyle survey was also conducted. Participants’ medical records detailing weight growth from birth to five years were analysed with regard to adult diabetes risk to determine whether childhood weight and rate of weight gain were associated with subsequent diabetes. Adult lifestyle factors were xiialso explored to determine whether variation in nutrition and physical activity was related to level of diabetes risk.¶ Approximately 20% of adults in Cherbourg have diagnosed diabetes. Prevalence may be as high as 38.5% in females and 42% in males if those who are high-risk (abnormal fasting glucose and three additional factors) are included. Among those over 40 years, total prevalence is estimated to be 51% for females and 59% for males.¶ Patterns of early childhood growth may contribute to risk of diabetes among adults. In particular, relatively rapid weight growth to five years is associated with both general and central obesity among adult women. This lends some qualified support to the programming hypothesis as catch-up growth has previously been incorporated into the model; however, although the most consistent association was found among those who gained weight more rapidly, it was also found that risk is increased among children who are heavier at any age.¶ No consistent associations were found between intrauterine growth retardation (as determined by lower than median birthweight and higher than median weight growth velocity to one and three months) and diabetes risk among women or men. A larger study sample with greater statistical power may have yielded less ambiguous results.¶ Among adults, levels of physical activity may be more important than nutritional intake in moderating diabetes risk, although features of diet, such as high intake of simple carbohydrates, may contribute to risk in the community overall, especially in the context of physical inactivity. A genetic component is not ruled out. Two additional areas which require further investigation include stress and high rates of infection, both of which are highly relevant to the study community, and may contribute to the insulin resistance syndrome.¶ Some accepted thresholds indicating increased diabetes risk may not be appropriate in this population. Given the relationship between waist circumference and other diabetes risk factors and the propensity for central fat deposition among women even with low body mass index (BMI), it is recommended that the threshold where BMI is considered a risk be lowered by 5kg/m2 for women, while no such recommendation is made for men.¶ There are a number of social barriers to better community health, including attitudes to exercise and obesity, patterns of alcohol and tobacco use and consumption of fresh foods. Some of these barriers are exacerbated by gender roles and expectations.¶

This thesis examines the effects that choral singing can have on the construction of Australian Aboriginal identities. The research is based on outcomes of an applied ethnomusicological project undertaken in the Lutheran Australian Aboriginal community of Hopevale, Northern Queensland Australia between September 2004 and June 2005. The project methodology used was participatory action research (PAR). I facilitated the Hopevale Community Choir to promote local wellbeing. The theoretical basis underpinning this approach is outlined in chapter one. Chapter two looks at the practicalities of the applied methodology and how I developed an ethnographically informed approach to choral facilitation. In the third chapter I use choir members’ biographies to investigate how choral singing influenced the lives of individual singers. Here I describe Hopevalian performance aesthetics based on the concept of ‘communal individuality’ where individual performers are seen as being as important as the choir as a whole. Chapter four, five and six discuss the influences of Australian social history and local Hopevalian history on the construction of identities. Chapter four presents the nonlocalised meta-theory related to constructs of Aboriginality. Chapters five and six examine localised, context-specific Hopevalian history and historiography and its impact on constructs of Hopevalian identity. In chapter six I show how hymnody was used in Hopevale during missionisation to influence local identities. In chapter seven I describe the choir’s four-day tour through Northern Queensland. I use the tour to further examine the relationship between Aboriginality, spirituality, tourism and wellbeing in relation to choral singing. The conclusion functions as an evaluation and summary of the applied project. It assesses the implications of the research outcomes and offers suggestions for future research. Throughout this thesis there is an emphasis on Aboriginal diversity, a concern for ‘voice’ in the construction of ethnography and advocacy for Aboriginal rights.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - James Cook University, 2004.
Thesis submitted by Sally Marie Babidge, BA (Hons) UWA June 2004, for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Anthropology, Archaeology and Sociology, James Cook University. Bibliography: leaves 283-303.

Alcohol misuse is considered the most significant cause of violence in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. All members of the Aboriginal community feel the impact of heavy alcohol consumption and related violence. Initiatives that attempt to reduce alcohol consumption as a strategy to decrease crisis levels of violence have had limited success. This thesis examines the extent and patterns of Aboriginal alcohol consumption and explores the relationship between alcohol misuse and violence, using secondary statistical and exploratory literature. It will be contended that: the link between alcohol misuse and violence is not a simple cause and effect relationship; and Aboriginal family and community violence are symptoms of underlying social and psychological trauma. This thesis presents qualitative researched case studies of Aboriginal alcohol treatment organisations, and Aboriginal initiatives that address the issues underlying violence. It is argued that interventions focusing on alcohol alone will not reduce family violence and community dysfunction. A "grassroots," Aboriginal community based response is presented as an alternative to reactive and short-term interventions.

(Synopsis to introductory statement): An introductory statement to five documentary films made by Ian Lang in Australia between 1981 and 1997 exemplifying  a 'democratising' model of sustainable and ethical documentary film production. This document critically reflects on the production process of these films to accompany their submission for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Publication at Griffith University. It finds that a contemporary tendency towards 'post-industrial' conditions allows an observational film-maker to negotiate a critical inter-dependence rather than a romantically conceived 'independence' traditional to the genre. [Full thesis consists of introductory statement plus six DVD videodiscs.]

This thesis is an historical anthropology of power, a study of the relations between the state and Aboriginal family in Charters Towers, a rural town of approximately 9,000 people, 135km south west of Townsville, North Queensland. In this thesis I argue that the state/society relationship is mutually (if unequally) constituted, and that the relationship (in practice, in discourse, and in the imagination) operates at many levels. The thesis takes up critical evaluations of the anthropological research on family/kinship in rural Aboriginal Australia through an ethnographic study of the practices of family and belonging. I begin by examining the nature of the frontier, in the construction of knowledge across the frontier and the early practices of the state and Aboriginal people in the reproductions of cultural and social boundaries. The reproduction of Aboriginal difference is institutionalised at the turn of the 20th Century when the state creates specific legislation to control Aboriginal people under the rhetoric of 'protection'. Subsequent state policies of 'assimilation' and 'self-determination' are seen as extension of measures of control, although practised by state bureaucracies in novel ways. Under ‘recognition’, in the era of Native Title, Aboriginal difference is 'recognised' in terms of concepts of ‘traditional culture’: a static de-historicised Aboriginality with which Aboriginal people identify as well as subvert and resist. In the thesis I examine how Aboriginal families are produced and reproduced in ways which are enmeshed in state practice as well as constituted by practice identified as particularly Aboriginal. Utilising archival sources produced by the colonial state, as well as published histories, oral history and ethnography, I analyse the complexities of state intervention into Aboriginal people’s lives and Aboriginal discourse and practice in response to these measures. An ethnographic study of everyday articulations of 'family' and of events such as meetings and funerals, demonstrates that relations of kinship are formed and reformed through frequent performance, which as practice creates and recreates the terms of such relations. My engagement with these arguments in relation to Australian Aboriginal anthropology, is distinct in its analysis of the role of power outside of the resistance/domination duality.

This thesis is an historical anthropology of power, a study of the relations between the state and Aboriginal family in Charters Towers, a rural town of approximately 9,000 people, 135km south west of Townsville, North Queensland. In this thesis I argue that the state/society relationship is mutually (if unequally) constituted, and that the relationship (in practice, in discourse, and in the imagination) operates at many levels. The thesis takes up critical evaluations of the anthropological research on family/kinship in rural Aboriginal Australia through an ethnographic study of the practices of family and belonging. I begin by examining the nature of the frontier, in the construction of knowledge across the frontier and the early practices of the state and Aboriginal people in the reproductions of cultural and social boundaries. The reproduction of Aboriginal difference is institutionalised at the turn of the 20th Century when the state creates specific legislation to control Aboriginal people under the rhetoric of ‘protection’. Subsequent state policies of ‘assimilation’ and ‘self-determination’ are seen as extension of measures of control, although practised by state bureaucracies in novel ways. Under ‘recognition’, in the era of Native Title, Aboriginal difference is ‘recognised’ in terms of concepts of ‘traditional culture’: a static de-historicised Aboriginality with which Aboriginal people identify as well as subvert and resist. In the thesis I examine how Aboriginal families are produced and reproduced in ways which are enmeshed in state practice as well as constituted by practice identified as particularly Aboriginal. Utilising archival sources produced by the colonial state, as well as published histories, oral history and ethnography, I analyse the complexities of state intervention into Aboriginal people’s lives and Aboriginal discourse and practice in response to these measures. An ethnographic study of everyday articulations of ‘family’ and of events such as meetings and funerals, demonstrates that relations of kinship are formed and reformed through frequent performance, which as practice creates and recreates the terms of such relations. My engagement with these arguments in relation to Australian Aboriginal anthropology, is distinct in its analysis of the role of power outside of the resistance/domination duality.

This thesis is an ethnographic and historical account of art and identity production by Indigenous artists in far north Queensland, Australia. It explores how both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists begin to understand and express their Indigeneity through artwork in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art studio in the Tropical North Queensland College of Technical and Further Education (TNQT TAFE), Cairns. It examines why Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people choose to enter into the TNQT Indigenous arts program, how they navigate the expectations of the course and the arts market, while highlighting the complexities and difficulties of being an Indigenous artist. The history of this unique program - the first of its kind in Australia - explores the desires of the students who first created it in 1984 as well as the students who enter through the studio doors in 2010. The studio demands a certain form of expression and 'cultural' knowledge, which fits well with some students and not so well with others. Looking at the artworks painted, dyed, carved and printed in the studio gives testament to the various ways in which students engage with the issues of representation and how they understand their place in the world. "Deadly" was the highest compliment an Indigenous artist could give an artwork inside the studio and the concept is defined as the basis from which an Indigenous artwork is recognised, promoted and accepted. What is or is not deadly centres around contested spaces and ideas of 'culture' - a concept which has been enmeshed with concepts of identity. The history of Indigenous art production in Queensland, along with the purposeful development of an art market and the effects of government policies in conceptualising that market, has been largely left unexplored but has had an enormous effect on the development and expression of Indigenous identity and approaches to an objectified idea of culture as something which is visible rather than internal. This thesis looks at how contemporary, urban Indigenous artists face a number of stereotypes and public expectations when producing artworks. These expectations create a range of tensions for artists that stem from both the success of works from the Northern Territory as well as the past policies of the Queensland government. In particular, it will be shown that the actions of the government body established in the 1950s to create a market for Aboriginal art, Queensland Aboriginal Creations (QAC) has left a mixed legacy for Queensland Indigenous artists. Their art styles have been misinterpreted as derivative copies of 'true' Indigenous works and the positive outcomes that have come from QAC's engagement with communities and artist has not been fully recognised. The legacy of QAC continues on to today and the TNQT Cairns Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art studio reflects these tensions in Indigenous art.

Globally, the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes is rising. The most affected populations are those that have undergone recent and rapid transition towards a Western lifestyle, characterised by energy-dense diets and physical inactivity. Two major hypotheses have attempted to explain the variation in diabetes prevalence, both between and within populations, beyond the contributions made by adult lifestyle. The thrifty genotype hypothesis proposes that some populations are genetically well adapted to surviving in a subsistence environment, and are predisposed to develop diabetes when the dietary environment changes to one that is fat and carbohydrate rich. The programming hypothesis focuses on the developmental environment, particularly on prenatal and early postnatal conditions: nutritional deprivation in utero and early postnatal life, measured by low birthweight and disrupted child growth, is proposed to alter metabolism permanently so that risk of diabetes is increased with subsequent exposure to an energy-dense diet. Both hypotheses emphasise discord between adaptation (genetic or developmental) and current environment, and both now put forward insulin resistance as a likely mechanism for predisposition.¶ Diabetes contributes significantly to morbidity and mortality among Australia’s Indigenous population. Indigenous babies are more likely to be low birthweight, and typical patterns of child growth include periods of faltering and rapid catch-up. Although there have been numerous studies in other populations, the programming hypothesis has not previously been tested in an Australian Indigenous community. The framework of the programming hypothesis is thus expanded to consider exposure of whole populations to adverse prenatal and postnatal environments, and the influence this may have on diabetes prevalence.¶ The present study took place in Cherbourg, a large Aboriginal community in southeast Queensland with a high prevalence of diabetes. Study participants were adults with diagnosed diabetes and a random sample of adults who had never been diagnosed with diabetes. Data were collected on five current risk factors for diabetes (general and central obesity, blood pressure, age and family history), in addition to fasting blood glucose levels. A lifestyle survey was also conducted. Participants’ medical records detailing weight growth from birth to five years were analysed with regard to adult diabetes risk to determine whether childhood weight and rate of weight gain were associated with subsequent diabetes. Adult lifestyle factors were also explored to determine whether variation in nutrition and physical activity was related to level of diabetes risk. ...

In this thesis I examine aspects of disease, health and healing among the indigenous people in Western Australia and Queensland from 1900 to 1940. I argue that diseases have helped to shape and influence the interaction between the indigenous people and the various members of the settler community most concerned with them - government protectors, missionaries, pastoralists and health workers. In developing this argument I draw on the distinction made by Stephen J. Kunitz between the universalistic and particularistic approaches to historical epidemiology. Kunitz argues that the development of physiology and bacteriology transformed the practice of medicine by revealing universalistic 'natural histories' of diseases and their causative agents, but that this approach should be tempered by attention to the particular individual, cultural and institutional circumstances of disease occurrence. Diseases have a past, a present and a future of their own, and when considered within the context of human social history, are seen to be a powerful motivate force in human affairs. My approach involves examining the history of diseases, health and healing among the indigenous peoples using models of causation, some of which are biomedical, some are anthropological and others are demographic and epidemiological. There are differences between such models. The biomedical model is 'universalistic' and 'scientific', based on general principles subject to proof or denial through empirical research. In the same way, the demographic and epidemiological models are also universalistic. The anthropological model, however, is articularistic' in that each situation is unique and is explained by its history and internal dynamics, not by reference to general principles. The combination of the biomedical, demographic and epidemiological methods with those of social history allows an otherwise silent indigenous population to be brought into the historical narrative from which they would otherwise have been excluded. In Western Australia, contrary to previous thinking, the total number of Aborigines increased during the study period. In particular, the number of females and older males increased under the influence of protection laws. The increases contradict the popular belief that the indigenous populations were still in decline. However, the spread of disease and the growing population worsened the already poor personal and public hygiene practices, creating the mistaken impression that the indigenous populations were declining. Indeed, diseases such as leprosy, respiratory and sexually transmitted diseases had by the 1930s reached epidemic proportions, which suggested that the indigenous people were a dying race. The indigenous populations already contained some pathogenic infections prior to contact with Europeans. The Aborigines had developed a means, however rudimentary, of predicting how sick people reacted to an illness and of determining what the disease might be that healers treated. But following European contact, other diseases came from contact not only with Europeans but also with Asians, who introduced leprosy into mining camps and Kanakas, who introduced leprosy into the cane plantations and tuberculosis into the Cape York regions. Protection policies intensified the effects of the diseases. In Queensland, the government applied its protection policies with increasing vigour over the period, resulting in most Aborigines living on government ·relief depots, missions and reserves by the 1930s. Demographic analysis reveals that Queensland consistently overestimated its indigenous populations. Death, disease, health and heating among indigenous groups, therefore, came to have social and political dimensions which few, if any, people recognised at the time. In hindsight, however, we can appreciate that the assumption behind health programs was that the indigenous populations should be the passive, but grateful, recipients of welfare rather than historic actors in their own right. The consequences in terms of disease dynamics were profound. The associated practice of gathering together sick, infirm and infected people in 'disease compounds' created reservoirs of exotic diseases to infect newcomers with low immunity. The social consequences of weakened populations meant, in turn, higher numbers of inmates who succumbed to virulent infections. Even in the absence of 'disease compounds', overcrowding of depots and inadequate health services based mostly on religious compassion (on both mission and government compounds) were instruments in promoting increased infection. After 1920 professional services supervised by government protectors and health officials became the norm, but in general, Aborigines were not allowed access to normal hospital facilities. During epidemics, overcrowding of depots and settlements meant a greater susceptibility to respiratory and sexually transmitted diseases, which became endemic, as well as to other infections such as hookworm and leprosy.

Cultural, scientific and political issues associated with the conservation of Australian Aboriginal rock images are discussed. The process of significance assessment and its essential role in the development of a management plan is outlined. Emphasis is placed on the need for full recognition of Aboriginal ownership of Aboriginal cultural property, and the right of Aboriginal people to decide management and preservation policies for rock images is stressed. The major causes of deterioration of painted images are summarised and some recommended treatment methods are reviewed. A project involving the removal of graffiti from a Townsville site is described. Current methods for painted graffiti removal are assessed and recommendations made. A case study of the conservation requirements of Aboriginal painted images in the Townsville region is included.