Australian Aboriginal Studies: Issue 1, 2024
Major articles
Evidencing the emergence of healthy Indigenous communities through Ground Up monitoring and evaluation
Nyomba Gandaŋu, Emmanuel Yunupiŋu, Michaela Spencer and Michael Christie
This paper focuses on our Ground Up monitoring and evaluation research in two community development projects where local Yolŋu researchers and Elders supported university-based researchers to reconsider their understanding of what ‘evidence’ is, and how it works in monitoring and evaluation. In these projects, local Yolŋu researchers insisted that strong practices of monitoring and evaluation were always already being undertaken by Elders and Traditional Owners guiding and shaping the unfolding networks of kin in place. In re-presenting this work here, we suggest that, evidencing good community development did not involve ‘collecting evidence’ as practice of data gathering, or ‘making evidence’ through collaborative knowledge work. Instead, it involved ‘making evident’ to partner organisations the character of particular Indigenous sovereign knowledge and governance practices, and the flourishing that these practices enable. We suggest that such considerations are important in the context of recent Australian Government commitments to Indigenous evaluation through its Indigenous Evaluation Strategy (2020) and, more broadly, in policy realms that impact Indigenous Australian life.
Indigenous urban food: a small study of adults and young people’s food security in Geraldton, Western Australia.
Miri (Margaret) Raven
Indigenous peoples in developed countries face multiple disadvantages that can influence their ability to access food. These disadvantages are not spatially uniform. While remote Indigenous peoples in Australia consume the focus of policy interventions, more Indigenous people live in urban and regional areas than in remote areas. We do not know if urban and regionally located Indigenous peoples experience food insecurity in similar ways to remote Indigenous peoples. This paper uses preliminary research on pilot testing the US Household Food Security Module (FSSM) — with additional demographic questions — with Indigenous people in a large urban town in Western Australia. The findings suggest that urban Indigenous peoples in developed countries experience food insecurity, and that there is a question missing in the FSSM related to putting on weight. Administering FSSM is straightforward and quick, but the addition of prior informed consent processes, as required by ethics guidelines, makes the process timely. Administering the FSSM is better placed with Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations (ACCHOs), which may already have consent processes across their services.
Ending the cycle: the effects of a trauma-informed program operating in a remote Indigenous community
Jack R Menges, Marie L Caltabiano, Alan Clough and Tim White
The Reset program has been running in the remote Cape York community of Aurukun since 2019. It aims to empower Indigenous men through a trauma-informed, skills-based approach. This study explores the impacts of participating in the Reset program. A community-driven, qualitative evaluation of the effects of the program was conducted. Semi-structured interviews were completed with 25 members of the Aurukun community. Fourteen interviews were with current or former participants in the Reset program. Eleven interviews were with family members of participants, five of whom were also community Elders. Results indicated that participants in the program experienced multi-faceted benefits to their wellbeing, including emotional, psychological, cultural, physical, and social components. The implications of these findings as well as the program’s capacity to work towards the self-determined goals of the Aurukun community are discussed.
Indigenous medicines in Australia: a flawed regulatory and legal landscape
Virginia Marshall, Emma Kowal, Paul W Marshall, Mardi Reardon-Smith and Ronald J Quinn
Over recent years, Indigenous peoples in Australia have increasingly sought to explore the commercial and economic potential of their intellectual property and Traditional Knowledge (TK) in relation to genetic or biological resources. Indigenous peoples have recognised the economic value of their TK in a variety of diverse industries, including visual art, tourism, natural resource management and bush foods. One area in which the commercial potential of TK is yet to be realised is Indigenous traditional medicines. At the time of writing, in Australia there have been no Indigenous medicines listed or registered by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). In this article, we consider the complementary medicine pathway for TGA approval. Research to support the commercial development of Indigenous medicines has reached a critical stage where Indigenous TK remains vulnerable to exploitation and yet the regulatory pathways to its protection are not fully or appropriately developed. Our research project seeks to address some of these issues through a collaborative multi-disciplinary ARC Discovery Indigenous project, in partnership with Aboriginal community and regional organisations. The Project’s case study is focused on the opportunities presented, and barriers encountered, by a research and development project involving a traditional analgesic known as ‘mudjala’ to the Nyikina Mangala people.
Indigenous standpoint in tourism research to assist leadership imperatives
Joann Schmider
This research capitalises on the tourism industry’s willingness to incorporate local cultural knowledge into tourism products. The study region’s Indigenous leadership has gained native title recognition for over 88% of the region and has aspired for more than 40 years to benefit from tourism. This leadership has also achieved an Australian National Heritage listing for the area’s Aboriginal cultural values. As an insider, the researcher carries responsibilities for empowering the Traditional Custodian leadership and promoting Indigenous rights and ethical interests. An Indigenous standpoint is the basis of this tourism discipline inquiry and provides for these considerations in designing the research. The article shares my Indigenous standpoint as essential values that can underpin Indigenous tourism research design.
Making Indigenous Reference Group meetings meaningful — ‘it’s all about respect’
Alison Wunungmurra and Anita D’Aprano
While many guidelines highlight the importance of Indigenous Reference Groups (IRG) in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research, there is little published from the IRG members’ perspective. This paper aims to describe the experience and reflections of the Aboriginal chair of the IRG for the Ages and Stages Questionnaire-Steps for Measuring Aboriginal Child Development (ASQ-STEPS) project, alongside the non-Indigenous researcher. This paper takes a heteroglossic approach, presenting the voice of the Aboriginal IRG chair in regular font and the non-Indigenous researcher’s voice in Italics. Alison Wunungmurra is a Dhalwangu Yolngu woman from Gapuwiyak in North-East Arnhem land in the Northern Territory. She is an early childhood teacher and has 20 years’ experience working within the early childhood sector. Anita D’Aprano is a non-Indigenous woman of Italian heritage who has worked in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander context as a researcher and developmental paediatrician. Alison describes her journey, as the chair of the IRG — who she is, why she is in this space, and what her purpose is. Anita, the ASQ-STEPS project lead, provides background information, describing how the ASQ-STEPS IRG was formed and functions. Finally, Alison provides recommendations for non-Indigenous researchers to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander reference or other governance group members and the process.
‘No White Man’s ground, Black Mans’: Kulin ‘trespassers’ on Collins Street in early Melbourne
Liz Conor
Collins Street of 1840 would be unrecognisable to Melburnians today. Contemporary settler accounts and illustrations, from the vantage of Russell Street, looking west, show a thin strip of wooden shelters receding like beach change huts into the horizon. The small township of Melbourne was clustered in a basin nestled between treed rises, with a number of yet uncleared vacant lots. Despite the appearance of Kulin in a number of early illustrations of Melbourne, by this time restrictions had already been placed on ‘native’ presence within the township. Yet people of the Kulin nations continued to camp on vacant allotments in the township, and all around the outer perimeters of the settlement. In a number of early images from colonial Melbourne, individual family bands, most likely from Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung clans, maintained their presence on streets now well within Melbourne’s Central Business District, often marking the township’s boundary with still mostly uncleared bush. This article investigates what Kulin ‘trespassers’ may have encountered if they walked west along Collins Street from Russell Street. It demonstrates their resistance, in standing their ground, to the restrictions imposed on their presence and mobility throughout early colonial Melbourne.