Creating a Culturally Safe Space When Teaching Aboriginal Content in Social Work: A Scoping Review

Teaching Aboriginal content in social work education presents risks of retraumatisation for students. There are international calls for a trauma-informed teaching model that creates cultural safety in the classroom. This study aimed to develop a trauma-informed model for social work education by reviewing the literature on cultural safety for Aboriginal peoples. This model incorporates key aspects of ensuring Aboriginal cultural safety: de-colonise social work education; collaborative partnerships; build relationships; critical reflection; develop cultural courage; and yarning and story-telling. It provides a valuable framework for creating a more equitable teaching and learning environment that also ensures the essential academic content is covered.

IMPLICATIONS

• Trauma underlies the historical, contemporary and cultural narratives of Aboriginal peoples. Students engaging in Aboriginal content that is traumatic can mean connecting with trauma that has occurred in their own lives.

• Trauma-informed teaching and learning will ensure that educators create culturally safe spaces that enable students to engage well with content.

• The adoption of the framework proposed in this paper may lead to the creation of a culturally safe space for teaching and learning in social work education.

     

Pride and prejudice: opposing constructions of mixed race in Australia

ABSTRACT

In the Australian context, the development of a ‘situated politics of mixedness’ is complicated by the fact that there are (at least) two main categories of mixed race populations – the Indigenous and the migrant/settler. For those with mixed Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal ancestries, and those with mixed White and other migrant ancestries, life chances and identities differ significantly. This paper outlines some of these differences using the trope of pride and prejudice. For those of mixed migrant/settler heritage, evidence is growing that the mixed experience is predominantly one of pride. For them, misrecognition, or being asked about their racial background, is an opportunity for play, often resulting in ‘the big reveal’ of a valorised mixed identity associated with something other than a bland ‘white bread’ Australian-ness. For those of mixed Indigenous heritage however, there remains a significant level of prejudice, not (only) for being Aboriginal, but for not being visibly Aboriginal enough. Using existing studies and a number of media controversies as examples, this paper interrogates the implications of these differences for understandings of the ways in which race is recruited in the construction of legitimate identity claims. It asks particularly how ‘mixed race’ is helpful analytically to describe the identity constructions within these two very different experiences.     

‘Our own Hurricane Katrina’: Aboriginal disadvantage and Australian national identity

Since Prime Minister Howard's declaration in 2007 that child sex abuse in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities was Australia's ‘own Hurricane Katrina’, the trope of natural disaster has been a regular feature of print and television media coverage of Indigenous affairs in Australia. The effect of this rhetorical strategy is to separate what happens to Aboriginal people from the fabric of ‘mainstream’ Australian cultural and political life; to render it alien and unconnected to the relative privilege enjoyed by other Australians. This strategy also produces peculiar temporal effects by erecting a cordon sanitaire around Australian history and the national identity that it supports. Howard's comparison of Aboriginal disadvantage with Katrina, if read alongside his politicization of the teaching of Australian history, demonstrates an unwillingness to incorporate systemic injustice toward Indigenous people within the composition of that history. This article interrogates the relationships between the manifold understandings of Aboriginal disadvantage and attempts to commemorate its violent history, as these aspects of Australian life are both integrated and refused by national identity narratives. Specifically, the paper reinterprets the trope of natural disaster as a means of comprehending Indigenous disadvantage and Australian identity by drawing on Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history. Benjamin's understanding of activism as a constructive retrieval of the past will be developed to reconnect catastrophe to history, and to enable an exploration of responsibility for that history as an integral condition of contemporary Australian identity.     

Unsettling Australian settler supremacy: combating resistance in university Aboriginal studies

Higher education courses designed to equip students to work effectively with Indigenous peoples by teaching about racism and inequality often encounter resistance to these concepts. In particular, students argue that individual and structural racisms, and their own white privilege, are ‘not their fault’. This article examines different forms of student resistance expressed within a number of Aboriginal Studies courses taught in a regional Australian university. This article reflects on data collected from various research initiatives with students, and personal teaching experiences over decades, and argues that although the notion of white supremacy can explicitly identify white privilege it also actively promotes even greater student resistance to learning. As such, this article argues for a consistent sequence of anti-racism approaches and suggests a number of key pedagogical strategies for anti-racism education.     

Importance of Land,family and culture for a good life: Remote Aboriginal people with disability and carers

Worldwide health and social outcomes of Indigenous people are poorer than those of non-Indigenous. In Australia, the Indigenous population experience disability at more than twice the rate of the non-Indigenous population, and a quarter live in geographically remote areas. The challenges associated with accessing services and supports in remote communities can impact on a good life for Aboriginal people with disability. Interviews were conducted with Aboriginal people (An angu) with disability and family carers from remote Central Australian communities and service workers. Thematic data analysis determined factors An angu viewed as essential to living a good life: connection to their Lands, being with family and engaging in cultural activities. Workers' support for a good life involves “Proper Way” help and an understanding of An angu culture. Three culturally relevant strengths-based concepts are important in supporting An angu with disability to live a good life: being connected to the Lands and family, sharing together and working together.     

Tracking the westernization of urban Aboriginal gambling in Canada’s Prairie Provinces

North American Aboriginals have an extensive cultural history of gambling. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of modern western gambling on these traditional beliefs. This is the first large-scale study of this issue in Canada. A total of 1114 Aboriginals in 15 cities in Canada’s Prairie Provinces were surveyed, with recruitment occurring at Native Friendship Centres, shopping malls and other locations where Aboriginals congregated. Results showed that ‘gambling’ to most urban Aboriginal people refers to western commercial forms, something distinct from historical traditions. Attitudes toward gambling were negative, except whether Aboriginal provision of western commercial forms was good or bad for Aboriginal people, where opinion was divided. Primary motivations for gambling were the same as for non-Aboriginals: to win money and for entertainment. Although attitudes and motivations were quite similar to non-Aboriginals, overall level of gambling participation was higher, especially for electronic gambling machines, instant lotteries and bingo. It is concluded that Canadian Aboriginals have a largely westernized orientation to western forms of gambling. The policy implication of this finding is that the factors predictive of gambling benefits as well as the factors predictive of gambling harm among Aboriginals do not appear to be culturally unique.     

Integrative Family Therapy for Child Behavioural Problems in a Parenting Support Agency

This paper describes family therapy for behavioural problems in a parenting support agency. It discusses the literature on the effectiveness of family therapy with child behaviour problems within a community support environment. The paper presents a detailed family case study, which is discussed from an integrative family therapy framework. Narrative therapy is used as an overarching framework for integrating systemic therapy and parenting skills to help a family with a mixed cultural Aboriginal and Australian background. This allows sessions that are meaningful for the family and encourages a connection to their own resources and to their community, besides creating a safe space for a dialogue that hears and values all voices.     

Haudenosaunee Grandmothers Caring for their Grandchildren: The Process of Assuming the Caregiving Role

The purpose of this grounded theory study was to understand the processes, motivations, and reasons for Aboriginal grandmothers assuming the full-time caregiving role for their grandchildren. Fifteen Haudenosaunee grandmothers who were from the Six Nations community participated in this study. The results indicate that a series of complex factors, circumstances, and processes contributed to them caring for their grandchildren. Of particular significance is that, prior to assuming their full-time caregiving roles, they had intermittently cared for their grandchildren as a means of preventing family breakdown. Many of them were accustomed to this type of care arrangement as over half of the grandmothers had been cared for by their grandmothers or great-mothers. Ultimately, they cared for their grandchildren as a means of “keeping the state’s hands off” their grandchildren and avoiding child welfare involvement. Furthermore, the women in this study served as important vital roles for healing in Aboriginal families and communities.