Articoli di riviste sul tema "Aboriginal Australians. Cultural assimilation"

During the early 1970s, large numbers of Aboriginal people became tenants of the Housing Commission of New South Wales under the Housing for Aborigines program. Most moved from government reserves or dilapidated and overcrowded private rental dwellings to broadacre suburban estates. As public housing tenants, they encountered considerable pressures to become 'respectable' citizens, to build their lives around privacy, sobriety, moral restraint, the nuclear family, conventional gender roles and wage labour. For many indigenous Australians, these expectations-which were based as much on class relations as on colonialism— represented a threat to their conventional ways of life and their obligations to extended family and community. This paper explores the patterns of conformity and resistance amongst Aboriginal tenants. It draws on the sociological and cultural studies literature on youth subcultural resistance and compares anthropological theory about indigenous responses to the pressures of modernity.

During the first century of Australia's colonization, settler thanatopolitics meant both casual killing of individual Natives and organized massacres of Aboriginal clans. From the mid-nineteenth century, however, Aboriginal Protection Boards sought to disappear their charges by more covert means. Thus, biopolitics of biological absorption, cultural assimilation, and child removal, designed to bring about the destruction of Aboriginal peoples, came to be represented as being in the victims' best interests. Even today, coercive assimilation is framed in the now-threadbare terms of welfare discourse. Yet, Australia's Indigenous peoples have survived the genocidal practices of the frontier era and continue to resist the relentless succession of normative policies deployed to eradicate their “recalcitrant” lifeways. This essay presents a brief historical overview of settler Australia's biopolitics and analyzes the sociocultural factors enabling Aboriginal Australians both to survive the devastating impact of settler biopower and to resist the siren call of assimilationist rhetoric. Drawing on Kim Scott's Benang and Alexis Wright's Plains of Promise, I discuss how that resistance is reflected in contemporary Indigenous life-writing and fiction.

An analysis of Australia’s governmental policy towards indigenous peoples has been done. The negative consequences of the colonization of the Australian continent have been revealed, in particular, a significant reduction in the number of aborigines due to the spread of alcohol and epidemics, the seizure of their territories. It is concluded that the colonization of Australia was based on the idea of the hierarchy of human society, the superiority and inferiority of different races and groups of people, and accordingly - the supremacy of European culture and civilization. It is demonstrated in the creation of reservations for aborigines and the adoption of legislation aimed at segregating the country's white and colored populations and assimilating certain indigenous peoples into European society, primarily children from mixed marriages. It has been proven that, considering the aborigines an endangered people and seeking to protect them from themselves, Europeans saw the way to their salvation in miscegenation - interracial marriages and the isolation of aboriginal children from their parents. This policy has been pursued since the end of the XIX century by the 1970s and had disrupted cultural and family ties and destroyed aboriginal communities, although government circles positioned it as a policy of caring for indigenous Australians. As a result, the generation of aborigines taken from their parents and raised in boarding schools or families of white Europeans has been dubbed the “lost generation”. The activity of A.O. Neville who for more than two decades held the position of chief defender of the aborigines in Western Australia and in fact became the ideologist of the aborigines’ assimilation policy has been analyzed. He substantiated the idea of the biological absorption of the indigenous Australian race as a key condition for its preservation and extremely harshly implemented the policy of separating Aboriginal children from their parents. It is concluded that the policy towards the indigenous population of Australia in the late XIX – first third of the XX century was based on the principle of discrimination on racial grounds.

Abstract The mental health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males in Australia is often misunderstood, mainly because it has been poorly researched. When analyzing the quality of life of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males, it is crucial to consider the associated factors that have directly and indirectly contributed to their poor health and wellbeing, that is, the effects of colonization, the interruption of cultural practices, displacement of societies, taking away of traditional homelands and forceful removal of children (assimilation and other policies). The displacement of families and tribal groups from their country broke up family groups and caused conflict between the original inhabitants of the lands and dislocated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribal groups. These dislocated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were forced to reside on the allocated government institutions where they would be (allegedly) protected. Whilst in the institutions they were made to comply with the authority rules and were forbidden to practice or participate in their traditional rituals or customs or speak their own tribal languages. Additionally, the dispossession from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditional lands and the destruction of culture and political, economic, and social structures have caused many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to have a pervading sense of hopelessness for the future. The traditional customs and life cycles of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males were permanently affected by colonization adversely contributing to mental health problems in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. In this article we aim to provide a better understanding of the processes impacting on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males' social and emotional wellbeing.

A few decades ago the culture of Aboriginal Australians was believed to have been removed or assigned to the margins. It was considered static and primitive, produced by uncivilized and barbaric peoples. Since the 1980s the view has been successfully challenged and recent art histories produced in settler colonial countries emphasize that Indigenous cultures were neither stuck in the past nor resistant to change. Its development was due to contact between the Indigenous and settler societies and the cross-cultural interactions the contact engendered in political, social and artistic life. This was often against the backdrop of conquest and displacement, which was the result of colonization. Adopting as the main frame of the discussion the theory of transculturation and the concept of counter-narrative from cultural studies, this article will show these different types of encounters and their influence on the life and art of William Barak, a nineteenth-century Aboriginal Australian statesman, leader of a Woi Wurrung nation and an artist. It will also show ‐ again through transculturation ‐ what trajectory the Australian mainstream society followed from initial separation and exclusion, through assimilation to an integration of Indigenous Australians in the artistic and social life. The counter-narrative concocted on the basis of those encounters produces a nuanced picture of loss, survival and strength as experienced by William Barak and his peoples.

This article examines two psychological interventions with Australian Aboriginal children in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The first involved evaluating the cognitive maturation of Aboriginal adolescents using a series of Piagetian interviews. The second, a more extensive educational intervention, used a variety of quantitative tests to measure and intervene in the intellectual performance of Aboriginal preschoolers. In both of these interventions the viability of the psychological instruments in the cross-cultural encounter created ongoing ambiguity as to the value of the research outcomes. Ultimately, the resolution of this ambiguity in favour of notions of Aboriginal ‘cultural deprivation’ reflected the broader political context of debates over Aboriginal self-governance during this period.

The last decades of previous century has witnessed the burgeoning of life narratives lending voice to the oppressed, dispossessed, and the colonized marginalities of race, class or gender across the world. A large number of autobiographical and biographical narratives that have appeared on the literary scene have started articulating their ordeals and their struggle for survival. The Aboriginals in Australia have started candidly articulating their side of story, exposing the harassment and oppression of their people in Australia. These oppressed communities find themselves sandwiched and strangled under the mainstream politics of multiculturalism, assimilation and secularism. The present paper seeks to analyze how life writing serves the purpose of history in celebrated Australian novelist, Aboriginal historian and social activist Ruby Langford’s autobiographical narrative, Don’t Take Your Love to Town. The Colonial historiography of Australian settlement has never accepted the fact of displacement and eviction of the Aboriginals from their land and culture. The whites systematically transplanted Anglo-Celtic culture and identity in the land of Australia which was belonged to the indigenous for centuries. Don’t Take Your Love to Town reconstructs the debate on history of the colonial settlement and status of Aboriginals under subsequent government policies like reconciliation, assimilation and multiculturalism. The paper is an attempt to gaze the assimilation policy adopted by the state to bring the Aboriginals into the mainstream politics and society on the one hand, and the regular torture, exploitation and cultural degradation of the Aboriginals recorded in the text on the other. In this respect the paper sees how Langford encounters British history of Australian settlement and the perspectives of Australian state towards the Aboriginals. The politics of mainstream culture, religion, race and ethnicity, which is directly or indirectly responsible for the condition of the Aboriginals, is also the part of discussion in the paper.

Abstract Despite their different politics, populations and histories, there are some striking similarities between the indigenous assimilation policies enacted by the United States and Australia. These parallels reveal much about the harsh practicalities behind the rhetoric of humanitarian uplift, civilization and cultural assimilation that existed in these settler nations. This article compares legislation which provided assimilative pathways to Aborigines and Native Americans whom white officials perceived to be acculturated. Some Aboriginal people were offered certificates of “exemption” which freed them from the legal restrictions on Aboriginal people’s movement, place of abode, ability to purchase alcohol, and other controls. Similarly, Native Americans could be awarded a fee patent which declared them “competent.” This patent discontinued government guardianship over them and allowed them to sell, deed, and pay taxes on their lands. I scrutinize the Board that was sent to Oklahoma to examine the Cheyenne and Arapaho for competency in January and February 1917, and the New South Wales Aborigines’ Welfare Board, which combined the awarding of exemption certificates with their efforts to assimilate Koori people into Australian society in the 1940s and 1950s. These case studies reveal that people of mixed white/indigenous descent were more likely to be declared competent or exempt. Thus, hand in hand with efforts to culturally assimilate Aborigines and Native Americans came attempts to reduce the size of indigenous populations and their landholdings by releasing people of mixed descent from government control, and no longer officially recognizing their indigenous identity.

In the 20 years before the Second World War the frontier war dragged to a close in remote parts of north Australia with the 1926 Daly River massacre and the 1928 Coniston massacre. There was a rapid decline in the Aboriginal population, giving rise to the idea of the ‘dying race’ which had found policy expression in the State ‘Protection’ Acts. Aboriginal and Islander labour was exploited under scandalous rates of pay and conditions in the struggling north Australian beef industry and the pearling industry. In south east Australia, Aborigines endured repressive white control on government reserves and mission stations described by some historians as being little better than prison farms. A largely ineffectual Aboriginal political movement with a myriad of organisations, none of which had a pan-Aboriginal identity, struggled to make headway against white prejudice. Finally, in 1939, John McEwen's ‘assimilation policy’ was introduced and, though doomed to failure, it at least recognised that Aborigines had a place in Australia in the long term.

Officials in the Australian Public Service often wield substantial influence on policy-making, yet their work is normally hidden from public view. This case study of the process involved in developing an Aboriginal broadcasting policy after the 1967 referendum reveals conflict between two incompatible paradigms: assimilation (Aboriginal affairs) and diversity of choice (broadcasting). This conflict, together with official reluctance to truly consult with relevant Aboriginal communities and misunderstandings over historically and culturally specific concepts such as country, tribe, clan, community and resident, eventually led to policy failure. Since community control was not considered as an option, Aboriginal broadcasting obstinately remained whitefella business.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore representations of Aboriginal people, in particular children, in the Victorian government’s school reader The School Paper, from the end of the Second World War until its publication ceased in 1968. The author interrogates these representations within the framework of pedagogies of citizenship training and the development of national identity, to reveal the role Aboriginal people and their culture were accorded within the “imagined community” of Australian nationhood and its heritage and history. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on the rich material available in the Victorian Department of Education’s school reader, The School Paper, from 1946 to 1968 (when the publication ceased), and on the Department’s annual reports. These are read within the context of scholarship on race, education and citizenship formation in the post-war years. Findings – State government policies of assimilation following the Second World War tied in with pedagogies and curricula regarding citizenship and belonging, which became a key focus of education departments following the Second World War. The informal pedagogies of The School Paper’s representations of Aboriginal children and their families, the author argues, excluded Aboriginal communities from understandings of Australian nationhood, and from conceptions of the ideal Australian citizen-in-formation. Instead, representations of Aboriginal people relegated them to the outdoors in ways that racialised Australian spaces: Aboriginal cultures are portrayed as historical yet timeless, linked with the natural/native rather than civic/political environment. Originality/value – This paper builds on scholarship on the relationship between education, reading pedagogies and citizenship formation in Australia in the post-war years to develop our knowledge of how conceptions of the ideal Australian citizen of the future – that is, Australian students – were inherently racialised. It makes a new contribution to scholarship on the assimilation project in Australia, through revealing the relationship between government policies towards Aboriginal people and the racial and cultural qualities being taught in Australian schools.

In Representing Australian Aboriginal Music and Dance 1930–1970, Amanda Harris sets out a history of Aboriginal music and dance performances in south-east Australia during the four-decade-long period defined as the Australian assimilation era. During this era, and pushing its boundaries, harsh government policies under the guise of ‘protection’ and ‘welfare’ were designed forcibly to assimilate Aboriginal people into the mainstream population. It is striking while reading this book how few of these stories are widely known, particularly given the heavy influence that Harris uncovers it having on the Australian art music scene of today. As such, the book makes an important contribution to the ‘truth telling’ of Australian history while also showing that—despite the severe policies during this era, including the banning of speaking in Indigenous languages and restricting the performance of ceremony—Aboriginal people have remained active agents in driving their own engagements and asserting their own culturally distinct modes of music and dance performance. This resilience against significant odds has been aptly described by one of the book’s contributors, Yorta Yorta and Dja Dja Warrung cultural leader, visual and performance artist, curator and opera singer Tiriki Onus, as ‘hiding in plain sight,’ referring to the ways in which Aboriginal people ensured the continued practice and performance of their culture by doing so in public, the only place they were allowed to…

This article considers the interplay between Aboriginal people’s remembrances about race relations in rural mid-twentieth-century Australia and the frames of remembrance provided by the American Civil rights movement. It takes as its focus two key Australian sites of racial segregation – country town cinemas and public swimming pools – to explore the ways in which since, and in no small part due to, the desegregationist politics of the 1960s they have become prominent sites of public memory. Drawing on three examples from a range of media – art, film and published memoirs – the article traces the ways in which different ways of narrating and remembering these ‘twisted spaces’ contributes to and makes possible alternative and at times unsettling interpretations of experiences and histories of relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people during what is commonly referred to as the ‘assimilation era’.

A cornerstone of the author's pedagogy as a teacher educator is to help students analyse how their culture and socialisation influence their role as teachers. In this article she shares the reflections of her Australian students on their culture. As part of their coursework in an elective subject, Cultural Diversity and Education, students reflect on and address questions of how they have been socialised to regard Anglo-Australian, Indigenous and non-British migrant cultures in their society. Some recall that their early conditioning cultivated a deep fear of Aborigines, and a tokenistic understanding of ethnicity. Others talk of their confusion between the pulls of assimilation into mainstream ‘whiteness’ and of maintaining a minority identity. This, combined with an often Anglocentric education, has left them with a problematic foundation with regard to becoming teachers who can overcome prejudice and discrimination in the classroom and the curriculum. This article argues that in grappling with the negative legacies of neo-colonialism and its ‘race’ ideologies, teachers need as a first step to analyse discourses of ethnicity and how these discourses construct ‘white’, ‘ethnic’ and Indigenous Australians. This groundwork is necessary for the further steps of honouring the central role of Indigenous people in Australian culture, recognizing how interacting cultures restructure each other, contributing to initiatives for peace and reconciliation, and promoting the study of cultural diversity in the curriculum – all essential components of an intercultural pedagogy.

This prospective study was designed to describe problems that arise when Aboriginal people undergo anaesthesia, in order to develop guidelines for anaesthetists who are not accustomed to treating Aboriginal people. Data were collected on 1122 consecutive different individuals undergoing anaesthesia at Royal Darwin Hospital, 24.5% of whom described themselves as Aboriginal. Aboriginal patients were in a poorer physiological state than were non-Aboriginal patients. The prevalence of diabetes mellitus, renal disease and rheumatic heart disease reported in Aboriginal patients was very high. Communication difficulties were more commonly reported in Aboriginal patients; the most common difficulty was apparent shyness or fear, rather than actual language difficulty. The results suggest that the treatment of Aboriginal people involves diagnosis and management of diverse pre-operative medical problems, and that better management may be achieved by learning simple cultural strategies and by adding Aboriginal interpreters and health workers to the anaesthetic team.

This article offers a critical exploration of social studies textbooks and allied curriculum materials used in New South Wales primary schools between 1930 and 1960, and of the way in which these texts positioned, discussed, and assessed Aboriginal Australians. With reference to European commitments to Enlightenment philosophies and social Darwinian views of race and culture, the author argues that Aboriginal peoples were essentialized via a discourse of paternalism and cultural and biological inferiority. Thus othered in narratives of Australian identity and national progress, Aboriginal Australians were ascribed a role as marginalized spectators or as a primitive and disappearing anachronism.

Abstract Although a minority of Indigenous Australians still use their heritage languages, English has been largely adopted by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as their medium of communication both within and beyond their communities. In the period since English first reached Australia in 1788, a dialect has emerged, drawing on English, contact language, and Indigenous language sources, to enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander speakers to maintain cultural conceptual continuity while communicating in a dramatically changed environment. In the perspective of Cultural Linguistics it can be shown that many of the modifications in the lexicon, grammar, phonology, and discourse of English as used by Indigenous Australians can be related to cultural/conceptual principles, of which five are illustrated here: interconnectedness, embodiment, group reference, orientation to motion, and orientation to observation. This is demonstrated here with data from varieties of Aboriginal English spoken in diverse Australian locations.1 The understanding of Aboriginal English this gives has implications for cross-cultural communication and for education.

Abstract Australian Aboriginal boxer Adrian Blair was one of three Indigenous Australians to compete in the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. To that point, no Indigenous Australians had ever participated in the Olympics, not for want of sporting talent but because the racist legislation that stripped them of their basic human rights extended to limited sporting opportunities. The state of Queensland, where Blair lived, had the most repressive laws governing Indigenous people of any state in Australia. The Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement, a government reserve where Blair grew up as a ward of the state, epitomized the oppressive control exerted over Indigenous people. In this article, we examine Blair's selection for the Olympic Games through the lens of government legislation and changing policy toward Indigenous people. We chart a growing trajectory of boxing in Cherbourg, from the reserve's foundation in 1904 to Blair's appearance in Tokyo sixty years later, which corresponds to policy shifts from “protection” to informal assimilation and, finally, to formal assimilation in the 1960s. The analysis of how Cherbourg boxing developed in these changing periods illustrates the power of sport history for analyzing race relations in settler colonial countries.

Improvements to the education of Australia's indigenous people is very much dependent upon the teacher's awareness of the factors affecting their academic potential. The traditional role of schools which essentially aimed at assimilating Aboriginal children into the ways of Western civilisation has proven to be ineffective and grossly unfair. Educational institutions must be more responsive to the needs of these people so that many more will be willing to participate in Western forms of education, and at a level beyond the compulsory years. This will involve an appreciation of the cultural, social, environmental and economic factors that can seriously impair the academic potential of Aboriginal children. Moreover, the teacher may need to alter a number of specific instructional practices in order to cater for the learning styles of these children. With the release of the Federal Government's Reconciliation Policy, and the P-10 Curriculum Framework's (Queensland Department of Education, 1987) emphasis on understanding individuals and their cultural diversity, it appears that these practices will become a necessary responsibility for all teachers in the near future.

While there is strong evidence of the need for healthy ageing programs for older Aboriginal Australians, few are available. It is important to understand older Aboriginal Australians’ perspectives on healthy ageing in order to co-design culturally-appropriate programs, including views on technology use in this context. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 34 Aboriginal Australians aged 50 years and older from regional and urban communities to explore participants’ health concerns, preferences for healthy ageing programs, and receptiveness to technology. Qualitative data were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. This study found that older Aboriginal Australians are concerned about chronic health conditions, social and emotional well-being, and difficulties accessing health services. A range of barriers and enablers to participation in current health programs were identified. From the perspective of older Aboriginal people, a successful healthy ageing program model includes physical and cognitive activities, social interaction, and health education. The program model also provides culturally safe care and transport for access as well as family, community, cultural identity, and empowerment regarding ageing well as central tenets. Technology could also be a viable approach for program delivery. These findings can be applied in the implementation and evaluation of culturally-appropriate, healthy ageing programs with older Aboriginal people.

Background. Cancer mortality among Indigenous Australians is higher compared to the non-Indigenous population and attributed to poor access to cancer detection, screening, treatment and support services. A large proportion of Indigenous Australians live in rural and remote areas which makes access to cancer treatment services more challenging. Factors, such as transport, accommodation, poor socio-economic status and cultural appropriateness of services also negatively affect health service access and, in turn, lead to poor cancer outcomes. Design, setting and participants. Qualitative research with 30 in-depth interviews was conducted with Aboriginal people affected by cancer from across WA, using a variety of recruitment approaches. Results. The infrastructure around the whole-of-treatment experience affected the decision-making and experiences of Aboriginal patients, particularly affecting rural residents. Issues raised included transport and accommodation problems, travel and service expenses, displacement from family, concerns about the hospital environment and lack of appropriate support persons. These factors are compounded by a range of disadvantages already experienced by Aboriginal Australians and are vital factors affecting treatment decision-making and access. Conclusion. To improve cancer outcomes for Aboriginal people, logistical, infrastructure and cultural safety issues must be addressed. One way of ensuring this could be by dedicated support to better coordinate cancer diagnostic and treatment services with primary healthcare services. What is known about the topic? Cancer is a major cause of death among Indigenous Australians who are generally diagnosed later with their disease, have poorer continuity of care and lower uptake and completion of cancer treatment. For cancer diagnosis at an equivalent stage of cancer, Aboriginal people have poorer outcomes. What does this paper add? This study documents Aboriginal perspectives on basic infrastructure and logistical problems which impede their accessing hospital-based cancer treatments: transport, accommodation, preparation for the experience of hospital and cancer treatment, service affordability and the certainty of support services. What are the implications for practitioners? There are difficulties for practitioners in addressing the geographic, socioeconomic and cultural differences that Aboriginal people face in accessing cancer treatment. System level changes to ensure cultural safety, social support and better coordination with primary healthcare are essential to improve outcomes of Aboriginal people with cancer.

In Australia, organisations identify Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cross-cultural awareness training or Indigenous cultural competency training as a means to address the service needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and to address the gap in disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. This training is also one of the strategies utilised in working towards reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. This paper presents the findings from an institutional study based on the development and implementation of an Indigenous Cultural Competency Course within an Australian university and the tensions that exist within the teaching and delivery of such a course.

Objective The aim of the present systematic review was to examine the enablers for effective health service delivery for Aboriginal Australians. Methods This systematic review was undertaken in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement. Papers were included if they had data related to health services for Australian Aboriginal people and were published between 2000 and 2015. The 21 papers that met the inclusion criteria were assessed using the Effective Public Health Practice Project Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies. Seven papers were subsequently excluded due to weak methodological approaches. Results There were two findings in the present study: (1) that Aboriginal people fare worse than non-Aboriginal people when accessing usual healthcare services; and (2) there are five enablers for effective health care services for Australian Aboriginal people: cultural competence, participation rates, organisational, clinical governance and compliance, and availability of services. Conclusions Health services for Australian Aboriginal people must be tailored and implementation of the five enablers is likely to affect the effectiveness of health services for Aboriginal people. The findings of the present study have significant implications in directing the future design, funding, delivery and evaluation of health care services for Aboriginal Australians. What is known about the topic? There is significant evidence about poor health outcomes and the 10-year gap in life expectancy between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, and limited evidence about improving health service efficacy. What does this paper add? This systematic review found that with usual health care delivery, Aboriginal people experience worse health outcomes. This paper identifies five strategies in the literature that improve the effectiveness of health care services intended for Aboriginal people. What are the implications for practitioners? Aboriginal people fare worse in both experience and outcomes when they access usual care services. Health services intended for Aboriginal people should be tailored using the five enablers to provide timely, culturally safe and high-quality care.

Colonisation in Australia has had a devastating and lasting impact on the wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia (herein referred to as Indigenous Australians). This paper discusses the role of psychology in Australia and the negative impact that certain disciplinary theories and practices have had on Indigenous Australians. The impact has been further exacerbated by the failure of mainstream policy makers and mental health practitioners to recognise the key, distinctive cultural and social determinants that contribute to Aboriginal health and wellbeing. There is a growing response by Aboriginal psychologists, critical social theorists, and their allies to decolonise psychological theory and practice to redress this situation. This paper outlines key decolonising strategies that have been effective in interrupting those aspects of psychology that are inimical to Aboriginal wellbeing.

In the mid-twentieth century many Aboriginal Australians moved to live in Australian cities in search of life opportunities that were not available to them in rural areas. This article explores the life history narratives of three Indigenous people who were brought to live in Sydney as children during this period. It considers the processes by which, in spite of the dominant policy position of assimilation at the time, they were alienated from the school education system and failed to make the most of their talents. None of them could recognise themselves in the meritocratic narratives held up to them. In addition, each experienced obligations to family and/or to home country that were incompatible with the rhythms of life associated with school education.

The over-riding objective of an Aboriginal Education Policy should be to achieve equity between Aboriginal people and other Australians in participation at all stages of education by the turn of the century. Education opportunities must be available to Aboriginal people regardless of where they live and in a manner that is appropriate to the diverse cultural and social situations in which they live. It is therefore essential to ensure access for Aboriginal children and adults to school and tertiary education, to ensure that Aboriginal communities are able to influence the way in which education is provided, and to ensure that it reflects their social and cultural values (Hughes Report, 1987: 17).

Back in early 1982, a mate in New Zealand wrote to me describing, in a very excited manner, his research into cultural aspects of Maori people, especially with respect to the poetry relating to funeral rites. Concurrently, I was completing the Multicultural Education Diploma, and fostering an infant interest in aspects of Australian literature dealing with the immigrant experience and cultural difference (viz. Judah Waten’s Alien Son, and Nancy Keesing’s Shalom). Whilst I had not at that stage successfully made the link between such literature and its effective use in the educational process of students of non-English speaking background, I remember thinking that perhaps I should soon pursue a course which would lead me to an understanding of Aboriginal Australians, in some way similar to Terry’s pursuit in New Zealand.

Past histories charting interactions between British healthcare and Aboriginal Australians have tended to be dominated by broad histological themes such as invasion and colonization. While such descriptions have been vital to modernization and truth telling in Australian historical discourse, this paper investigates the nineteenth century through the modern cultural lens of mental health. We reviewed primary documents, including colonial diaries, church sermons, newspaper articles, medical and burial records, letters, government documents, conference speeches and anthropological journals. Findings revealed six overlapping fields which applied British ideas about mental health to Aboriginal Australians during the nineteenth century. They included military invasion, religion, law, psychological systems, lunatic asylums, and anthropology.

SynopsisAs part of the Taiwan Aboriginal Study Project (TASP), a new acculturation scale (the Taiwan Aboriginal Acculturation Scale, or TAAS) has been developed among the aboriginal minorities of Austronesian origin in Taiwan. The design of the original 54 items was based on Milton Gordon's concept of assimilation in association with a careful consideration of cross-cultural validity. These items were administered to 144 subjects stratified by age and sex who were randomly sampled from four major Taiwanese aboriginal groups. Item analysis and factor analysis were applied to select an 18-item scale which has three subscales (factors): cultural assimilation, social assimilation, and social attitude. Results of validity and reliability studies of the TAAS were found to be acceptable. The development of TAAS demonstrates the applicability of the concept of acculturation as a process that involves changes both in attitude, and in behaviour, to non-western societies.

Objectives. To describe health professionals’ perceptions of Aboriginal people’s access to cardiac rehabilitation (CR) services and the role of institutional barriers in implementing the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) guidelines Strengthening Cardiac Rehabilitation and Secondary Prevention for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Design. Qualitative study. Setting. Metropolitan and rural tertiary and community-based public CR services and Aboriginal health services in WA. Participants. Thirty-eight health professionals working in the CR setting. Method. Semistructured interviews were undertaken with 28 health professionals at public CR services and 10 health professionals from Aboriginal Medical Services in WA. The participants represented 17 services (10 rural, 7 metropolitan) listed in the WA Directory of CR services. Results. Emergent themes included (1) a lack of awareness of Aboriginal CR patients’ needs; (2) needs related to cultural awareness training for health professionals; and (3) Aboriginal health staff facilitate access for Aboriginal patients. Conclusions. Understanding the institutional barriers to Aboriginal participation in CR is necessary to recommend viable solutions. Promoting cultural awareness training, recruiting Aboriginal health workers and monitoring participation rates are important in improving health outcomes. What is already known about this subject? Significant health and social inequity exists for Aboriginal Australians. Despite the persisting high rates of morbidity and mortality related to cardiovascular disease in Aboriginal Australians, participation rates in cardiac rehabilitation remain low. What does this paper add? Despite widespread dissemination of NHMRC guidelines, there remains a disconnect between CR health professionals’ understandings and practices and the needs of Aboriginal people in WA. Increasing the volume and quality of cultural awareness training as well as access to Aboriginal health professionals are crucial in addressing this disparity. What are the implications for practitioners? Increasing the number and support of Aboriginal people trained as health professionals will assist the system to respond better to the needs of communities. Collaborative partnership models where Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal health professionals work together to increase mutual understanding are warranted.

Full TextThe first law enacted in Canada to protect existing Aboriginal rights was section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.2 The first law in Canada to recognize the rights of non-human animals as anything other than property has yet to be enacted. The first Supreme Court of Canada (hereafter referred to as the Court) case to interpret section 35 was R. v. Sparrow.3 The 1990 case confirmed an Aboriginal right of the Musqueam peoples of British Columbia to fish for food, social and ceremonial purposes. Since this precedent-setting case, many similar claims have been brought before the courts by way of the fluctuating legal space created by s.35. Many of these cases have been about establishing rights to fish4, hunt5, and trap non-human animals (hereafter referred to as animals). The Court has developed, and continues to develop tests to determine the existence and scope of Aboriginal rights. These tests primarily embody cultural, political and, to a surprisingly lesser degree, legal forces. One of the principal problems with these tests is that they privilege, through the western philosophical lens, the interests of humans. Animals are, at best, the resources over which ownership is being contested. The Euro-centric legal conceptualization of animals as 'resources' over which ownership can be exerted is problematic for at least two reasons. First, the relegation of animals solely to a utilitarian role is antithetical to Indigenous-animal relationships and therefore demonstrates one of the fundamental ways the Canadian legal system is ill equipped to give adequate consideration to Indigenous law. Second, failure to consider animals' inherent value and agency in this context reproduces the human-animal and culture-nature binaries that are at the root of many of western Euro-centric society's inequities. This paper argues that Aboriginal peoples' relationships with animals are a necessary, integral and distinctive part of their cultures6 and, therefore, these relationships and the actors within them are entitled to the aegis of s.35. Through the legal protection of these relationships, animals will gain significant protection as a corollary benefit. If the Court were to protect the cultural relationships between animals and Aboriginal groups, a precondition would be acceptance of Indigenous legal systems. Thus, this paper gives a brief answer to the question, what are Indigenous legal systems and why are animals integral to them? The Anishinabe (also known Ojibwe or Chippewa) are Indigenous peoples who have historically lived in the Great Lakes region. The Bruce Peninsula on Lake Huron is home to the Cape Croker Indian Reserve, where the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation live. The people of this First Nation identify as Anishinabe. The Anishinabek case of Nanabush v. Deer is a law among these people and is used throughout the paper as an example of Indigenous-animal relationships. Making the significant assumption that s.35 has the capacity to recognize Indigenous law, the subsequent section of the paper asks why we should protect these relationships and how that protection should be achieved. Finally, the paper concludes that both the ability of s.35 to recognize Indigenous-animal relationships, and the judicial and political will to grant such recognition, are unlikely. Indigenous-animal relationships are integral to the distinctive culture of the Anishinabek, however the courts would be hesitant to allow such an uncertain and potentially far-reaching right. This is not surprising given that such a claim by both Indigenous and animal groups would challenge the foundations upon which the Canadian legal system is based. There are many sensitive issues inherent in this topic. It should be noted the author is not of Indigenous ancestry, but is making every effort to learn about and respect the Indigenous legal systems discussed. While this paper focuses on a number of Anishinabek laws; it is neither a complete analysis of these practices, nor one that can be transferred, without adaptation, to other peoples. Finally, Indigenous peoples and animal rights and Indigenous law scholars, such as Tom Regan and Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, respectively, may insist on an abolitionist approach to animal 'use' or reject the legitimacy of s.35 itself.7 These perspectives are worthy and necessary. This paper positions itself amongst these and other sources in order to reflect upon the timely and important issue of the legal status of Indigenous-animal relationships. I:WHAT ARE INDIGENOUS LEGAL SYSTEMS? The Law Commission of Canada defines a legal tradition as “a set of deeply rooted, historically conditioned attitudes about the nature of law, the role of law in the society and the polity, the proper organization and operation of a legal system, and the way law is or should be made, applied, studied, perfected and taught.”8 Indigenous legal traditions fit this description. They are living systems of beliefs and practices, and have been recognized as such by the courts.9 Indigenous practices developed into systems of law that have guided communities in their governance, and in their relationships amongst their own and other cultures and with the Earth.10 These laws have developed through stories, historical events that may be viewed as ‘cases,’ and other lived experiences. Indigenous laws are generally non-prescriptive, non-adversarial and non-punitive and aim to promote respect and consensus, as well as close connection with the land, the Creator, and the community. Indigenous laws are a means through which vital knowledge of social order within the community is transmitted, revived and retained. After European ‘settlement’ the influence of Indigenous laws waned. This was due in part to the state’s policies of assimilation, relocation and enfranchisement. 11 Despite these assaults, Indigenous legal systems have persevered; they continue to provide guidance to many communities, and are being revived and re-learned in others. For example, the Nisga’a’s legal code, Ayuuk, guides their communities and strongly informs legislation enacted under the Nisga’a Final Agreement, the first modern treaty in British Columbia.12 The land and jurisdiction claims of the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan Nations ultimately resulted in the Court’s decision in Delgamuukw,13 a landmark case that established the existence of Aboriginal title. The (overturned) BC Supreme Court’s statement in Delgamuukw14 reveals two of the many challenges in demonstrating the validity of Indigenous laws: “what the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en witnesses[es] describe as law is really a most uncertain and highly flexible set of customs which are frequently not followed by the Indians [sic] themselves.” The first challenge is that many laws are not in full practice, and therefore not as visible as they could be and once were. What the courts fail to acknowledge, however, is that the ongoing colonial project has served to stifle, extinguish and alter these laws. The second challenge is that the kind of law held and practiced by Indigenous peoples is quite foreign to most non-Indigenous people. Many Indigenous laws have animals as central figures. In Anishinabek traditional law, often the animals are the lawmakers15: they develop the legal principles and have agency as law givers. For instance, the Anishinabek case Nanabush v. Deer, Wolf , as outlined by Burrows, is imbued with legal principles, lessons on conduct and community governance, as well as ‘offenses’ and penalties. It is not a case that was adjudicated by an appointed judge in a courtroom, but rather one that has developed over time as a result of peoples’ relationships with the Earth and its inhabitants. An abbreviated summary of the case hints at these legal lessons: Nanabush plays a trick on a deer and deliberately puts the deer in a vulnerable position. In that moment of vulnerability, Nanabush kills the deer and then roasts its body for dinner. While he is sleeping and waiting for the deer to be cooked, the Wolf people come by and take the deer. Nanabush wakes up hungry, and out of desperation transforms into a snake and eats the brains out of the deer head. Once full, he is stuck inside the head and transforms back into his original shape, but with the deer head still stuck on. He is then chased and nearly killed by hunters who mistake him for a real deer. This case is set within the legal context of the Anishinabek’s treaty with deer. In signing the treaty, the people were reminded to respect beings in life and death and that gifts come when beings respect each other in interrelationships.16 Nanabush violated the rights of the deer and his peoples’ treaty with the deer. He violated the laws by taking things through trickery, and by causing harm to those he owed respect. Because his actions were not in accordance with Anishinabek legal principles, he was punished: Nanabush lost the thing he was so desperately searching for, and he ended up nearly being killed. This case establishes two lessons. The first is that, like statutory and common law, with which Canadians are familiar, Indigenous law does not exist in isolation. Principles are devised based on multiple teachings, pre- vious rules and the application of these rules to facts. That there are myriad sources of Indigenous law suggests that the learning of Indigenous law would require substantial effort on the part of Canadian law-makers.17 The second is that animals hold an important place in Indigenous law, and those relationships with animals – and the whole ‘natural’ world – strongly inform the way they relate to the Earth. II: CAN CANADIAN LAW ACCEPT INDIGENOUS LEGAL SYSTEMS? If there were a right recognized under s.35 concerning the Indigenous-animal relationship, what would it look like? Courts develop legal tests to which the facts of each case are applied, theoretically creating a degree of predictability as to how a matter will be judged. Introduced in Sparrow, and more fully developed in Van der Peet, a ‘test’ for how to assess a valid Aboriginal right has been set out by the Court. Summarized, the test is: “in order to be an Aboriginal right an activity must be an element of a practice, custom or tradition integral to the distinctive culture of the Aboriginal group claiming the right.”18 There are ten, differently weighted factors that a court will consider in making this assessment. The right being ‘tested’ in this discussion is the one exemplified in Nanabush v. Deer: the ability of Indigenous peoples to recognize and practice their laws, which govern relationships, including death, with deer and other animals. The courts have agreed that a generous, large and liberal construction should be given to Indigenous rights in order to give full effect to the constitutional recognition of the distinctiveness of Aboriginal culture. Still, it is the courts that hold the power to define rights as they conceive them best aligning with Canadian society19; this is one way that the Canadian state reproduces its systems of power over Indigenous peoples.20 The application of the Aboriginal right exemplified in Nanbush v. Deer to the Sparrow and Van der Peet tests would likely conclude that the Anishinabek do have an integral and distinctive relationship with animals. However, due to the significant discretion of the Court on a number of very subjective and politically sensitive factors, it is uncertain that the Nanabush v. Deer case would ‘pass’ Van der Peet’s required ten factors.21 This is indicative of the structural restraints that s.35 imposes. 22 The questions it asks impair its ability to capture and respect the interrelationships inherent in Indigenous peoples’ interactions with animals. For example, the Court will characterize hunting or fishing as solely subsistence, perhaps with a cultural element. Shin Imai contends these activities mean much more: “To many…subsistence is a means of reaffirming Aboriginal identity by passing on traditional knowledge to future generations. Subsistence in this sense moves beyond mere economics, encompassing the cultural, social and spiritual aspects for the communities.”23 Scholar Kent McNeil concludes that: “regardless of the strengths of legal arguments in favour of Indigenous peoples, there are limits to how far the courts […] are willing to go to correct the injustices caused by colonialism and dispossession.”24 It is often not the legal principles that determine outcomes, but rather the extent to which Indigenous rights can be reconciled with the history of settlement without disturbing the current economic and political structure of the dominant culture. III:WHY PROTECT THE ANIMAL-INDIGENOUS RELATIONSHIP? Legally protecting animal-Indigenous relationships offers symbiotic, mutually respectful benefits for animals and for the scope of Aboriginal rights that can be practiced. For instance, a protected relationship would have indirect benefits for animals’ habitat and right to life: it would necessitate protecting the means necessary, such as governance of the land, for realization of the right. This could include greater conservation measures, more contiguous habitat, enforcement of endangered species laws, and, ideally, a greater awareness and appreciation by humans of animals and their needs. Critical studies scholars have developed the argument that minority groups should not be subject to culturally biased laws of the mainstream polity.24 Law professor Maneesha Deckha points out that animals, despite the central role they play in a lot of ‘cultural defences,’ have been excluded from our ethical consideration. Certainly, the role of animals has been absent in judicial consideration of Aboriginal rights.26 Including animals, Deckha argues, allows for a complete analysis of these cultural issues and avoids many of the anthropocentric attitudes inherent in Euro-centric legal traditions. In Jack and Charlie27 two Coast Salish men were charged with hunting deer out of season. They argued that they needed to kill a deer in order to have raw meat for an Aboriginal religious ceremony. The Court found that killing the deer was not part of the ceremony and that there was insufficient evidence to establish that raw meat was required. This is a case where a more nuanced consideration of the laws and relationships with animals would have resulted in a more just application of the (Canadian) law and prevented the reproduction of imperialist attitudes. A criticism that could be lodged against practicing these relationships is that they conflict with the liberty and life interests of animals.28 Theoretically, if Indigenous laws are given the legal and political room to fully operate, a balance between the liberty of animals and the cultural and legal rights of Indigenous peoples can be struck.29 Indeed, Indigenous peoples’ cultural and legal concern for Earth is at its most rudimentary a concern for the land, which is at the heart of the challenge to the Canadian colonial system. If a negotiated treaty was reached, or anti-cruelty and conservation laws were assured in the Indigenous peoples’ self government system, then Canadian anti-cruelty30 and conservation laws,31 the effectiveness of which are already questionable, could be displaced in recognition of Indigenous governance.32 Indigenous peoples in Canada were – and are, subject to imposed limitations – close to the environment in ways that can seem foreign to non-Indigenous people.33 For example, some origin stories and oral histories explain how boundaries between humans and animals are at times absent: Animal-human beings like raven, coyote and rabbit created them [humans] and other beings. People …acted with respect toward many animals in expectation of reciprocity; or expressed kinship or alliance with them in narratives, songs, poems, parables, performances, rituals, and material objects. 34 Furthering or reviving these relationships can advance the understanding of both Indigenous legal systems and animal rights theory. Some animal rights theorists struggle with how to explain the cultural construction of species difference: Indigenous relationships with animals are long standing, lived examples of a different cultural conception of how to relate to animals and also of an arguably healthy, minimally problematic way to approach the debate concerning the species divide.35 A key tenet of animal-Indigenous relationships is respect. Shepard Krech posits that Indigenous peoples are motivated to obtain the necessary resources and goals in ‘proper’ ways: many believe that animals return to the Earth to be killed, provided that hunters demonstrate proper respect.36 This demonstrates a spiritual connection, but there is also a concrete connection between Indigenous peoples and animals. In providing themselves with food and security, they ‘manage’ what Canadian law calls ‘resources.’37 Because of the physical nature of these activities, and their practical similarity with modern ‘resource management,’ offering this as ‘proof’ of physical connection with animals and their habitat may be more successful than ‘proving’ a spiritual relationship. Finally, there are health reasons that make the Indigenous-animal relationship is important. Many cultures have come to depend on the nutrients they derive from particular hunted or fished animals. For example, nutrition and physical activity transitions related to hunting cycles have had negative impacts on individual and community health.38 This shows the multidimensionality of hunting, the significance of health, and, by extension, the need for animal ‘resources’ to be protected. IV: HOW SHOULD WE PROTECT THESE ABORIGINAL RIGHTS? If the Anishinabek and the deer ‘win’ the constitutional legal test (‘against’ the state) and establish a right to protect their relationships with animals, what, other than common law remedies,39 would follow? Below are ideas for legal measures that could be taken from the human or the animal perspective, or both, where benefits accrue to both parties. If animals had greater agency and legal status, their needs as species and as individuals could have a meaningful place in Canadian common and statutory law. In Nanabush v. Deer, this would mean that the deer would be given representation and that legal tests would need to be developed to determine the animals’ rights and interests. Currently the courts support the view that animals can be treated under the law as any other inanimate item of property. Such a legal stance is inconsistent with a rational, common-sense view of animals,40 and certainly with Anishinabek legal principles discussed herein.41 There are ongoing theoretical debates that inform the practical questions of how animal equality would be achieved: none of these in isolation offers a complete solution, but combined they contribute to the long term goal. Barsh and James Sákéj Youngblood Henderson advocate an adoption of the reasoning in the Australian case Mabo v. Queensland,42 where whole Aboriginal legal systems were imported intact into the common law. Some principles that Canada should be following can also be drawn from international treaties that Canada has or should have signed on to.43 Another way to seek protection from the human perspective is through the freedom of religion and conscience section of the Charter. Professor John Borrows constructs a full argument for this, and cites its challenges, in Living Law on a Living Earth: Aboriginal Religion, Law and the Constitution.44 The strongest, but perhaps most legally improbable, way to protect the animal- Indigenous relationship is for Canada to recognize a third, Indigenous order of government (in addition to provincial and federal), where all three orders are equal and inform one another’s laws. This way, Indigenous laws would have the legal space to fully function and be revived. Endowing Indigenous peoples with the right to govern their relationships would require a great acquiescence of power by governments and a commitment to the establishment and maintenance of healthy self-government in Indigenous communities. Louise Mandell offers some reasons why Canada should treat Aboriginal people in new ways, at least one of which is salient to the third order of government argument: To mend the [E]arth, which must be done, governments must reassess the information which the dominant culture has dismissed. Some of that valuable information is located in the oral histories of Aboriginal Peoples. This knowledge will become incorporated into decisions affecting the [E]arth’s landscape when Aboriginal Peoples are equal partners in decisions affecting their territories.45 V: CONCLUSION A legal system that does not have to justify its existence or defend its worth is less vulnerable to challenges.46 While it can be concluded that s.35 has offered some legal space for Indigenous laws and practices, it is too deeply couched in Euro-centric legal traditions and the anthropocentric cultural assumptions that they carry. The most effective strategy for advancing Indigenous laws and culture, that would also endow many animals with greater agency, and relax the culture-nature, human-animal binaries, is the formal recognition of a third order of government. Lisa Chartrand explains that recognition of legal pluralism would be a mere affirmation of legal systems that exist, but which are stifled: “…this country is a multijuridical state, where the distinct laws and rules of three systems come together within the geographic boundaries of one political territory.” 47 Revitalizing Indigenous legal systems is and will be a challenging undertaking. Indigenous communities must reclaim, define and understand their own traditions: “The loss of culture and traditions caused by the historic treatment of Aboriginal communities makes this a formidable challenge for some communities. Equally significant is the challenge for the Canadian state to create political and legal space to accommodate revitalized Indigenous legal traditions and Aboriginal law-making.”48 The project of revitalizing Indigenous legal traditions requires the commitment of resources sufficient for the task, and transformative change to procedural and substantive law. The operation of these laws within, or in addition to, Canadian law would of course cause widespread, but worthwhile controversy. In Animal Bodies, Cultural Justice49 Deckha argues that an ethical relationship with the animal Other must be established in order realize cultural and animal rights. This paper explores and demonstrates the value in finding legal space where cultural pluralism and respect for animals can give rise to the practice of Indigenous laws and the revitalization of animal-Indigenous relationships. As Borrows writes: “Anishinabek law provides guidance about how to theorize, practice and order our association with the [E]arth, and could do so in a way that produces answers that are very different from those found in other sources.”50 (see PDF for references)

Background and context: Cancer survival rates in Australia are among the best in the world, yet Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (indigenous) people continue to experience disparities in the distribution and burden of cancer, and unwarranted variations in outcomes. Indigenous Australians are 40% more likely to die of cancer than non-Indigenous Australians. Cancer Australia developed the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cancer Framework (the framework), which identified 7 national priorities to address disparities in cancer outcomes experienced by indigenous Australians. An ongoing collaboration with indigenous Australians was integral to developing this shared agenda. Priority 5 in the framework highlights the need to ensure indigenous Australians affected by cancer receive optimal and culturally appropriate treatment, services, and supportive and palliative care. Aim: To improve cancer outcomes for indigenous Australians through the development and national endorsement of a population-specific Optimal Care Pathway (OCP) to guide the delivery of consistent, safe, high-quality, culturally appropriate and evidence-based care. Strategy/Tactics: Cancer Australia formed a partnership with the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to address Priority 5 and develop the OCP. The approach to development was underpinned by Cancer Australia's Model of Engagement for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People and guided by the national Leadership Group on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cancer Control (Leadership Group). Program/Policy process: Cancer Australia, in collaboration with DHHS: • reviewed experiences of care and the framework's comprehensive evidence base • developed a draft OCP to complement tumor-specific pathways • facilitated an Expert Working Group, comprising indigenous health sector leaders and consumers to refine and validate the draft OCP • undertook national public consultation, including with the indigenous health sector and community, health professionals and professional colleges • received an indication of support to proceed to endorsement from the Leadership Group. Outcomes: The first population-specific OCP for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with cancer received national endorsement. It will guide the delivery of consistent, safe, high-quality, culturally appropriate and evidence-based care. What was learned: Key elements of optimal care include: addressing the cultural appropriateness of the healthcare environment; improving cross-cultural communication; relationship building with local community; optimizing health literacy; recognition of men's and women's business; and the need to use culturally appropriate resources. The national priority in the framework informed and unified high-level direction, which was integral to effective OCP development and endorsement. The evidence-based, step-wise development approach contributed to its relevance, utility and quality.

The Aboriginal and Islander Tertiary Aspiration Program (AITAP) aims to enhance the attendance and academic achievement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students during their secondary school years to increase the number of indigenous Australians successfully completing Year 12 studies. AITAP encourages them to nurture aspirations involving tertiary education while maintaining their pride in their cultural heritage. AITAP, which has been operating in NT schools since 1994, is about raising the level of expectations and aspirations of students, parents and teachers, and encouraging positive attitudes towards education and towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

Indigenous Australians experience significantly poorer health compared to other Australians, with chronic disease contributing to two-thirds of the health gap. We report on an evaluation of an innovative model that leverages mainstream and Aboriginal health resources to enable safe, supported transfer of care for Aboriginal adults with chronic conditions leaving hospital. The multisite evaluation was Aboriginal-led and underpinned by the principles of self-determination and equity and Indigenous research protocols. The qualitative study documented processes and captured service user and provider experiences. We found benefits for patients and their families, the hospital and the health system. The new model enhanced the patient journey and trust in the health service and was a source of staff satisfaction. Challenges included staff availability, patient identification and complexity and the broader issue of cultural safety. Critical success factors included strong governance with joint cultural and clinical leadership and enduring relationships and partnerships at the service delivery, organisation and system levels. A holistic model of care, bringing together cultural and clinical expertise and partnering with Indigenous community organisations, can enhance care coordination and safety across the hospital–community interface. It is important to consider context as well as specific program elements in design, implementation and evaluation.

Place is central to the identity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The Narrabeen Camp Project explores the use of immersive technologies to offer opportunities to engage with Indigenous histories, Storytelling and cultural heritage in ways that privilege place. While nothing can replace being ‘on Country’, the XR technologies of AR and VR support different modalities of engagement with real, and virtual, place. The project documents the Stories, Language and Lore associated with the Gai-mariagal clan and, in particular, with the Aboriginal Camp that existed on the north-western shore of Narrabeen Lakes from the end of the last ice age to 1959 when it was demolished to make way for the Sydney Academy of Sports and Recreation. The project will investigate evolving Aboriginal Storytelling dynamics when using immersive digital media to teach culture and to document a historically important site that existed for thousands of years prior to its demolition in the mid-twentieth century. It expects to generate new knowledge about Aboriginal Storytelling and about the history of urban Aboriginals. Expected outcomes include a schema connecting Aboriginal Storytelling with immersive digital technologies, and truth-telling that advances understanding of modern Australia and urban Aboriginal people. The research should promote better mental, social and emotional health and wellbeing for Indigenous Australians and benefit all Australians culturally, socially and economically.

The assumption that Islam is a new religious identity among Aboriginal Australians is questioned. The historical evidence demonstrates a well-established connection between Islam and Aboriginal communities through the early migration of Muslims to colonial Australia. This historical framework allows us to criticise the negative construction of the Aboriginal Muslim in the media through the use of statistical information gathered in three Australian censuses (1996, 2001 and 2006). Our conclusion is that the Aboriginal Muslim needs to be understood both in terms of the historical context of colonial Australia and the Aboriginal experience of social and political marginalisation. Their conversion to Islam represents some degree of cultural continuity rather than rupture. Finally the article demonstrates that the sociological and psychological understanding of conversion is underdeveloped and inadequate.

Informal carers provide an important role in supporting people with cancer. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples experience higher cancer mortality than other Australians. To date, very little is known about the support needs of carers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults with cancer. This article explored these needs through a qualitative study. Twenty-two semi-structured qualitative interviews and one focus group were conducted with carers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults with cancer (n = 12) and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cancer survivors (n = 15) from Queensland, Australia. Half of the carers interviewed were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Australians. Interviews were transcribed, coded and thematically analysed following an interpretive phenomenological approach. Thematic analysis of carer and survivor interviews revealed four key themes relating to carers’ needs: managing multiple responsibilities; maintaining the carer’s own health and wellbeing; accessing practical support and information; and engaging with the health system. Within these overarching themes, multiple needs were identified including specific needs relevant for carers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, such as advocating for the patient; accessing Indigenous support services and health workers; and ensuring that the cultural needs of the person are recognised and respected. Identifying the needs of informal carers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cancer patients will enable greater understanding of the support that carers require and inform the development of strategies to meet these areas of need.

In general, education in Australia is dominated by an out-of-date worldview that encourages fragmentation and actively excludes the philosophical views of its Aboriginal Australian students. Despite growing support for the principles and practice of equal opportunity and multi-culturalism, for Aboriginal Australians to benefit from education they are left with little choice but to participate in teaching programs that devalue or ignore their cultural identity. To meet the needs of students, education must undergo a philosophical transformation that makes the structure and content of academic programs more culturally sensitive and flexible. All students need to develop cross-cultural skills, including ways of thinking in terms of interconnectedness and cultural relativity within the dominant culture. Students need to be prepared to work within differing cultural paradigms and to have an understanding of the philosophical diversity of Australia's cultural context.

Despite 42 years progress since the 1967 referendum enabling laws to be made covering Aboriginal Australians their poor health status remains and is extensively documented. This paper presents results of a study into Cultural Awareness Training (CAT) in New South Wales and specifically South West Sydney Area Health Service (SWSAHS) with the aim of improving long-term health gains. The evidence demonstrates poor definition and coordination of CAT with a lack of clear policy direction and accountability for improving cultural awareness at government level. In SWSAHS staff attendance at training is poor and training is fragmented across the Area. The paper proposes actions to improve Aboriginal cultural awareness for health professionals including incorporating Aboriginal CAT into broader based Cross Cultural Training (CCT). What is known about the topic? Cross-cultural education programs for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal health industry staff are poorly coordinated, delivered and evaluated. There is recognition that improvements in this area could bring real enhancements in service delivery and health outcomes. What does this paper add? The deficiencies in Aboriginal CAT programs in general are explored and specifically identified in one large NSW health area with a major urban Aboriginal population. This paper reviews CAT themes in the literature and evaluates the effectiveness of known programs. What are the implications for practitioners? The authors list a series of recommendations that have the potential to improve awareness of Aboriginal cultural issues to provide a basis for development of effective and comprehensive CAT programs to bring real improvements in service delivery.

Many Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services (ACCHS) embrace Facebook as an organisational tool to share positive stories, which counter the negative narrative surrounding Aboriginal issues. However, the Facebook algorithm prioritises posts on personal pages over organisations. To take advantage of the algorithm, this project paid three Yolŋu employees of a north-east Arnhem Land ACCHS to share quit smoking messages on their personal Facebook pages. Smoking prevalence among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians is nearly three-fold higher than non-Indigenous Australians, and previous research has identified the need for culturally appropriate communication approaches to accelerate the decline in Indigenous smoking. This research found Yolŋu participants nurtured healthy behaviours through compassionate non-coercive communications, in contrast to fear-inducing health warnings prevalent in tobacco control. Cultural tailoring of tobacco control messages was achieved by having trusted local health staff sharing, and endorsing, messages regardless of whether the content was Indigenous specific. This research also revealed online Facebook activity does not reflect the reach of posts, which may extend beyond social media users to individuals who do not have a Facebook profile.