Enhancing resilience in indigenous people: The integration of individual, family and community interventions

This paper describes a number of interventions being developed to address the emotional, social and behavioural problems experienced by Aboriginal people in Australia. These are: the We-Al-Li program to help people deal with the impact of transgenerational trauma; and the RAP Indigenous Parenting Program. It is argued that the emotional well being of indigenous people will be enhanced through the integration of interventions targeting the individual, family and community.

The uses of multilingualism in digital culture : the case of inter-language linking

Language-use has proven to be the most complex and complicating of all Internet features, yet people and institutions invest enormously in language and crosslanguage features because they are fundamental to the success of the Internet’s past, present and future. The thesis takes into focus the developments of the latter – features that facilitate and signify linking between or across languages – both in their historical and current contexts. In the theoretical analysis, the conceptual platform of inter-language linking is developed to both accommodate efforts towards a new social complexity model for the co-evolution of languages and language content, as well as to create an open analytical space for language and cross-language related features of the Internet and beyond. The practiced uses of inter-language linking have changed over the last decades. Before and during the first years of the WWW, mechanisms of inter-language linking were at best important elements used to create new institutional or content arrangements, but on a large scale they were just insignificant. This has changed with the emergence of the WWW and its development into a web in which content in different languages co-evolve. The thesis traces the inter-language linking mechanisms that facilitated these dynamic changes by analysing what these linking mechanisms are, how their historical as well as current contexts can be understood and what kinds of cultural-economic innovation they enable and impede. The study discusses this alongside four empirical cases of bilingual or multilingual media use, ranging from television and web services for languages of smaller populations, to large-scale, multiple languages involving web ventures by the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Special Broadcasting Service Australia, Wikipedia and Google. To sum up, the thesis introduces the concepts of ‘inter-language linking’ and the ‘lateral web’ to model the social complexity and co-evolution of languages online. The resulting model reconsiders existing social complexity models in that it is the first that can explain the emergence of large-scale, networked co-evolution of languages and language content facilitated by the Internet and the WWW. Finally, the thesis argues that the Internet enables an open space for language and crosslanguage related features and investigates how far this process is facilitated by (1) amateurs and (2) human-algorithmic interaction cultures.

Indigenous knowledge and effective parent–school partnerships : issues and insights

Towards the last decade of the last millennium, Indigenous knowledge was central to international scholarly debates relating to decolonising knowledge. Indigenous scholars, particularly those from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States, advanced many of these debates. They argued for Indigenous knowledge to be used as the epistemological standpoint for intellectual engagements and the methodology for resisting colonial constructions of the colonised other (Rigney 1997; Smith 1999, 2005). However, the challenge of engaging Indigenous knowledge to inform research and educational processes, in many respects, is still a contested debate in Western-oriented universities and institutions of higher education. This chapter discusses findings of the Parent–School Partnership Initiative (hereafter referred to as PSPI) project conducted by the Oodgeroo Unit staff and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Focus Group for the Caboolture Shire, in South East Queensland. The state government sponsored initiative examined factors that promote and enhance parent–school engagement with students’ schooling, and contributed to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students’ learning and completion of secondary schooling within the participating schools. We argue in this chapter for the importance of recognising Indigenous knowledge and its place in enhancing parent–school partnerships.

Towards designing digital noticeboards with a remote indigenous community

This position paper reflects upon the opportunities and challenges of designing a digital noticeboard system with a remote indigenous community that supports their aspirations for both internal and external communication. The project itself has evolved from a relationship built through ecological work between scientists and the local community on the Groote Eylandt archipelago to study native populations of animal species over the long term. In the course of this work the aspiration has emerged to explore how digital noticeboards might promote and communicate aspects of work and life on the island through both the web and touchscreen noticeboards. This paper introduces the community, the context and the history of the project. We then reflect upon the science project and its outcomes, in order to draw lessons for extending what we see as a pragmatic and relationship based approach towards design.

Valuing diversity : a multiliteracies project in a remote Indigenous community

This chapter draws attention to the complex nature of teachers’ work when working with linguistically and culturally diverse students and their communities in an era of new literacies. One multiliteracies project undertaken within a remote Indigenous community in the Torres Straits, Far North Queensland, Australia, is presented. The discussion considers understandings of student diversity as articulated in the Australian Curriculum documents, designs of meaning for written and visual text and the various components of pedagogy introduced into a multiliteracies project. The chapter concludes by highlighting the usefulness of the ‘wide, but not vague’ multiliteracies approach and the importance of an explicit grammar for written and visual text, for meeting the literacy learning needs of one group of 21st century learners.

Introductory Indigenous Studies in Education : Reflection and the Importance of Knowing

Although the demand for pre-service teachers to be better informed about Indigenous issues in Australia has been broadly articulated, it is reasonably new for universities to make Indigenous studies a compulsory area of study, or to define what is meant by 'Indigenous education'. This book was motivated by the growing necessity for an approach to Indigenous education that would include more than just a summarising of Indigenous history and traditional culture. It is useful for anyone with an interest in challenging their ideas about culture, identity and history in Australia.

Re/presenting readings of the indigenous literary terrain

In this study I investigate the spectrum of authoring, publishing and everyday reading of three texts - My Place (Morgan 1987), Jandamarra and the Bunuba Resistance (Pedersen and Woorunmurra 1995) and Carpentaria (Wright 2006). I have addressed this study within the field of production and consumption, utilising amongst others the work of Edward Said (1978, 1983) and Stanley Fish (1980). I locate this work within the holism of Kombu-merri philosopher, Mary Graham's 'Aboriginal Inquiry' (2008), which promotes self-reflexivity and a concern for others as central tenets of such inquiry. I also locate this work within a postcolonial framework and in recognition of the dynamic nature of that phenomenon I use Aileen MoretonRobinson's (2003) adoption of the active verb, "postcolonising"(38). In apprehending selected texts through the people who make them and who make meaning from them - authors, publishers and everyday readers, I interviewed members of each cohort within a framework that recognises the exercise of agency in their respective practices as well as the socio-historical contexts to such textual practices. Although my research design can be applied to other critical arrangements of texts, my interest here lies principally in texts that incorporate the subjects of Indigenous worldview and Indigenous experience; and in texts that are Indigenous authored or Indigenous co-authored.

Launch of the BMA chair in Indigenous engagement

I begin by offering a formal acknowledgement to the Darumbal people. I thank Wade Mann for his Welcome as a member of the Darumbal people and the Dance Troupe for dancing on this day. I thank the other people who are here today from other Country that surrounds and borders Darumbal Country and on which this university also works: the Woppaburra; Gungalou; Bidjara; Gurang Gurang; Birri Gubba; and others. I thank the members of the Fitzroy Basin Elders for supporting this event...

Improving Indigenous women’s wellness through action research

Today in Australia, 75% of all Indigenous Australians reside in urban and peri-urban areas. In Brisbane, Indigenous Australians now number just over 45,000, and this number is rapidly increasing. Undertaking research with urban based Indigenous Australians is a relatively new phenomenon. Most past research with Indigenous people has been carried out in remote and regional areas. This paper focuses on a Participation Action Research project undertaken with Indigenous women in the highly urbanised area of North Brisbane. The project takes on the challenge of undertaking urban based Indigenous research. It opts not to centre on poor Indigenous women’s health statistics but instead centres on Indigenous women’s wellness and ways to talk about and work towards wellness. Through the cycles of dialogue with Indigenous women these concepts were teased out and manifested in two highly successful Women’s Wellness Summits. This paper will outline aspects of this project.