Access to justice for Aboriginal People in the Northern Territory

This article discusses research in the Northern Territory on Aboriginal civil and family law needs. It is based on focus group discussions and interviews with legal services providers and other associated organisations. The article argues that key areas of legal need involve discrimination, housing, child protection, social security, credit/debt and consumer law problems. It further argues that welfare conditionality, particularly as embodied in the NT Intervention and subsequent Stronger Futures policies, has exacerbated the need for legal assistance and advocacy for Aboriginal people.     

Telling and Re‐telling Stories: The Use of Narrative and Drawing in a Group Intervention with Parents and Children in a Remote Aboriginal Community

The Let's Start Parent‐Child Program is a manualised parent‐child program which aims to improve educational, social and emotional outcomes for Aboriginal parents and their four‐ to seven‐year‐old children. It has been implemented in the Northern Territory, Australia on the Tiwi Islands and in Darwin since 2005. This paper outlines the adaptation of the program to include narrative approaches, the sharing of stories and the use of expressive arts as a way to build understanding between program leaders and participating families. An example from a recent program is used to illustrate how the sharing of stories and expressive use of art engages and binds group participants together. It supports parents to tell their own stories, to speak about their lived experience, to reconsider aspects of their own and their children's experiences and to achieve an increased awareness of their personal resources and a sense of self‐empowerment. The program is designed and delivered with sensitivity to individual parents, children and families, where cultural and interpersonal differences and different developmental and family situations can be taken into account.     

“Newsworthy” Victims?

More than 500 Aboriginal women have gone missing or been murdered in Canada since the 1980s yet press attention to this violence is relatively minimal. This paper compares local press coverage of matched cases: three missing/murdered Aboriginal women from Saskatchewan and three missing/murdered White women from Ontario. Quantitative and qualitative content analyses indicate stark disparities in the amount and content of coverage between groups. The Aboriginal women received three and a half times less coverage; their articles were shorter and less likely to appear on the front page. Depictions of the Aboriginal women were also more detached in tone and scant in detail in contrast to the more intimate portraits of the White women. Drawing on feminist media studies and theories of intersectionality, this paper argues that the simultaneous devaluation of Aboriginal womanhood and idealization of middle-class White womanhood contributes to broader systemic inequalities which re/produce racism, sexism, classism, and colonialism. This paper raises concerns about the broader implications of the relative invisibility of missing/murdered Aboriginal women in the press, and their symbolic annihilation from the Canadian social landscape.     

Eating Morality: Food and the Goodness of Care in Northern Aboriginal Australia

This article contributes to anthropological discussions about care, food and morality by considering the gastro-morality of Yolngu people living in Galiwin’ku in the 2000s. I develop the concept of ‘trans-material morality’ to capture the ways that food takes on material, emotive and ontological forms of morality. Food is central to articulating expressions of care, as well to experiencing feelings of being cared for and, inversely, feelings of not being cared for. This is done by way of the meanings of good and bad that are attached to the food itself and by way of eating and acts of sharing and not sharing. I argue that largely because of food’s capacity to exist as trans-material morality, it is a particularly compelling thing with which to moralise, both in the intimate interactions of day-to-day life and in the grander theorising that human beings undertake to paint a picture of moral change.     

Playing the game of school mathematics: being explicit for Indigenous learners and access to learning

Drawing on studies of successful remote schools in one region of Australia, it was found that two key strategies were common in the approaches at these schools. First, to make the strategies and expectations being adopted explicit to all those involved in the learning enterprise, and second, that consistency in approaches was crucial. Bourdieu’s theoretical project is used to understand how the practices are being adopted by the schools and how they contribute to the success of learners of mathematics.     

Understanding child neglect in Aboriginal families and communities in the context of trauma

Child neglect is a significant concern for Aboriginal families and communities both in Australia and internationally. Service responses to child neglect are largely informed by child neglect theories, which explain the nature and causes of child neglect. However, child neglect is a problem that is worsening for Aboriginal children, suggesting that these theories are not appropriate. This paper argues that to meet the needs of Aboriginal families and communities where there is child neglect, policy and practice needs to acknowledge and address the impact of trauma in shaping the lived experiences of Aboriginal people. International literature discusses the impact and consequence of historical trauma within Indigenous families and communities, and separately, child maltreatment theorists have discussed the ecological nature of child neglect. However, the literature and evidence‐base linking the two, child neglect and historical trauma in Indigenous contexts, are very scant. This paper aims to fill this gap and emphasize the importance of addressing child neglect within Aboriginal families and communities in the context of historical trauma. Although this paper focuses on the post‐colonial experiences of Aboriginal people in Australia, the arguments can extend to many Indigenous cultures universally where child welfare interventions have resulted in significant and ongoing trauma.     

‘Having to say everyday … I’m not black enough … I’m not white enough’. Discourses of Aboriginality in the Australian education context

This paper interrogates discourses of Aboriginality about, and by, early career Aboriginal teachers as they negotiate their emergent professional identity in specific Australian school contexts. These discourses position the respondents via their ethnic and cultural background and intersect with self-positioning. This relates to the desire to be positioned as teacher rather than (only) as an ‘Aboriginal’ teacher. Consequently, the over-determination of Aboriginality includes such suppositions as the ‘think-look-do’ Aboriginality with a ‘natural’ connection to community, the ‘good’ Aboriginal teacher who fixes Aboriginal ‘problems’, the Aboriginal teacher as ‘Other’, and [the notion that] ‘Aboriginal work’ as easy, not real work and peripheral to core business. Through qualitative methodology, eleven Aboriginal teachers from the University of Sydney were interviewed. They were able to construct stories of early career teaching and the data was analysed to explore how the participants interpreted, accepted and/or resisted various discourses in their efforts to be agentic and resilient and to make a difference for the Aboriginal students they teach.     

Elements of cultural competence in an Australian Aboriginal maternity program

Background

Pregnancy, labour and neonatal health outcomes for Australian Aboriginal women and their infants are frequently worse than those of the general population. Provision of culturally competent services may reduce these differences by improving access to timely and regular antenatal care. In an effort to address these issues, the Aboriginal Maternity Group Practice Program commenced in south metropolitan Perth, Western Australia, in 2011. The program employed Aboriginal Grandmothers, Aboriginal Health Officers and midwives working in a partnership model with pre-existing maternity services in the area.

Sexual and Family Violence: Overcoming Barriers to Service Access for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Clients

ABSTRACT

Despite the fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities typically experience a high prevalence of sexual and family violence, service responses have mostly been culturally inappropriate and ineffective. This article reports on a collaborative, participatory research project aimed at exploring barriers to service access by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients when they have been affected by sexual and family violence. The findings reveal multiple barriers to service access, including justice system deterrents, social taboo, shame, and a lack of culturally appropriate services. The article highlights the importance of recognising and addressing the complex interplay of historic, social, and cultural factors influencing service access.     

鲍德温•斯宾塞与后维多利亚时代的古典人类学

The post-Victorian anthropologist Baldwin Spencer was the first to investigate the central and northern aboriginal tribes of Australia. His ethnographic works in this area have greatly in-fluenced related disciplines and studies in fields such as kinship, totem worship, and primitive reli-gions. In the field of classics and anthropology, Spencer’s academic heritage has received wide-spread respect and recognition, and has made sub-sequent academic discussion possible. In order to present Spencer’s personal experiences and aca-demic ideas clearly and comprehensively, it is nec-essary to return to the post-Victorian context, and comb Spencer’ s life history and academic history. Taking important clues from various times an e-vents in his life, the paper introduces three peri-ods:Spencer’s early training in the discipline and his epistemic background, his medium-term eth-nographic investigations and works, and the later investigations of Tierra del Fuego. Textual study, based on Spencer’s life history and academic histo-ry, is very useful to understand his ethnographic investigations. Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer ( 1860 -1929 ) was born on 23 June, 1860 in Lancashire, Eng-land. Spencer was educated at Old Trafford School and at the Manchester School of Art. His interest in art and sketching was lifelong, and would reveal itself in his competence as a scientific draftsman and illustrator ( D. J. Mulvaney,1990 ) . Entering Owens College ( Victoria University of Manchester) in 1879, Spencer intended to study medicine. In-spired by Milnes Marshall, a disciple of Darwin disciple, he became a committed evolutionary biol-ogist, soon abandoning conventional religion. He entered the University of Oxford in 1881 to study
science under Professor H. N. Moseley, who com-bined an enthusiasm for evolutionary biology with ethnological interests. Spencer grasped Oxford ’ s diverse opportunities, which included lectures by Ruskin and E. B. Tylor. In 1887, Spencer ar-rived at Melbourne University . With his colleague Professor David Masson, Spencer helped to trans-form university standards and they co-operated as entrepreneurs of Australian science. Spencer was recruited as zoologist and photog-rapher in the 1894 Horn scientific exploration ex-pedition to central Australia. His anthropological interest was rekindled when he met F. J. Gillen, the Alice Springs postmaster, during the expedi-tion. In 1896 Spencer joined Gillen for the most intensive fieldwork then attempted in Australia. The Native Tribes of Central Australia ( 1899 ) , which resulted, was to influence contemporary theories on social evolution and interpretations of the origins of art and ceremonial practices. Spencer and Gillen drove a buggy from Oodnadatta to Borroloola in 1901-02 . Their research resulted in The Northern Tribes of Central Australia ( 1904 );Haddon had written that the names of Spencer and Gillen are familiar to every ethnologist in the world, and probably no books on ethnology have been so wide-ly noticed and criticized as have The Native Tribes of Central Australia and The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (A. C. Haddon ,1902). To assist the Government of the Common-wealth, Spencer was appointed Special Commis-sioner for Aboriginals in the Northern Territory, and also their Chief Protector. He also led three other scientists, including J. A. Gilruth, on the 1911 Preliminary Scientific Expedition. Native Tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia (1914)
described his ethnographic observations and the ex-tensive collections made on the expedition. At the government ’ s request, Spencer visited Alice Springs and Hermannsburg in 1923 . He published The Arunta: A Study of a Stone Age People ( 2 vols, 1927 ) to respond to the criticisms derived from Carl Stretlow and defend his work. A popular rewrite of previous books followed—Wanderings in Wild Australia ( 2 vols, 1928 )—this time under his sole authorship. Spencer retired as emeritus professor in 1919 . His nerves and his judgments were impaired from the strain of continuous overwork, the virtual disin-tegration of his marriage, and he was finally hospi-talized in 1921 . His health improved and within two years he resumed anthropological activities and rebuilt his art collection. He sailed to Tierra del Fuego together with Jean Hamilton to undertake anthropological studies early in 1929. Spencer, with an unrivalled record of anthropological field-work in Australia, undertook this journey to fill a gap in our knowledge, and compare very different and remote races of mankind (A. C. H. ,1931). However, his gallant attempt was prematurely frus-trated by his death from angina pectoris, at which point he had been only two months in the field. His notes were organized and published as Spencer’s Last Journey (1931). His achievements were recognized. Elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1900 , he was ap-pointed C. M. G. in 1904 and K. C. M. G. in 1916 . Manchester University conferred him with an honorary doctorate of science, while Melbourne a-warded him a doctorate of letters. Exeter College, Oxford, elected him to an honorary fellowship in 1907 , and stained glass in its hall commemorates his contribution. James Frazer’s letter to Spencer in 1899 was prophetic: books like mine, merely speculative, will be superseded sooner or later ( the sooner the better for the sake of truth) by bet-ter induction based on fuller knowledge;books like yours, containing records of observations, will nev-er be superseded ( John M. Cooper, 1932 ) . Therefore, the sense and value of reading and un-derstanding Spencer and his books today goes with-out saying.