Skins for smokes and the use of cultural content and imagery

[Extract] For just $5.29 Australians can now purchase "Skins" from local, independent grocers to cover their cigarette packet with the Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander flag. We argue that this use of cultural content and copyright' imagery on cigarette packets negates health promotion efforts, such as Australia's recent introduction of plain packaging laws and the subsequent dismissal of a legal challenge from the tobacco industry.

The ‘Indigenous Australian’ theme in the Australian Curriculum English : necessary or not?

On Friday 10 January 2014 Education Minister Christopher Pyne formally announced a review of the inaugural Australian curriculum. In his three and half minute televised justification, Pyne (2014) identified a number of criticisms of the national curriculum document, including the ‘necessity to have themes’ of ‘Australia’s place in Asia, Indigenous Australia and sustainability’. It is the second of these themes that we consider as ALEA’s Hot Topic for March 2014. We respond to Pyne’s momentary musing of the necessity of the ‘Indigenous Australian’ theme in the Australian Curriculum with a particular focus on the discipline of English. In the nomenclature of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority’s Australian Curriculum (ACARA, 2013), we are of course referring to the ‘cross curriculum priority’ of ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures’.

Reterritorializing multimodal design in the classroom through a socially mediated Indigenous heritage

National or International Significance Flows of cultural heritage in textual practices are vital to sustaining Indigenous communities - a national and international priority (Commonwealth of Australia, 2011). Indigenous heritage, whether passed on by oral tradition or ubiquitous social media, can be seen as a "conversation between the past and the future" (Fairclough, 2012, p. xv). Indigenous heritage involves appropriating memories within a cultural flow to pass on a spiritual legacy. This presentation reports ethnographic research of social media practices in a small independent Aboriginal school in Southeast Queensland, Australia that is resided over by the Yuggera elders and an Aboriginal principal. Quality of Research The purpose was to rupture existing notions of white literacies in schools, and to deterritorialize the uses of digital media by dominant cultures in the public sphere. Examples of learning experiences included the following: i. Integrating Indigenous language and knowledge into media text production; ii. Classroom visits from Indigenous elders; and iii. Publishing oral histories through digital scrapbooking. The program aligned with the Australian National Curriculum English (ACARA, 2014), which mandates the teaching of multimodal text creation. Data sources included a class set of digital scrapbooks collaboratively created in a preparatory-one primary classroom. The digital scrapbooks combined digitally encoded words, images of material artifacts, and digital music files. A key feature of the writing and digital design task was to retell and digitally display and archive a cultural narrative of significance to the Indigenous Australian community and its memories and material traces of the past for the future. Data analysis of the students' digital stories involved the application of key themes of negotiated, material, and digitally mediated forms of heritage practice. It drew on Australian Indigenous research by Keddie et al. (2013) to guard against the homogenizing of culture that can arise from a focus on a static view of culture. The interpretation of findings located Indigenous appropriation of social media within broader racialized politics that enables Indigenous literacy to be understood as a dynamic, negotiated, and transgenerational flows of practice. It demonstrates that Indigenous children's use of media production reflects "shifting and negotiated identities" in response to changing media environments that can function to sustain Indigenous cultural heritages (Appadurai, 1696, p. xv). Impact on practice, policy or theory The findings are important for teachers at a time when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures is a cross-curricular policy priority in the Australian Curriculum (ACARA, 2014). The findings show how curriculum policies can be applied to classroom practice in ways that are epistemologically consistent with Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Theoretically, it demonstrates how the children's experiences of culture are layered over time, as successive generations inherit, interweave, and hear others' cultural stories or maps. Practically, recommendations are provided for an approach to appropriating social media in schools that explicitly attends to the dynamic nature of Indigenous practices, negotiated through intercultural constructions and flows, and opening space for a critical anti-racist approach to multimodal text production. Timeliness The research is timely in the context of the accessibility and role of digital and multimodal forms of communication, including for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

Empirical reference points for Bernstein’s model of pedagogic rights: Recontextualising the reconciliation agenda to Australian schooling

In this chapter we use Bernstein’s (2000) model of pedagogic rights to examine the learning experiences for non-Indigenous teachers in two reconciliation projects. In the context within which we write, reconciliation is the process of establishing a culture of mutual respect between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-Indigenous Australians. In 1991, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody linked the continuation of racism in Australian society to the weak coverage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content in the school curriculum (Reconciliation Australia 2010). Nearly two decades later, the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians issued by the council of Federal, State and Territory Ministers of Education proclaimed that curriculum should enable all students to ‘understand and acknowledge the value of Indigenous cultures and possess the knowledge, skills and understanding to contribute to, and benefit from reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians’ (MCEETYA 2008, 9). Education holds out promise not only of better life chances for Indigenous young people, but also of replacing myths with understanding and tackling prejudice and racism within the non-Indigenous population. Bernstein’s (2000) model of pedagogic rights promises some purchase on this pedagogic work by providing concepts for looking systematically at the participation of non-Indigenous teachers in education. As observed by Frandji and Vitale (Chapter 2, this volume), the model is not sufficient to achieve a democratic reality, ‘but simply provides a basis for problematizing reality and considering possibilities’.

Locating Indigenous Australia within community development practice : clients, consumers or change makers?

The philosophical promise of community development to “resource and empower people so that they can collectively control their own destinies” (Kenny 1996:104) is no doubt alluring to Indigenous Australia. Given the historical and contemporary experiences of colonial control and surveillance of Aboriginal bodies, alongside the continuing experiences of socio-economic disadvantage, community development reaffirms the aspirational goal of Indigenous Australians for self-determination. Self-determination as a national policy agenda for Indigenous Australians emerged in the 1970s and saw the establishment of a wide range of Aboriginal community-controlled services (Tsey et al 2012). Sullivan (2010:4) argues that the Aboriginal community controlled service sector during this time has, and continues to be, instrumental to advancing the plight of Indigenous Australians both materially and politically. Yet community development and self-determination remain highly problematic and contested in how they manifest in Indigenous social policy agendas and in practice (Hollinsworth 1996; Martin 2003; McCausland 2005; Moreton-Robinson 2009). Moreton-Robinson (2009:68) argues that a central theme underpinning these tensions is a reading of Indigeneity in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, behaviours, cultures, and communities are pathologised as “dysfunctional” thus enabling assertions that Indigenous people are incapable of managing their own affairs. This discourse distracts us from the “strategies and tactics of patriarchal white sovereignty” that inhibit the “state’s earlier policy of self-determination” (Moreton-Robinson 2009:68). We acknowledge the irony of community development espoused by Ramirez above (1990), that the least resourced are expected to be most resourceful.; however, we wish to interrogate the processes that inhibit Indigenous participation and control of our own affairs rather than further interrogate Aboriginal minds as uneducated, incapable and/or impaired...

Back to the future

In the field of education, explicit instruction refers to teacher-­‐centred instruction that is focused on clear behavioural and cognitive goals and outcomes. These in turn are made ‘explicit’ or transparent to learners. Sociologist Basil Bernstein defined explicit instruction as featuring “strong classification” and “strong framing”: clearly defined and boundaried knowledge and skills, and teacher-­‐directed interaction. Explicit instruction is affiliated with but not limited to highly structured, instruction in basic skills in early literacy and numeracy education. It is also used in Australian genre-­‐based approaches to writing that stress the value of “explicit” knowledge of grammar and all textual codes. Several major meta-­‐analyses and reviews have identified explicit instruction as a major instructional approach in contemporary schooling...

Diversity, disruption, continuity: Parenting and social and emotional wellbeing amongst Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders

This paper reviews the diversity in parenting values and practices amongst Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders. Firstly, issues arising from the historical traumatic disruption of families’ attachments are discussed, Then the contribution Indigenous parenting makes to the development of healthy and vulnerable individuals becomes the central focus. Family therapists can draw from a broad understanding of the diversity of parenting values and practices in the context of a strength-based approach.

Embedding university perspectives in university teaching and learning : lessons learnt and possibilities for reforming/decolonising curriculum

Embedding Indigenous knowledge in the curriculum continues to challenge traditional western perspectives on Indigenous epistemologies and cultures. This paper will initially discuss experiences of embedding Indigenous perspectives in the curriculum at an Australian university. The project was inspired by the Reconciliation Statement which ensured funding through Teaching and Learning Large Grants. Its successful outcomes included the creation of identified positions for Indigenous academics within faculties, creation of a resource hub of relevant teaching materials and consistent documentation and awareness of Indigenous perspectives through interviews and workshops. The paper concludes by critically interrogating the methodology used to conceptualise Indigenous knowledge in embedding Indigenous perspectives in a university curriculum. This paper argues for a thorough curriculum reform if a degree of decolonisation of the western constructed Indigenous knowledge and its living systems are desired.

How the whiteness embedded in health services impacts on the health and well-being of Aboriginal peoples

Aboriginal women are treated differently by non-indigenous health care providers based on perceptions of Aboriginality and skin colour and white race privilege within health care environments. The experiences shared below are from some of the Aboriginal woman respondents in a research project undertaken within Rockhampton, a regional area in Central Queensland (Fredericks, 2003). The experiences give an insight into how the Aboriginal women interviewed felt and their observations of how other Aboriginal women were treated within health care settings based on skin colour and perceptions of Aboriginality. A number of the women demonstrated a personal in-depth analysis of the issues surrounding place, skin colour and Aboriginality. For example, one of the women, who I named Kay, identified one particular health service organisation and stated that, ‘it is a totally white designed space. There is nothing that identifies me to that place. I just won’t go there as a client because I don’t feel they cater for me as a black woman’. Kay’s words give us an understanding of the reality experienced by Aboriginal women as they move in and out of places within health environments and broader society. Some of these experiences are examples of direct racism, whilst other examples are subtle and demonstrate how whiteness manifests and plays out within places. I offer acknowledgement and honour to the Aboriginal women who shared their stories and gave me a glimpse of their realities in the research project from which the findings presented in this chapter are taken. It is to this research project that is the subject of this chapter.

There is nothing that 'identifies me to that place' : Aboriginal Women's perceptions of health spaces and places

There is a growing body of literature within social and cultural geography that explores notions of place, space, culture, race and identity. The more recent works suggest that places are experienced and understood in multiple ways and are embedded within an array of politics. Memmott and Long, who have undertaken place-based research with Australian Indigenous people, present the theoretical position that ‘place is made and takes on meaning through an interaction process involving mutual accommodation between people and the environment’. They outline that places and their cultural meanings are generated through one or a combination of three types of people–environment interactions. These include: a place that is created by altering the physical characteristics of a piece of environment and which might encompass a feature or features which are natural or made; a place that is created totally through behaviour that is carried out within a specific area, therefore that specific behaviour becomes connected to that specific place; and a place created by people moving or being moved from one environment to another and establishing a new place where boundaries are created and activities carried out. All these ideas of places are challenged and confirmed by what Indigenous women have said about their particular use of, and relationship with, space within several health services in Rockhampton, Central Queensland. As my title suggests, Indigenous women do not see themselves as ‘neutral’ or ‘non-racialised’ citizens who enter and ‘use’ a supposedly neutral health service. Instead, Aboriginal women demonstrate they are active recognisers of places that would identify them within the particular health place. That is, they as Aboriginal women didn’t just ‘make’ place, the places and spaces ‘make’ them. The health services were identified as sites within which spatial relations could begin to grow with recognition of themselves as Aboriginal women in place, or instead create a sense of marginality in the failure of the spaces to identify them. The women’s voices within this paper are drawn from interviews undertaken with twenty Aboriginal women in Rockhampton, Central Queensland, Australia, who participated in a research project exploring ‘how the relationship between health services and Aboriginal women can be more empowering from the viewpoints of Aboriginal women’. The assumption underpinning this study was that empowering and re-empowering practices for Aboriginal women can lead to improved health outcomes. Throughout the interviews women shared some of their lived realities including some of their thoughts on identity, the body, employment in the health sector, service delivery and their notions of health service spaces and places. Their thoughts on health service spaces and places provide an understanding of the lived reality for Aboriginal women and are explored and incorporated within this paper.

Getting skilled for education, training and employment : Indigenous Cultural Knowledges and mainstream knowledges of mathematics

This abstract is a preliminary discussion of the importance of blending of Indigenous cultural knowledges with mainstream knowledges of mathematics for supporting Indigenous young people. This import is emphasised in the documents Preparing the Ground for Partnership (Priest, 2005), The Indigenous Education Strategic Directions 2008–2011 (Department of Education, Training and the Arts, 2007) and the National Goals for Indigenous Education (Department of Education, Employment and Work Relations, 2008). These documents highlight the contextualising of literacy and numeracy to students’ community and culture (see Priest, 2005). Here, Community describes “a culture that is oriented primarily towards the needs of the group. Martin Nakata (2007) describes contextualising to culture as about that which already exists, that is, Torres Strait Islander community, cultural context and home languages (Nakata, 2007, p. 2). Continuing, Ezeife (2002) cites Hollins (1996) in stating that Indigenous people belong to “high-context culture groups” (p. 185). That is, “high-context cultures are characterized by a holistic (top-down) approach to information processing in which meaning is “extracted” from the environment and the situation. Low-context cultures use a linear, sequential building block (bottom-up) approach to information processing in which meaning is constructed” (p.185). In this regard, students who use holistic thought processing are more likely to be disadvantaged in mainstream mathematics classrooms. This is because Westernised mathematics is presented as broken into parts with limited connections made between concepts and with the students’ culture. It potentially conflicts with how they learn. If this is to change the curriculum needs to be made more culture-sensitive and community orientated so that students know and understand what they are learning and for what purposes.

Third space in cyberspace : Indigenous youth, new technologies and literacies

This chapter analyses the affordances and constraints of an online literacy program designed for Indigenous Australian youth through a partnership between the Indigenous community, university staff and local schools. The after-school program sought to build on the cultural resources and experiences of the young people through a dialogic process of planning, negotiating, implementing, reflecting, and renegotiating the program with participants and a range of stakeholders. In the majority of cases, students presented themselves as part of pervasive global popular cultures, often hot-linking their webpages to pop icons and local sports stars. Elders regarded their competency as a potential cultural tool and community resource.

Little theory, big plans : social capital and community building in Aboriginal Australia

The discourse surrounding recent Aboriginal social policy regularly refers to pragmatism and partnership. In a simpler world, we might call this ‘getting things done with Aboriginal people.’ To that extent, the discourse draws on an indisputable common sense, and it is not surprising that a variety of political agendas can be packaged within such language. While many things need to be done, the quantity and particularly the quality of social networks required to take effective policy into effective practice is something we ought to consider more carefully. This is where the concept of social capital could be useful, since it focuses attention on the social resources required to construct social policy, as well as the social resources that could be produced by effective social policy. Partnerships and pragmatism are therefore related at a most fundamental level in terms of social policy. We question whether this important conceptual bedrock has been fully explored. Hence we review here some recent ‘big plans’ for Aboriginal Australia, and ask whether the size of the theory matches the size of the plans.

What health services within rural communities tell us about Aboriginal people and Aboriginal health

There is a growing body of literature within social and cultural geography that explores notions of place, space, culture, race and identity. When health services in rural communities are explored using these notions, it can lead to multiple ways of understanding the cultural meanings inscribed within health services and how they can be embedded with an array of politics. For example, health services can often reflect the symbolic place that each individual holds within that rural community. Through the use of a rural health service case study, this paper will demonstrate how the physical sites and appearances of health services can act as social texts that convey messages of belonging and welcome, or exclusion and domination. They can also produce and reproduce power and control relations. In this way, they can influence the ways that Aboriginal people engage in health service environments – either as places where Aboriginal people feel welcome, comfortable, secure and culturally safe and happy to use the health service, or as places where they utilise the service provided with a great deal of effort, angst and energy. It is important to understand how these complex notions play out in rural communities if the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal people is going to be addressed.

Aboriginal community control and decolonizing health policy : a yarn from Australia

This chapter outlines: a brief history of Australian Aboriginal health and health policy and then moves on to demonstrate how the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (VACCHO) undertakes its work and is an example of 'decolonizing policy in action'. Moreover, it highlights how Aboriginal participation in the development of policy and in the planning, delivery, management and evaluation of health programs enables policies and programs to respond effectively to the needs of Aboriginal people and to change future health outcomes for them. It showcases how Aboriginal decision-making has gone some way to decolonizing policymaking and has addressed the power imbalance - both of which have been critical in the improvement in Aboriginal health outcomes.