The process of remembering with The Forgotten Australians : digital storytelling and marginalized groups

Digital storytelling projects have proliferated in Australia since the early 2000s, and have been theorized as a means to disseminate the stories and voices of “ordinary” people. In this paper I examine through the case study of a 2009 digital storytelling project between the Australasian Centre for Interactive Design and a group identifying as Forgotten Australian whether digital storytelling in its predominant workshop-based format is able to meet the needs of profoundly marginalized and traumatized individuals and groups. For digital storytelling to be of use to marginalized groups as a means of communication or reflection a significant re-examination of the current approaches to its format, and its function needs to undertaken. This paper posits new ways of utilizing digital storytelling when dealing with trauma narratives.

Disproportionate over-representation of Indigenous students in New South Wales government special schools

A significant gap exists in the Australian research literature on the disproportionate over-representation of minority groups in special education. The aim of this paper is to make a contribution to the research evidence-base by sketching an outline of the issue as it presents in Australia’s largest education system in the state of New South Wales. Findings from this research show that Indigenous students are equally represented in special schools enrolling students with autism, physical, sensory, and intellectual disabilities, but significantly over-represented in special schools enrolling students under the categories of emotional disturbance, behaviour disorder and juvenile detention. Factors that might influence the disproportionate over-representation of Indigenous children and young people are discussed, and based on these observations, some practical implications for policy and practice are provided.

Climate Change and Human Displacement

This paper will focus on the legal issues associated with people displaced as a result of water scarcity. Human displacement can lead to internal displacement (displacement of people within their country) and external displacement (displacement of people into another country). If the displacement takes place as a result of climate change these people may be referred to as climate refugees. The majority of work on climate refugees has focused on those people that will lose their homes as a result of sea –level rise. The number of people that could be displaced as a result of prolonged drought and lack of adequate water supplies is likely to be far more significant in number. There are estimates that around 2.8 billion people will suffer water shortages by 2025 and many of these people are at increased risk of internal or external displacement. Certain groups are more likely to be displaced as a result of prolonged drought or water scarcity. These groups include indigenous and minorities groups living in areas that are more susceptible to climate change and groups living in areas with a history of water shortage and supply issues. People displaced as a result of water scarcity are at increased risks of malnutrition and of dehydration. Furthermore the lack of adequate water supplies in such areas increases the risk and spread of disease among the population. In certain instances internal and external displacement may lead to escalation of conflict and competition for water resources in newly settled territories. This paper will use case studies from Australia (indigenous groups and rural landholders) and East Africa (Ethiopia, Sudan and Kenya) to demonstrate the significance of human displacement arising as a result of water scarcity. Climate adaptation policy frameworks will need to address a number of legal issues, arising as a result of climate displacement from water scarcity. There are a number of unresolved legal issues for both categories of environmental displaced people. The major legal issue for externally environmentally displaced people is lack of international recognition and support for these people. The Climate Change Convention, the Refugee Convention, the Desertification Convention and Human Rights instruments all fail to provide recognition for people externally displaced as a result of environmental conditions. Similarly there is a lack of legal recognition and legal support mechanisms to assist those people internally displaced by environmental conditions. The lack of developed environmental rights in most countries contributes to this problem. Polices and governance frameworks must be put in place which aims to prevent such displacement through programs identifying populations at risk and instigating damage mitigation and relocation programs. In addition there are a number of legal issues which may arise such as; rights of compensation, property and tenure disputes, increases on the water demand and environmental degradation in places of relocation and jurisdictional issues arising in federal countries. This paper will provide an overview of the legal issues at the international and national levels arising as a result of climate displacement from water scarcity.  

Australia and Forest Carbon Partnerships : Indigenous Land Rights

One of the ways in which indigenous communities seek justice is through the formal recognition of their sovereign rights to land. Such recognition allows indigenous groups to maintain a physical and spiritual connection with their land and continue customary management of their land. Indigenous groups world over face significant hurdles in getting their customary rights to land recognized by legal systems. One of the main difficulties for indigenous groups in claiming customary land rights is the existence of a range of conflicting legal entitlements attaching to the land in question. In Australia, similar to New Zealand and Canada legal recognition to customary land is recognized through a grant of native title rights or through the establishment of land use agreement. In other jurisdictions such as Indonesia and Papua New Guinea a form of customary land title has been preserved and is recognized by the legal system. The implementation of REDD+ and other forms of forest carbon investment activities compounds the already complex arrangements surrounding legal recognition of customary land rights. Free, prior and informed consent of indigenous groups is essential for forest carbon investment on customary land. The attainment of such consent in practice remains challenging due to the number of conflicting interests often associated with forested land. This paper examines Australia’s experience in recongising indigenous land rights under its International Forest Carbon Initiative and under its domestic Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Act (Australia) 2011. Australia’s International Forest Carbon initiative has a budget of $273 million dollars. In 2008 the governments of Australia and Indonesia signed the Indonesia-Australia Forest Carbon Partnership Agreement. This paper will examine the indigenous land tenure and justice lessons learned from the implementation of the Kalimantan Forest and Climate Partnership (KFCP). The KFCP is $30 million dollar project taking place over 120,000 hectares of degraded and forested peatland in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. The KFCP project site contains seven villages of the Dayak Ngdu indigenous people. In 2011 Australia established a domestic Forest Carbon Initiative, which seeks to provide new economic opportunities for farmers, forest growers and indigenous landholders while helping the environmental by reducing carbon pollution. This paper will explore the manner in which indigenous people are able to participate within these scheme noting the limits and opportunities in deriving co-benefits for indigenous people in Australia under this scheme.

Assessment of applicability and transferability of evidence-based antenatal interventions to the Australian indigenous setting

There is a need for public health interventions to be based on the best available evidence. Unfortunately, well-conducted studies from settings similar to that in which an intervention is to be implemented are often not available. Therefore, health practitioners are forced to make judgements about proven effective interventions in one setting and their suitability to make a difference in their own setting. The framework of Wang et al. has been proposed to help with this process. This paper provides a case study on the application of the framework to a decision-making process regarding antenatal care in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Queensland. This method involved undertaking a systematic search of the current available evidence, then conducting a second literature search to determine factors that may affect the applicability and transferability of these interventions into these communities. Finally, in consideration of these factors, clinical judgement decisions on the applicability and transferability of these interventions were made. This method identified several interventions or strategies for which there was evidence of improving antenatal care or outcomes. By using the framework, we concluded that several of these effective interventions would be feasible in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities within Queensland.

Framing local stories for community consumption facilitation and evaluation in narrative driven arts-based projects

Cyclone Yasi struck the Cassowary Coast of Queensland in the early hours of Feb 3, 2011, destroying many homes sand property, including the destruction of the Cardwell and district historical society’s premises. With their own homes flattened, many were forced to live in mobile accommodation, with extended family, or leave altogether. The historical society members however were more devastated by their flattened foreshore museum and loss of their collection material. A call for assistance was made through the OHAA Qld branch, who along with QUT sponsored a trip to somehow plan how they could start to pick up the pieces to start again. This presentation highlights the need for communities to gather, preserve and present their own stories, in a way that is sustainable and meaningful to them, but that good advice and support along the way is important. Two 2 day workshops were held in March and then September, augmented by plenty of email correspondence and phone calls in between. Participants learnt that if they could conduct quality oral history interviews, they could later use these in many exhibitable ways including: documentary pieces; digital stories; photographic collections; creative short stories; audio segments –while also drawing closely together a suffering community. This story is not only about the people who were interviewed about the night Yasi struck, but the amazing women (all over 50) of the historical society who were willing to try and leap the digital divide that faces older Australians, especially those in rural Australia, so that their older local stories would not be lost and so that new stories could also be remembered.

Diabetes health program development for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women

According to Australian Health (2008), the area of endocrine, nutritional and metabolic disorders (mainly diabetes) yields the highest cause of death for Indigenous Australian women at 10.1%. Indigenous Brisbane North women’s results reiterate this with slightly higher percentages and are a cause for concern and action due to the noted levels of undiagnosed/unaware Indigenous Brisbane North women with abnormal blood glucose levels, whom participated in the research. A sub-sample of the group (N=17) were piloted to test the feasibility of method of eliciting health information on Indigenous Women within this community. This pilot study revealed the following health information regarding this group of women. 41.2% of Indigenous Brisbane North women were found to have blood glucose levels that were outside normal ranges, however only 29.4% had been diagnosed with diabetes and or endocrine abnormalities. These findings highlight that 11.8% of participants have signs indicating that they may have undiagnosed diabetes or/and pre diabetes juxtaposed to unacceptable endocrine levels compatible with health and wellness. The percentages of Indigenous Brisbane North Women whom have indicated that they have a diagnosis of diabetes have been compared to both National Indigenous peoples percentages and the national percentages for the wider Australian community (all Australians). The rate of diabetes within this population is 9 times that of the wider Australian community and 5 times that of the wider Australian Indigenous community. Data was collected from Indigenous participants on arrival and the attendance numbers of 112 women was recorded for comparison with other current health prevention wellness programs being delivered. Data was also collected through the use of specially designed culturally safe questionnaires undertaken in conjunction with health checks and health service information given to participants.

Understanding Indigenous Australian women’s social and emotional wellbeing and wellness through yarning

This paper explores Indigenous Australian women’s understanding of wellness, through the lens of social and emotional wellbeing. The authors use a “yarning” approach to explore how wellness is important to Indigenous women who live in North Brisbane (Australia). They discuss the benefits of yarning and its strength as a methodology for conducting research and building activism within Indigenous Australian communities. They argue that, for Indigenous Australian women, wellness is linked to a sense of wholeness and strongly related to the feeling of connection that women get from meeting together and having time for women’s business. They describe the way that their research project developed into a community summit focused on Indigenous women’s wellness.

Australian Aboriginal words in English : their origin and meaning [Second edition]

Australian Aboriginal Words in English records the Aboriginal contribution to Australian English and provides a fascinating insight into the contact between the first Australians and European settlers. The words are grouped according to subject, and for each one there is information on the Aboriginal language from which it derives, the date of its first written use in English, and its present meaning and pronunciation. This book brings them together and provides the fullest available information about their Aboriginal background and their Australian English History.

Mobius markets : professional families in rural educational markets

Australia has many isolated communities that require human services provided by qualified professionals. Maintaining a viable and equitable spread of such educational capital across space as a public good is a challenge. Reports investigating this problem repeatedly point to ‘family issues’ such as limited options for children’s education, and limited access to ongoing professional development, as deterrents for rural/remote employment despite lucrative incentive schemes. This paper draws on semi-structured interviews with 30 parents of school-aged children, who work as doctors, nurses, teachers and police in six rural/remote towns in Queensland. We asked them how their family units reconcile career opportunities with educational strategy for family members over time and space. This paper considers these issues as a sociology of education problem in a context of educational marketisation and spiralling credentialism. This paper offers the concept of ‘mobius markets’ to capture the cyclical and intergenerational process underway in middle class professional families of investing in educational capitals, maintaining or maximising their value and profiting from them. A mobius strip is the topological anomaly of a single loop with one twist in it, whereby the loop becomes one continuous surface, not the double-sided shape it appears to be. This project is interested in how the middle class professional family is similarly on a constant circuit, investing in educational capitals, upgrading their currency/value, and profiting from them. This elaborated sense of educational markets extends the more usual sociological focus on school choice.

Challenges for rural and remote road safety

The growing national and international awareness of the increased representation of serious injuries and fatalities in rural and remote areas is the focus of this paper. Australia was one of the earliest countries to try to address this issue with a targeted national action plan in 1996. This was an important document but the most recent national plan fails to dedicate attention to developing countermeasures for the particular problems of improving road safety in these regions. The findings of a major program of research in Northern Queensland are discussed to stimulate interest and research into potential countermeasures. Specifically, the need to monitor clusters of crashes as a focus for intervention and local ownership is advocated. Taking action towards a national reduction of speed limits on rural roads and investment in proactive research based trials of drink driving countermeasures such as courtesy buses is strongly advocated.

Returning to the practices of our ancestors? Reconsidering Indigenous justice and the emergence of restorative practices

Restorative practices have often been considered both as emerging from the customs of Indigenous peoples, and ways of responding to crime that might be most suitable for Indigenous individuals and communities. This paper, which consists of two parts, will reconsider these claims from a critical perspective. The first part of the paper draws on my Ph.D. research on the emergence of restorative justice in Western criminal justice systems. It will argue that although many advocates of restorative justice uncritically and unproblematically accept that restorative practices emerged from the customs of Indigenous peoples, the relationship between Indigenous justice customs and the emergence of restorative justice is much more nuanced than proponents imply. The paper will examine, therefore, the legitimating rationalities associated with the diverse historical ‘truths’ obscured in advocates’ accounts of the role of Indigenous customs and the emergence of restorative justice. The second section draws on the findings of recent research undertaken at the Australian Institute of Criminology, and will present data on the numbers of Indigenous juveniles who participate in restorative conferences in each jurisdiction. These data will be used to elucidate the disparity between the rhetoric or ‘promise’ of restorative justice, and its apparent impact in relation to Indigenous juveniles. This paper will conclude with a consideration of the continued relevance of restorative justice for Indigenous young people in Australia.