This paper examines how well Higher Education (HE) meets the aspirations of Indigenous people in Australia, especially as reflected in the public policy discourse and its measurements of success. Through a literature review, the paper analyses current public policy and experiences of Indigenous students to identify the extent to which the HE system meets the needs of Indigenous people, especially those from remote areas. From a critical examination of the concept of success, the current limitations within HE are presented, and recommendations are made to help ensure that Indigenous Australians' aspirations and needs for HE are more firmly at the forefront of policy, design and delivery of HE in Australia.

We aimed to investigate the perceptions of Mapuche young adults in Araucanía, Chile, regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their communities, adherence to restrictions, and coping responses. Eight Mapuche individuals were included in this qualitative study, segmented by gender. Interviews with a semi-structured script were carried out between February and May 2023. A thematic analysis of the discourse was used with subsequent triangulation and validation of the results. The people interviewed believed that, although the pandemic affected their communities, this challenge strengthened ties and contributed to the recovery of the ancestral worldview. There was a temporal dynamic in adherence to restrictions, with initial distrust but high compliance, including vaccination. There was complementarity between Western and traditional Mapuche medicine, which highlights the importance of intercultural health strategies. The pandemic had an impact on young Mapuche adults by altering community dynamics and cultural practices, with the potential to exacerbate inequalities in their communities. This study emphasizes the need to integrate the indigenous worldview in decisions about restrictions and advocates considering cultural diversity in future health crises.

Introduction Healthcare inequalities among Australian Indigenous people are significantly influenced by sociocultural factors. Understanding these influences and potential solutions benefits from insights into behavioural factors in parallel with social and cultural perspectives of beliefs and attitudes. Deeper analysis of breast cancer among Indigenous women is required to better understand factors and solutions to close the inequality gap. Method A systematic and critical review of peer-reviewed literature was undertaken using the MEDLINE (Pubmed) electronic database. After inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied, and critical appraisal undertaken, 20 articles were identified that aligned with breast cancer incidence or survival among Indigenous Australians. Result The analysis revealed three central themes; pathological factors, cultural factors and social factors. Data linkage strategies reveals inequality in both incidence and 5-year survival for Indigenous breast cancer patients. Both sociocultural behaviours and sociocultural attitudes and beliefs about health, illness and healing contribute to inequality among Indigenous breast cancer patients. Conclusion Poorer outcomes relate to Indigenous patients presenting with more advanced disease. Cultural and socioeconomic behaviours, attitudes and beliefs are significant barriers that create disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous women’s access to and engagement with breast cancer services.

Municipalities are being called on to become more participatory in their approach to policy making and governing. Concurrently, they are working toward making their policies, programs, and staff complements more inclusive and equitable, and more responsive to the ongoing consequences of colonialism and other forms of systemic discrimination. These developments share common normative and theoretical foundations, but municipalities are not necessarily actively working on these changes in tandem. In response, we ask, “What are the problems and possibilities that emerge in efforts to centre Indigenous Knowledges and intersectional commitments in participatory policymaking processes at the local level?” We highlight two barriers that arise persistently in these efforts and suggest modest ways forward that will be useful for municipal public servants working on community engagement; diversity, equity, inclusion efforts; and building relationships with Indigenous residents.

This article considers the many ways in which mechanisms delivering funding for health and social services to First Nations on reserve embed colonial biases. Against a backdrop of trade-offs inherent in different funding mechanisms, we examine the extent to which colonial biases result in greater need for health and social services for which the same per unit funding would be inadequate, and how the colonial biases in operationalizing the funding mechanisms result in lower per unit funding than is afforded Canadians, in some instances. For better informing current efforts to co-develop a renewed fiscal federalism, we conclude with a path forward cast as different decolonizing options of increasing complexity.

Background: Canada’s settler history and legacy impacts of colonialization mean that policy is grounded in Eurocentric ideals which exacerbate vulnerabilities for Indigenous families due to gendered and racialized experiences. Objectives: Our purpose was to understand the experiences of Indigenous women as they try and secure safe affordable housing for themselves and their children. Methods: We utilized a community-based approach and interviewed 12 urban Indigenous women with current or recent experiences of homelessness. Results: Structural violence and racism manifested in three ways: trauma leads to homelessness which leads to trauma; families are trapped in dependency; the search for housing leads to fear of violence. Conclusion: The existence of multiple polices and frameworks to prevent human rights and housing violations are inadequate in protecting Indigenous women and children from racism and violence. An anti-colonial approach is necessary to review and align mainstream policy. This work must be led by lived experience experts.

Following a failed 2023 referendum on constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, Australian governments must work with Indigenous leaders to chart a new way forward in policy to support Indigenous health and wellbeing. Here we report on key stakeholder views on what is required to decolonise Indigenous primary health care (PHC) policy. This article reports on qualitative research conducting yarns with 20 senior staff working in key government and non-government organisations comprising the Indigenous PHC sector (‘stakeholders’). Stakeholders see the sector as exemplifying decolonisation, motivated through Indigenous leadership. However, further changes are needed in mainstream health services, workforce development, intersectoral policy, and determinants of health. We discuss how the Indigenous PHC sector can inform decolonising policy in other sectors and reflect on the international implications of our findings. We conclude that the sector provides important lessons for decolonising Australian public policy.

This study explores the nature of the Fedarb sheet of the Treaty of Waitangi. The author argues that it conflicts with the conventional argument for the necessity of Treaty principles. She argues that the Treaty principles are a device of settler/invader colonialism. The study is a type of Kaupapa Māori writing inquiry. In the case of the Fedarb sheet, if there was no English treaty sheet provided, then most traditional Treaty scholarship arguments become invalid.Rather than interpret Te Tiriti in light of the English Treaty, we must recognize that all the Fedarb signatories provided to the government was the ability to regulate land-use.Mataatua waka should not have been made a part of the settler colonial construction that was the results of settlers’ inaccurate interpretations of the document..All this highlights the need to view the various sheets of The Treaty of Waitangi and/or Te Tiriti o Waitangi as not a single monolithic and homogenous document, but differentiated international treaties between sovereign hapū and the Crown of England. Each sheet should be seen as separate and different on a regional and whakapapa basis, in its own context.

Media depictions of Indigenous people have a long history of perpetuating racist, stereotyping, and victim blaming discourse. At the same time, recent scholarship asserts that news media is shifting its stance towards equity-groups involved in police-based mental health emergency response (MHER). Yet, few have sought to determine how these frames apply to police-based MHER for Indigenous people in Canada. Using an intersectional approach accounting for Indigeneity and mental illness, 168 Canadian media articles published between 1970 and 2022 were collated and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Two overarching themes, affective realities and harms created by police involvement and normative practices perpetuating police impunity were found, as were several sub-themes. Implications for the role and function of news media in supporting the health and social policy needs of Indigenous groups are discussed.

Documenting Indigenous patient voices through safe and culturally appropriate patient-reported outcome (PROMs) and experience measures (PREMs) is essential for monitoring impacts of health care programming and policies. We explored the literature in order to understand the current landscape of PROMs and PREMs that have been developed for and with Indigenous Peoples in Canada, United States, Australia and New Zealand. From our exploration a number of key themes regarding the development of PROMs and PREMs emerged including, applying a wholistic perspective, a relational framework with an emphasis on the role of the family, ensuring cultural fit (reflecting a resilience, strength-based and cultural approach to health), being sensitive to the ethics of survey tools, and ensuring decolonizing approaches in their development. In addition, the scarcity and the need for developing Indigenous-specific PREMs are highlighted.