Imaginging the good Indigenous citizen : race war and the pathology of partiarchal white sovereignty

In June 2007, the Australian federal government sent military and policy into Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory on the premise that sexual abuse of children was rampant and a national crisis. This article draws on Foucault’s work on sovereignty and rights to argue that patriarchal white sovereignty as a regime of power deploys a discourse of pathology in the exercising of sovereign right to subjugate and discipline Indigenous people as good citizens.

Health, Death, and Indigenous Australians in the Coronial system

This paper details research conducted in Queensland during the first year of operation of the new Coroners Act 2003. Information was gathered from all completed investigations between December 2003 and December 2004 across five categories of death: accidental, suicide, natural, medical and homicide. It was found that 25 percent of the total number of Indigenous deaths recorded in 2004 were reported to, and investigated by, the Coroner, in comparison to 9.4 percent of non-Indigenous deaths. Moreover, Indigenous people were found to be over-represented in each category of death, except in death in a medical setting, where they were absent.

Accommodating the diverse cultural needs of cancer patients and their families in palliative care

Cultural issues have become an increasingly important consideration in healthcare. Such cultural issues, however, are underresearched in Australia, especially in palliative care. This study has sought to address this gap, exploring the social construction of cultural issues in palliative care by oncology nurses. A grounded theory approach was used. Semistructured interviews with 7 Australian oncology nurses provided the data for the study. The core category emerging from the study was that of accommodating cultural needs whereby to meet patients' specific cultural requirements, nurses actively found ways to accommodate the needs of patients and their families. This process often included compromise and negotiation whereby limits were set. In addition, the use of cross-cultural communication strategies emerged from the data as an important feature of cultural care. A series of subcategories were also identified as factors that could influence the process by which nurses would accommodate cultural needs.

Perspectives on the recruitment and retention of culturally and linguistically diverse police

Purpose: The aims of this paper are: to investigate the perceptions held by police (insiders) and community member (outsiders) of the recruitment and retention of culturally and linguistically diverse employees of Victoria Police; and, to develop a model that can assist in future recruitment and retention policy development.---------- Design/methodology/approach: Structured focus group interviews were conducted based on an instrument deduced from existing literature. Police and community members were interviewed separate cohorts. The discussions were thematically coded to themes and sub-themes.---------- Findings: Specific differences were identified in perceptions of the importance of recruiting culturally and linguistically diverse groups, barriers to recruitment, recruitment methods, and retention methods.---------- Research limitations/implications: Based on these perceptions, a propose a model addresses the importance of cultural diversity in policing and barriers to recruitment and retention of culturally and linguistically diverse employees. Further research is necessary to assess the broader applicability of this model.---------- Practical implications: The proposed model is may be used as the basis for future recruitment and retention activities, and human resource management policy development.---------- Originality/value: This is the first study in the Australian context of recruitment and retention of culturally and linguistically diverse police that addresses both community and police perspectives. Aligning the demographic profile of the police service with that of the community is beneficial to effective policing.

The white man's burden : patriarchal white epistemic violence and Aboriginal women's knowledges within the academy

In this article I reveal how texts produced by Aboriginal women scholars signify a racialised and gendered body that functions discursively, as an immediacy of racism in the form of white patriarchal epistemic violence (Lloyd 1991, 74). I demonstrate how this dominant racialised and gendered form of violence is an assertion of power that involves or arises from racialised knowledge by examining Dirk Moses' analysis of ‘Indigeneity’ via the Northern Territory Intervention (Spivak 1988).

Reconciling Nicci Lane : the 'unspeakable' significance of Australia's first indigenous porn star

This article will explore X-rated representations of Aboriginality in Australian-produced pornographic videos, particularly the image of Australia's first Indigenous porn-star, Nicci Lane. It investigates how pornographic narratives involving 'Aboriginal' characters or motifs are connected to broader embodiments of Aboriginality in popular culture. Drawing a parallel with Australian television drama and mainstream films, the article highlights how contemporary sexualized images of Aboriginal people are intimately tied to a politics of reconciliation. By surveying recent literature on pornography, which describe how certain pornographic narratives engage 'unspoken' community desires, my argument will discuss Nicci Lane's career as a unique development in the history of representations of Aboriginality. Through analysis of Lane’s Arigato Baby (1991), these ‘unspoken’ desires relate to showing Indigenous people in everyday sexual contexts, as romantic partners, friends and lovers. My argument will go on to suggest that, through Nicci Lane's performance and profile, the image of Australia’s first Indigenous porn-star offers the possibility for imagining new kinds of interracial intimacy within the Australian public sphere.