Global indigenous studies in the first world: some reflections and epistemological matters

Indigenous studies in First World nation states such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States of America and Hawaii, appear to have acquired the status of a discipline, although the accounts of its formation vary. Indigenous studies is formally recognised as part of university curricula in these countries and is included in inter‐disciplinary contexts and degree programs or is offered as a program and a degree in its own right. Indigenous scholarship is being published in unprecedented numbers with publishing houses competing for manuscripts. Indigenous studies journals have proliferated having emerged in the 1970s though most were, and continue to be, edited by non‐Indigenous people. In addition, Indigenous studies professional associations have been established organising research related activities as well as convening conferences to enable intellectual engagement and the formation of national and international networks. The nature and extent of this institutionalisation and the conditions of existence, though often marginalised and under resourced, may allude to the coherence of Indigenous Studies as a discipline with global reach but what remains unclear are its epistemological boundaries and the degree to which it perpetuates cultural entrapment . This paper will reflect on some of these epistemological matters.

The importance of science fiction and other STEM-related mass media in young people’s decisions to enrol in university STEM courses

This paper presents Australian results from the Interests and Recruitment in Science (IRIS) study with respect to the influence of STEM-related mass media, including science fiction, on students’ decisions to enrol in university STEM courses. The study found that across the full cohort (N=2999), students tended to attribute far greater influence to science-related documentaries/channels such as Life on Earth and the Discovery Channel, etc. than to science-fiction movies or STEM-related TV dramas. Males were more inclined than females to consider science fiction/fantasy books and films and popular science books/magazines as having been important in their decisions. Students taking physics/astronomy tended to rate the importance of science fiction/fantasy books and films higher than students in other courses. The implications of these results for our understanding of influences on STEM enrolments are discussed.

Digital technology and public apology : responses by Indigenous Australians to a government saying sorry

Australia has had two recent public apologies, one to the ‘ Stolen Generation’ of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians and the second to the ‘Forgotten Australians' – people who had been removed from their parents as children and institutionalized. Both acts occurred in time when there was no Internet and peoples’ stories took years to collect and decades for their weight to carry the public momentum required to gain a public apology. Now, in a digital age, the reports and the testimonies held within them are available for all to read on the Internet. We all now know what happened and formal public apologies ensued. Both public apologies also draw attention to an emerging intersection between digital technologies, personal historical stories and public apology. Research has identified the potential of digital narrative, such as digital storytelling3 and videoed oral histories to assist in the production of digital narratives that can help to present the multiple voices and viewpoints of those affected by these subjects co-creatively (Burgess et al, pp.152-153). Not all Australians however have access or the skills to use digital tools so as to benefit from these technologies ⎯ especially Indigenous Australians. While the Federal Government is committed to helping Australians enjoy digital confidence and digital media literacy skills, experience inclusive digital participation and benefit through online engagement (Department of Broadband, communications and the Digital Economy, 2009) there are many initiatives that can also be undertaken locally by State funded institutions, such as libraries to assist. This paper highlights the outcomes of recent empirical projects undertaken at the State Library of Queensland (SLQ) in particular focusing on digital initiatives in Family History practices by Indigenous users, and a digital story project in response to the public apology to the Stolen Generation instigated by SLQ.

An investigation into drink driving among aboriginal and Torres strait islander peoples in regional and remote Queensland and the development of the 'Hero to Healing' program

This program of research investigated the factors facilitating drink driving in Indigenous communities in Far North Queensland. Drink driving-related road crashes are a significant health burden for Indigenous people, as they die in road crashes at three times the rate of other Australians and are 30% more likely to be seriously injured. This research provided information to develop and pilot a culturally-specific program, 'Hero to Healing'. The main motivation to drink drive was related to 'kinship pressure; where drivers were pressured by family members to drive after drinking. The underlying responsibility for transporting family members was related to cultural values and involved responding to family needs as a priority. Exposure to older family members drink driving was considered to play a role in normalising the behaviour, leading to imitation into adulthood. The research highlighted the need to treat drink driving as a community issue, rather than an individual phenomenon.

Indigenous as ’not-Indigenous' as ’Us'?: A dissident insider's views on pushing the bounds for what constitutes 'our mob'

In australia, 'Aboriginality' is often defined by people in constrictive ways that are heavily influenced by the coloniser's epistemological frameworks. An essential component of this is a 'racial' categorisation of peoples that marks sameness and difference, thereby influencing insider and outsider status. In one sense, this categorisation of people acts to exclude non-aboriginal 'others' from participation in preinvasion indigenous ontologies, ways of living that may not have contained such restrictive identity categories and were thereby highly inclusive of outsiders. One of the effects of this is that aboriginal peoples' efforts for 'advancement' - either out of 'disadvantage' and/or towards political independence (ie, sovereignty) - become confined and restricted by what is deemed possible within the coloniser's epistemological frameworks. This is so much so that aboriginal people are at risk of only reinforcing and upholding the very systems that resulted in their original and continuing dispossession.

“We don’t tell people what to do”: Ethical practice and Indigenous health promotion

Health promotion aspires to work in empowering, participatory ways, with the goal of supporting people to increase control over their health. However, buried in this goal is an ethical tension: while increasing people’s autonomy, health promotion also imposes a particular, health promotion-sanctioned version of what is good. This tension positions practitioners precariously, where the ethos of empowerment risks increasing health promotion’s paternalistic control over people, rather than people’s control over their own health. Here in we argue that this ethical tension is amplified in Indigenous Australia, where colonial processes of control over Indigenous lands, lives and cultures are indistinguishable from contemporary health promotion ‘interventions’. Moreover, the potential stigmatisation produced in any paternalistic acts ‘done for their own good’ cannot be assumed to have evaporated within the self-proclaimed ‘empowering’ narratives of health promotion. This issue’s guest editor’s call for health promotion to engage ‘with politics and with philosophical ideas about the state and the citizen’ is particularly relevant in an Indigenous Australian context. Indigenous Australians continue to experience health promotion as a moral project of control through intervention, which contradicts health promotion’s central goal of empowerment. Therefore, Indigenous health promotion is an invaluable site for discussion and analysis of health promotion’s broader ethical tensions. Given the persistent and alarming Indigenous health inequalities, this paper calls for systematic ethical reflection in order to redress health promotion’s general failure to reduce health inequalities experienced by Indigenous Australians.

The experience of Indigenous students in a Bachelor of Nursing Program in Australia: cultural safety and decolonising nurse education

Background In Australia significant health inequalities, such as an 11year life expectancy gap, impact on the continent’s traditional owners, the Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders. Evidence suggests links between improved Indigenous health and a greater proportion of Indigenous people employed in all sectors. Achieving a greater proportion of Indigenous people in health services and in the health education workforce, requires improved higher education completion rates. Currently Indigenous people are under-represented in higher education and attrition rates amongst those who do participate are high. We argue these circumstances make health and education matters of social justice, largely related to unexamined relations of power within universities where the pedagogical and social environment revolve around the norms and common-sense of the dominant culture. Project Research at Queensland University of Technology in 2010-2012, aimed to gain insights into attrition/retention in the Bachelor of Nursing. A literature review on Indigenous participation in higher education in nursing contextualised a mixed methods study. The project examined enrolment, attrition and success by an analysis of enrolment data from 1984-2012. Using Indigenous Research Assistants we then conducted 20 in-depth interviews with Indigenous students followed by a thematic analysis seeking to gain insights into the impact of students’ university experience on retention. Our findings indicate that cultural safety, mentorship, acceptance and support are crucial in student academic success. They also indicate that inflexible systems based on ethnocentric assumptions exacerbate the structural issues that impact on the students’ everyday life and are also part of the story of attrition. The findings reinforced the assumption that educational environments and processes are inherently cultural and political. This perspective calls into question the role of the students’ cultural experience at university in attrition rates. A partnership between the School of Nursing and the Indigenous Education Unit is working to better support Indigenous students.

Indigenous cultural landscapes: Equitably defining the 'authenticity' of the intangible

Over hundreds of generations, indigenous groups around the world have passed down their traditional landscape associations, a number of which are intangible and therefore unquantifiable. Yet, these associative relationships with nature have been, and continue to be, pivotal in cultural evolution. Determining the authenticity of intangible landscape associations has caused much controversy, and in recent decades, indigenous groups have begun seeking protection of their places of significance. In response, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) World Heritage Committee (WHC) developed a criterion that intended to assist in the identification and protection of cultural landscapes. The WHC has therefore become the global authority responsible for determining the authenticity of cultural landscapes, including those with intangible associations rather than material cultural evidence. However, even with the support of the United Nations, UNESCO and the WHC, it is unlikely that every tangible cultural landscape will be sufficiently recognised and protected. Therefore, this research paper explores the effectiveness of current approaches to gauging authenticity in instances where multiple landscapes are valued according to similar characteristics. Further, this work studies the inherent relationship between the indigenous Maori population of the South Island of New Zealand, in particular Kai Tahi peoples, and their significant landscape features, as a means of considering the breadth and depth of historic intangible associations. In light of these findings, this research challenges the appropriateness of the term 'authenticity' when analysing not only the subjective, but more pressingly, the intangible. It therefore questions the role of empirical data in demonstrating authenticity, while recognising that a prolific list of such intangible cultural landscapes has the potential to diminish integrity. This, this paper addresses an urgent need for increased social research in this area, namely in identifying cultural landscape protection methods that empower all local indigenous communities, not just those which are the most critically acclaimed.

Editorial of "International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies Volume 2, Number 2, 2009"

This edition of the International Critical Indigenous Studies Journal, our second for 2009 takes alternative understandings as its theme. All four articles in this edition attend to citizenship and Indigenous sovereignty though in different ways...

Editorial of "International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, Volume 7, Number 1, 2014"

This edition testifies to the broad international reach of the journal, with contributions variously concerned with Arctic Indigenous communities, the Métis of Canada, Native Hawaiians and Māori of Aotearoa (New Zealand). Two articles stress the need to work collaboratively and respectfully with Indigenous populations whilst conducting research. The first, by Gwen Healey, notes the increased interest in health research in the Arctic, particularly with Inuit populations. Healy seeks to add to the growing body of literature concerned with Indigenous ways of knowing by highlighting Inuit concepts that inform an effective Arctic research model. The second, by primary author Peter Hutchinson and a range of co-contributors, highlights the ways in which Métis collaborators working in health developed a participatory Indigenous research method that was unique in that it foregrounded Métis relationships and relationality. In so doing, the researchers were able to give substance to otherwise staid policy statements about the need for good ethical research conduct.

Annual report 2007 - North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES). Sixteenth meeting, Victoria, Canada, October 26-November 5, 2007

Report of Opening Session (p. 1). Report of Governing Council (p. 15). Report of the Finance and Administration Committee (p. 65). Reports of Science Board and Committees: Science Board Inter-Sessional Meeting (p. 83); Science Board (p. 93); Biological Oceanography Committee (p. 105); Fishery Science Committee (p. 117); Marine Environmental Quality Committee (p. 129); Physical Oceanography and Climate Committee (p. 139); Technical Committee on Data Exchange (p. 145); Technical Committee on Monitoring (p. 153). Reports of Sections, Working and Study Groups: Section on Carbon and Climate (p. 161); Section on Ecology of Harmful Algal Blooms in the North Pacific (p. 167); Working Group 19 on Ecosystem-based Management Science and its Application to the North Pacific (p. 173); Working Group 20 on Evaluations of Climate Change Projections (p. 179); Working Group 21 on Non-indigenous Aquatic Species (p. 183); Study Group to Develop a Strategy for GOOS (p. 193); Study Group on Ecosystem Status Reporting (p. 203); Study Group on Marine Aquaculture and Ranching in the PICES Region (p. 213); Study Group on Scientific Cooperation between PICES and Non-member Countries (p. 225). Reports of the Climate Change and Carrying Capacity Program: Implementation Panel on the CCCC Program (p. 229); CFAME Task Team (p. 235); MODEL Task Team (p. 241). Reports of Advisory Panels: Advisory Panel for a CREAMS/PICES Program in East Asian Marginal Seas (p. 249); Advisory Panel on Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey in the North Pacific (p. 253); Advisory Panel on Iron Fertilization Experiment in the Subarctic Pacific Ocean (p. 255); Advisory Panel on Marine Birds and Mammals (p. 261); Advisory Panel on Micronekton Sampling Inter-calibration Experiment (p. 265). 2007 Review of PICES Publication Program (p. 269). Guidelines for PICES Temporary Expert Groups (p. 297). Summary of Scientific Sessions and Workshops (p. 313). Report of the ICES/PICES Conference for Early Career Scientists (p. 355). Membership (p. 367). Participants (p. 387). PICES Acronyms (p. 413). Acronyms (p. 415).

Ancient peoples at new tasks

http://www.archive.org/details/ancientpeoplesat00pricuoft

Finding Common Ground: A Critical Review of Land Use and Resource Management Policies in Ontario, Canada and their Intersection with First Nations

This article provides an in-depth analysis of selective land use and resource management policies in the Province of Ontario, Canada. It examines their relative capacity to recognize the rights of First Nations and Aboriginal peoples and their treaty rights, as well as their embodiment of past Crown–First Nations relationships. An analytical framework was developed to evaluate the manifest and latent content of 337 provincial texts, including 32 provincial acts, 269 regulatory documents, 16 policy statements, and 5 provincial plans. This comprehensive document analysis classified and assessed how current provincial policies address First Nation issues and identified common trends and areas of improvement. The authors conclude that there is an immediate need for guidance on how provincial authorities can improve policy to make relationship-building a priority to enhance and sustain relationships between First Nations and other jurisdictions.

Stolen past: Shattered futures, aboriginal justice in Canada

It is acknowledged that Canada's criminal justice system has some major flaws, particularly with respect to its application to various ethnic subgroups. Aboriginal Canadians are one subgroup particularly sensitive to the problems in the system as is reflected by their disproportionately high rates of criminality and incarceration. Over the past 50 years many programs have been developed and recommendations have been made to alleviate the tensions Aboriginals find within the system. However, the situation today is essentially the same. Aboriginals are still overrepresented within the system and solutions that have been brought forward have had little success in stemming their flow into the system. Blame for Aboriginal mistreatment in the system has been placed at all levels from line police officers to high-level officials and politicians and attempts to resolve problems continue as an on going process. However, many of the recommendations and reforms have revolved around culture conflict. Although this thesis recognizes the importance of culture conflict in the overrepresentation of Aboriginals within the Canadian criminal justice system, it has also recognized that culture conflict alone is not responsible for all the flaws within the system as it pertains to Aboriginals. This thesis is of the opinion that in order for reforms to the criminal justice system to be successful, the context in which the system is operating must also be considered. Variables such as geographic isolation, economic disparity and social/political stability are viewed as operating in conjunction with culture, ultimately influencing Aboriginal treatment within the system. The conclusions drawn from this study confirm that when these factors operate together, the overrepresentation of Aboriginals within the Canadian criminal justice system is inevitable. Thus all three variables, culture conflict (social/political stability being part), geographic isolation and economic disparity must be address within the system if any significant changes in the crime rates or incarceration rates of Aboriginals is to be expected. In addition, primary research indicated the influence of cooperation as a factor in moderating the effects of criminality; not just cooperation among Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals, but also cooperation among differing Aboriginal communities. It was argued that when all these issues are addressed, Aboriginal peoples in Canada will have the strength to repair their shattered futures.

A Home at School: Building Stronger Indigenous People through Cultural Resurgence in an Urban Ontario Public School Context.

In this thesis, I work through the educational narratives of young Aboriginal women and men as I explore the relationship between cultural programming and student engagement. My analysis is structured through a collaborative Indigenous research project. My overarching task is to explore how a cultural support program, the Native Youth Advancement with Education Hamilton (NYA WEH) Program, offered at Sir John A. Macdonald Secondary School, located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, attempts to re-imagine Aboriginal education in ways that directly challenge the residential school legacy. In particular, I work to illuminate how particular forms of Aboriginal education are connected to the graduation rates of Aboriginal youth. I argue that the ways in which the NYA WEH Program navigates Native Studies curriculum, relationships, and notions of culture and tradition are significant to the engagement of Aboriginal youth. This research develops theoretical connections between the contemporary experience of Aboriginal social inequality and educational initiatives which attempt to reverse that legacy. By placing the NYA WEH Program narratives side-by-side with literature supporting Aboriginal education for Self-determination, I work to learn how to best support and encourage Aboriginal student engagement in secondary schools across Ontario.