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.

The impact of Indigenous Community sports programs: The case of surfing

The objective of this research project was to consider the social impact of sport and physical activity on the lives of Indigenous Australians and their communities. There has been strong research interest in the links between sport and recreation programs and various health and social outcomes and a well-established body of literature exists on the use of sport to address social issues in mainstream society (A Thomson, Darcy and Pearce 2010). The consensus is that physical activity is an important contributor to health for all people (Nelson, Abbott and Macdonald 2010). While there is strong research interest, what remains unclear is the value and impact of sport and physical activity on Indigenous communities (Cairnduff 2001). Nelson (2009) drawing on the work of Jonas and Langton (1994) indicates that an ‘Aboriginal person is a descendant of an Indigenous inhabitant of Australia, identifi es as an Aboriginal, and is recognised as Aboriginal by members of the community in which he or she lives’ (p. 97). Even this defi nition has the potential to be politically charged. At a general level, the collective terms ‘Indigenous’ (capitalised) and ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander’ people (title capitalised) appear to be broadly acceptable terms. Indigenous groups cannot be considered to be homogenous as there is much diversity between and within groups (Nelson et al. 2010; Parker et al. 2006). It is therefore important this report is not viewed as taking an essentialist view of who Indigenous people are and how they develop. Rather, this paper attempts to describe and discuss the experiences of some individuals and their communities in site-specifi c surfi ng programs.

Two worlds apart: Indigenous community perspectives and Non-Indigenous teacher perspectives on Australian schools

Our evaluation studies of Indigenous school reform begin from a different starting point: listening to, hearing and engaging with the commentaries, voices, narratives and analyses of Indigenous community as they discuss and recount their experiences and current encounters with Australian state schools. Here we undertake a contrastive documentation of the views of Indigenous community members, Elders, parents, education workers, and young people and, indeed, of the views of their non-Indigenous teachers and school principals. This is a dramatic picture of two distinctive cultural lifeworlds, communities and worldviews in contact, of two very different ‘constructions’ by participants of a shared, mutual experience: everyday interaction in the social field of the Australian school. Taken together, our Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants repeatedly confirmed and corroborated a key theme: that Indigenous peoples continue to be viewed and ‘treated’ through the lens and language of cultural, intellectual and moral ‘deficit’.

Identity and autonomy of the indigenous community within Christianity

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Using mobile phones as placed resources for literacy learning in a remote Indigenous community in Australia

Despite massive funding from the Australian government, the literacy achievement of Australian Indigenous children remains significantly lower than for non-Indigenous. With the aim of identifying innovative ways to improve Indigenous children's literacy achievement, this study explored the social practices surrounding everyday mobile phone use by Indigenous people in a remote Australian community. Informed by the notion of ‘placed resources’, which highlights the understanding that digital literacies are best considered as resources situated by social practices that have local effect, the study surveyed 95 people living in a remote Indigenous community about their mobile phone practices. The study also examined a video of a literacy event between a mother and her child around the use of a mobile phone. The findings revealed the strong relational aspects of phone use in remote communities. Integral to the concept of placed resources is a respect for the practices communities find important as they adopt artefacts for their everyday communication.

Knowledge making by pre-service teachers on a professional placement experience in a remote Australian indigenous community

This paper reports on the preliminary investigations of an emerging program of research in which the authors are engaged. The program aims to generate new understandings for effective teacher education drawing on data from non-Indigenous pre-service teachers who undertook a teaching placement in remote Indigenous schools in Australia. The overall goals of this research gather around the notion of ‘building belonging’. The initial stage of this project sought to enable pre-service teachers to increase their awareness of the places and institutional practices operating within and between remote Indigenous communities and themselves. The twelve participants were interviewed while on three-week placements around Katherine and in Maningrida in the Northern Territory, Australia, during 2012. The paper elaborates various ways in which the remote placement experience began to challenge, positively disrupt, question and even (re) shape their professional learning and identities. Existing literature reporting on the experiences of largely white, middle class pre-service teachers in unfamiliar cultural contexts draws attention to themes of disruption, and the potential for meaningful and transformative professional learning experiences in such contexts (eg Gannon, 2010; Marble, 2012; Phillips, 2011; Ryan & Healy, 2009). Drawing on some of these insights from the literature, our preliminary reading of the data reveal the variety of ways and differing extents to which participants experienced disruptive, or potentially transformative professional learning moments during the placement. We conclude the paper by pointing towards some key areas for further investigation, in order to progress our research program around building belonging between pre-service teachers and remote Indigenous communities.

Diabetes mellitus in the australian indigenous community

This report aims to investigate the higher prevalence of type 2 diabetes (T2D) among Indigenous Australians, with recommendations to Australians Health Professionals in order to increase awareness of Indigenous health peculiarities related to diabetes mellitus (DM). Diabetes has become one of the most common public health problems of the 21st century. The proportion of Aborigines Australians developing T2D is 5 to 10 times greater than non-Aborigines. Although DM in Aboriginal community is multifactorial, this report shows three perceived causes: (i) obesity and the "Thrifty Gene Hypothesis", (ii) geographical position and (iii) smoking. It concluded that the combination of these causes have increased the incidence of DM among Indigenous Australians. Therefore, the following are recommended: improvement of genetic research, improvement of medical facilities, and increased employment of Indigenous Health Professionals and improvement of anti-smoking policies.

A way to communicate: A new signage system for the Mah Meri Indigenous community

Today, designers use a diverse range of alternative media to have a more efficient form of communication. This research is to investigate the potential of traditionally-inspired contemporary communication design to bridge cultural understandings between and among Malaysians of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. Specifically, I propose to design a new signage system in the Mah Meri indigenous community in Malaysia. This is in view that despite the development of the latest media alternatives in use today, the Mah Meri community still lags behind in terms of utilization of these new communication facilities. This project aims to improve social interactions between this community and visitors. The signage system that I propose will help outsiders to navigate in and around the Mah Meri settlements easier and faster because the system provides relevant information in a simple and easy to understand method. Without this signage system visitors will have difficulty in finding the right directions. This work also endeavours, through the notion of creating a new signage system to enrich the cultural identity of the Mah Meri community based on their beliefs in the elements of nature. This, in turn, will create a niche for the community to promote the uniqueness of their culture and identity to outsiders.

Social Mobilization in Health and Sanitation in an Action Research Process in an Indigenous Community in Northwestern Amazon

The living conditions of the inhabitants of Iauarete, an indigenous area in the municipality of Sao Gabriel da Cachoeira, State of Amazonas (Northern Brazil), have been negatively affected by population density, poor sanitation and maintenance of sanitation practices that are incompatible with that reality. To improve the population's quality of life, sanitation systems that are adequate to the local socio-cultural characteristics should be implemented, as well as educational processes with emphasis on social mobilization and community empowerment. The aim of this paper is to report and discuss a training course on health and sanitation using action research, directed to the mobilization of the Iauarete indigenous people, with the objective of assisting other studies of this nature. In the meetings, issues related to environmental health were discussed, a Community Newspaper was constructed, the course participants made interviews and drew up claims documents. This experience has enhanced the participants' understanding of local problems and of the importance of social mobilization for the dialogue with governmental institutions that are responsible for providing sanitation services and for seeking better living conditions. The researchers and teachers of the training course benefitted from the construction of collective knowledge resulting from interaction with subjects of the investigated situation and from the recognition and redefinition of their representations, fulfilling the fundamental premise of action research.

Hunting practices among the Awá-Guajá: towards a long-term analysis of sustainability in an Amazonian indigenous community

Indigenous Reserves have played an indispensable role in maintaining forest areas in the Neotropics. In the Amazon there is a clear correlation between these reserves and the presence of forest cover; however, the simple presence of uninterrupted vegetation is no guarantee for the conservation of biodiversity, especially where hunting is practiced. This study describes hunting practices among the Awá-Guajá people from 1993 through 1994, also identifying sociocultural, technological, and demographic changes that have influenced their resource acquisition strategies over the last two decades. The data was obtained through ethnographic fieldwork, recording 78 days of foraging returns, with follow-up visits through 2010. This work provides useful information for an effective diachronic analysis of hunting in this community, by revealing foraging patterns of the early to mid-1990s, and describing community transformations over the last two decades in this locale.

Postcolonial healing landscapes and mental health in a remote Indigenous community in subarctic Ontario, Canada

The concept of therapeutic landscape is concerned with a holistic, socio-ecological model of health, but most studies have attempted to explore land-health links from a Western perspective. On an Indigenous reserve in Northern Ontario, part of the Canadian subarctic, we explore the importance of spaces and places in creating postcolonial therapeutic landscapes to treat the wounds inflicted by colonialism. The aim of this research is to gain insight from views and experiences of First Nations residents living on reservations that are undergoing a process of regaining traditional spiritual beliefs and teachings to construct therapeutic spaces to face mental health problems caused by legal opioid analgesic abuse. This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews with Cree and Ojibwe participants to understand how they are reconnecting with earth, spirituality and traditional animist beliefs on their way to recovery. We find that practices such as taking part in ceremonies and ritual spaces, and seeking knowledge and advice from Elders assist with personal healing and enable Indigenous people to be physically and mentally healthy. Our research findings provide important insights into the relationship between space, healing and culture as determinants of health and well-being and document some key factors that contribute to substance abuse recovery.