Crossing lines: Sport history, transformative narratives, and Aboriginal Australia

In this collaborative article, we seek to unsettle the dominance of Western, reconstructionist accounts of Indigenous Australian sport history through reflections on our past research in the Queensland Aboriginal community of Cherbourg. That research focussed on a statue of legendary 1930s cricketer, Eddie Gilbert, and on sport exhibitions in Cherbourg's Ration Shed Museum. Here, we are less concerned with unveiling the ‘true’ account of Australian Aboriginal sporting history, or even a ‘true’ Indigenous representation of events. Rather, we are interested in analysing various perspectives in order to generate a more inclusive and complete account of Aboriginal sport history and the narrative implications of these for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. Central to this endeavour is the positioning of Indigenous knowledge and understanding at the centre of history-making. The article is in two sections: reflections on our past work from the perspectives of the researchers themselves and an Aboriginal academic colleague, followed by a discussion of how those experiences and reflections will inform our pending project on the 1950s and 1960s Cherbourg marching girls teams.

A review of: "Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling: The Function of Avowal in Justice. By Michel Foucault. Edited by Fabienne Brion and Bernard E. Harcourt. Translated by Stephen W. Sawyer"

Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling: The Function of Avowal in Justice is a collection of seven lectures delivered by French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault at the Catholic University of Louvain in 1981. Compiled from audiovisual recordings and Foucault’s original manuscripts, these lectures explore the notion of avowal and its place within criminal justice processes. Accompanied by three contemporaneous interviews given by Foucault (only one of which has previously been available in English), and a preface and concluding essay by the editors contextualizing these lectures in Foucault’s oeuvre, this volume contributes much to Foucaultian scholarship, particularly when considered alongside the recently published volumes of Foucault’s lecture courses at the Collège de France. However, while the book promises to offer some insights of relevance to criminology, it is important to remember that this is not its key purpose, and criminologists should read it with this caveat in mind...

How an urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander primary health care service improved access to mental health care

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience higher levels of psychological distress and mental ill health than their non-Indigenous counterparts, but underuse mental health services. Interventions are required to address the structural and functional access barriers that cause this underuse. In 2012, the Southern Queensland Centre of Excellence in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Primary Health Care employed a psychologist and a social worker to integrate mental health care into its primary health care services. This research study examines the impact of this innovation.

Intellectual property and global warming: Climate justice

Engaging in a close analysis of legal and political discourse, this chapter considers conflicts over intellectual property and climate change in three key arenas: climate law; trade law; and intellectual property law. In this chapter, it is argued that there is a need to overcome the political stalemates and deadlocks over intellectual property and climate change. It is essential that intellectual property law engage in a substantive fashion with the matrix of issues surrounding fossil fuels, clean technologies, and climate change at an international level. First, this chapter examines the debate over intellectual property and climate change under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 1992, and the establishment of the UNFCCC Climate Technology Centre and Network. It recommends that the technology mechanism should address and deal with matters of intellectual property management and policy. Second, the piece examines the discussion of global issues in the World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO GREEN. It supports the proposal for a Global Green Patent Highway to allow for the fast-tracking of intellectual property applications in respect of green technologies. Third, the chapter investigates the dispute in the TRIPS Council at the World Trade Organization over intellectual property, climate change, and development. This section focuses upon the TRIPS Agreement 1994. This chapter calls for a Joint Declaration on Intellectual Property and Climate Change from the UNFCCC, WIPO, and the WTO. The paper concludes that intellectual property should be reformed as part of a larger effort to promote climate justice. Rather than adopt a fragmented, piecemeal approach in various international institutions, there is a need for a co-ordinated and cohesive response to intellectual property in an age of runaway, global climate change. Patent law should be fossil fuel free. Intellectual property should encourage research, development, and diffusion of renewable energy and clean technologies. It is submitted that intellectual property law reform should promote climate justice in line with Mary Robinson’s Declaration on Climate Justice 2013.

The legacy of David Unaipon

The historical case of David Unaipon is a good starting point for a wider discussion of Indigenous intellectual property law, practice and reform. His story is a microcosm of larger battles over the cultural appropriation of Indigenous culture, iconography and science. David Unaipon could be seen as a beneficiary of intellectual property law. He is a creator of copyright works; an inventor of patented inventions; and an iconic figure, worthy of personality rights. His creative and scientific work has been an inspiration for others. David Unaipon could also be seen as being disenfranchised by intellectual property law. He lost ownership of his economic rights in respect of literary works; and his moral rights have not been respected under copyright law. His case also highlights the deficiencies of copyright law in respect of its failure to provide comprehensive recognition of communal authorship and ownership of copyright works. While he was a patent applicant, David Unaipon never seemed to have benefitted from the patent system. His experience raises questions about access to justice. The government and commercial use of the persona of David Unaipon raises complex questions about trade mark law, passing off and personality rights. The story of David Unaipon highlights the need for the systematic and holistic reformation of intellectual property law, so that it better serves Indigenous communities and peoples.

Divest Harvard: Climate justice, higher education, and fossil fuel divestment

On the 19 November 2014, seven Harvard students — the Harvard Climate Justice Coalition — have brought a legal action against Harvard University to compel it to withdraw its investments from fossil fuel companies. The plaintiffs include the Harvard Climate Justice Coalition; Alice Cherry, a law student; Benjamin Franta, a physics student interested in renewable energy; Sidni Frederick, a student of history and literature; Joseph Hamilton, a law student; Olivia Kivel, a biologist interested in sustainable farming; Talia Rothstein, a student of history and literature; and Kelsey Skaggs, a law student from Alaska interested in climate justice. The Harvard Climate Justice Coalition also bringing the lawsuit as ‘next friend of Plaintiffs Future Generations, individuals not yet born or too young to assert their rights but whose future health, safety, and welfare depends on current efforts to slow the pace of climate change.’ The case of Harvard Climate Justice Coalition v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, is being heard in the Suffolk County Superior Court of Massachusetts. The dispute will be an important precedent on the ongoing policy and legal battles in respect of climate change, education, and fossil fuel divestment.

Food justice or food sovereignty? Understanding the rise of urban food movements in the USA

As world food and fuel prices threaten expanding urban populations, there is greater need for the urban poor to have access and claims over how and where food is produced and distributed. This is especially the case in marginalized urban settings where high proportions of the population are food insecure. The global movement for food sovereignty has been one attempt to reclaim rights and participation in the food system and challenge corporate food regimes. However, given its origins from the peasant farmers' movement, La Via Campesina, food sovereignty is often considered a rural issue when increasingly its demands for fair food systems are urban in nature. Through interviews with scholars, urban food activists, non-governmental and grassroots organizations in Oakland and New Orleans in the United States of America, we examine the extent to which food sovereignty has become embedded as a concept, strategy and practice. We consider food sovereignty alongside other dominant US social movements such as food justice, and find that while many organizations do not use the language of food sovereignty explicitly, the motives behind urban food activism are similar across movements as local actors draw on elements of each in practice. Overall, however, because of the different histories, geographic contexts, and relations to state and capital, food justice and food sovereignty differ as strategies and approaches. We conclude that the US urban food sovereignty movement is limited by neoliberal structural contexts that dampen its approach and radical framework. Similarly, we see restrictions on urban food justice movements that are also operating within a broader framework of market neoliberalism. However, we find that food justice was reported as an approach more aligned with the socio-historical context in both cities, due to its origins in broader class and race struggles.

‘…souvlaki and a bit of lemon’: An Aboriginal Australian Greek Story.

In Victoria, Aboriginal peoples are collectively known as Koories (Koori History Website 2014). It’s a name that most people are comfortable with, even though each Koori will also hold their own specific tribal affiliations (Horton 1999). For example, the people of the Kulin nation are the Traditional Owners of the land that is now known by the English name of Melbourne. I am an Aboriginal Australian woman who originates from south-east Queensland (Brisbane/Ipswich). In south-east Queensland, some groups are collectively referred to as Murries...

Review: Let's talk kinship: Innovating Australian social work education, theory, research and practice through Aboriginal knowledge

Review(s) of: Let's talk kinship: Innovating Australian social work education, theory, research and practice through Aboriginal knowledge, by Christine Fejo-King, published by Christine Fejo-King Consulting, ISBN: 978-0-9922814-0-3.

Mid-Holocene Aboriginal occupation of offshore islands in northern Australia? A reassessment of Wurdukanhan, Mornington Island, southern Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia

Claims for mid-Holocene Aboriginal occupation at the shell matrix site of Wurdukanhan, Mornington Island, Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia, are reassessed through an analysis of the excavated assemblage coupled with new surveys and an extensive dating program. Memmott et al. (2006, pp. 38, 39) reported basal ages of c.5000–5500 years from Wurdukanhan as 'the oldest date yet obtained for any archaeological site on the coast of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria' and used these dates to argue for 'a relatively lengthy occupation since at least the mid-Holocene'. If substantiated, with the exception of western Torres Strait, these claims make Mornington Island the only offshore island used across northern Australia in the mid-Holocene where it is conventionally thought that Aboriginal people only (re)colonised islands after sea-level maximum was achieved after the mid-Holocene. Our analysis of Wurdukanhan demonstrates high shellfish taxa diversity, high rates of natural shell predation and high densities of foraminifera throughout the deposit demonstrating a natural origin for the assemblage. Results are considered in the context of other dated shell matrix sites in the area and a geomorphological model for landscape development of the Sandalwood River catchment.

Climate justice for intellectual property at Durban

DURBAN CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE: In a global day of action for climate justice, thousands of protestors complained about the slow progress in international debates on climate change at the United Nations conference in Durban. One of the chants of the campaigners was “Climate justice … not climate apartheid”. Banners dubbed the Durban event a “circus” – a “conference of polluters”.

Sing for Fukushima

The Fukushima Response Bay Area (FRBA) in collaboration with the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists (BFUU) Poetry Committee and the BFUU Social Justice Committee developed the Fukushima Poetry Anthology project to highlight the ongoing disaster at Fukushima Daiichi, Japan. All works in the Anthology are in response to the nuclear disaster in Fukushima and the ongoing impacts, including this work. Japanese anti-nuclear protest songs first surfaced in the 1980s after the Chernobyl disaster. Since this time there have been numerous anti-nuclear songs, with some still being produced. Research was required to search for such songs along with understanding who sang them. A process of listening to the songs, reading the English sub-titles and sharing the music with others took place. The most popular in the sharing being the song titled You Can't See It, And You Can't Smell It Either by Rankin & Dub Ainu Band (2011).This song and others, includes a mixture of music styles from pop, punk, rap, rock, storytelling, dance hall reggae and traditional Indigenous Japanese music (Tonkori, Ainu). You Can't See It, And You Can't Smell It Either is a catchy song with a rhythmic beat that remains in one’s head long after the song has finished. This music and the people who sang it became the basis for this poem that attempts to capture the style and backgrounds of protest songs within one creative work. It is hoped that the work encourages people to continue singing for Fukushima.

An Aboriginal nurse-led working model for success in graduating Indigenous Australian nurses

Australia needs more Indigenous nurses. This is widely recognised in both academic literature and government policy. In 2012, only 0.8 percent of the Australian nursing workforce was Indigenous (AIHW, 2012). In spite of the clear need, there is little discussion about how to successfully recruit, retain and graduate Indigenous nursing students. This paper describes a successful program being implemented at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). Between 2000 and 2012, USQ graduated 80 Indigenous nurses and midwives, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. In this paper, the authors outline the journey they undertook to develop the successful program at USQ: the Indigenous Nursing Support (INS) Model: Helping Hands. They argue that four elements underpin success for Indigenous nursing students: the availability of Indigenous academics, Indigenous health content in the nursing curriculum, Indigenous-specific recruitment materials, and individual mentoring and nurturing of Indigenous students.