Aboriginal Policy Research Articles

Messages for Good Practice: Aboriginal Hospital Liaison Officers and Hospital Social Workers

ABSTRACT This article reports the findings of a study about the work of Aboriginal hospital liaison officers (AHLOs) and hospital social workers in Victoria. Guided by an Aboriginal Critical Reference Group, in-depth interviews were held with nine AHLOs, 10 social workers, and three Aboriginal health policy and program informants. Telephone focus groups held with study participants confirmed an analysis of the narratives of good practice and themes identified by participants. Focusing on the strengths of collaborative work, six key principles for good practice were defined. These principles relate to nonbiomedical knowledge and skills that non-Aboriginal social workers and AHLOs require to work well with Aboriginal patients. Implications for training and further research are discussed. IMPLICATIONS Similar elements of shared good practice between AHLOs and social workers were identified across a range of hospital types in Victoria suggesting that this is an important area of social work practice to understand and develop. The relationship and practice between AHLOs and social workers were previously underexplored, and the strengths and challenges of their working together practice have the potential to positively impact the hospital stay and health outcomes of Aboriginal patients. This study calls for opportunities to further strengthen and facilitate the ongoing, dynamic, and positive relationships between hospital social workers and AHLOs. Working together, they contribute to the creation of cultural safety and care for Aborignal patients and their families.

A Man of the ‘Wild’ Queensland Frontier: King Gida of the Kaurareg

This biographical study concerns a Kaurareg man named Gida (c.1849–1899), who resided on Muralag (Prince of Wales Island), in Torres Strait in the late nineteenth century. It is part of a larger research project on the so-called ‘Meston’s Wild Australia’ or ‘Wild Australia Show’ of 1892–93 which was conceived by Queensland entrepreneur Archibald Meston. Meston conscripted a travelling troupe of Aboriginal people from the Queensland frontier whom he presented to the public as ‘wild’ but ‘magnificent’ both physically and in relation to particular skilled customs, yet doomed to extinction, being in the ‘dying days of their race’. The tour climax was planned to be their appearance at the Chicago World Fair in late 1893, but the troupe were left stranded by Meston in Melbourne. The aim here is to provide a longitudinal and culturally informed account of Gida’s life, with understanding of a range of critical life events, in addition to those that projected him into the Wild Australia Show and allowed him to return triumphant from the tour. Gida became renowned as a leader being referred to as both a ‘King’ and by the ignominious name of ‘Tarbucket’, titles reflecting the ethnocentric colonial construction of the ‘other’ as both a romanticised primitive, partly of the ‘wild’, yet simultaneously a faithful servant of the state, shaped as such by the emerging Aboriginal policies. Gida and his co-performers were conscripted from Kiwain village on Muralag. Gida had fled here as a young man after another village had been attacked and ‘razed’ in c.1870 by a punitive expedition led by Frank Jardine of Somerset settlement on Cape York, in which a significant number of his tribespeople were slaughtered for allegedly head-hunting the crew of a wrecked ship. An analysis of this phase of history more readily explains the personal and socio-economic impacts on Gida and the Kaurareg people, before tracing the later fate of Gida and the ongoing inter-generational trauma of his descendants as acknowledgement by their contemporary leader.

‘Where is the Aboriginal Act?’: Archibald Meston and the Emergence of the Aboriginal Policy in Queensland

Queensland Parliament passed The Aboriginals Protection and Sale of Opium Act in the last weeks of 1897, forcing Indigenous people onto reserves under strict control and stopping the sale of opium to them. The amalgamation of these two legislative elements has not been properly explained in the historical literature, and there has not been, to date, an overview of other preceding, connected Acts that imposed European values and ideologies on Indigenous people. Journalist Archibald Meston’s role is worth carefully investigating to understand the influences underlying this legislation. His co-authors William Parry-Okeden, Arthur Rutledge and Horace Tozer never publicly reflected on their part in the Act’s drafting, but Meston was to later successfully pose as the Act’s sole architect. Meston’s contribution to the Act demands critical inquiry because our research shows that his self-proclaimed “expertise” was mostly opportunistic propaganda. This paper examines the political background to the 1897 Act so as to understand the socio-economic influences that led to the creation of the first legislation that affected all Indigenous people in Queensland, and which was to become the largest and longest-lasting disrupter of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Queensland after the frontier wars – a significant longitudinal process in Queensland’s history, still reverberating into contemporary times.

Walking the talk: evaluating the alignment between Australian governments\u2019 stated principles for working in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health contexts and health evaluation practice

BackgroundStated principles in government policy documents serve as a set of values outlining how governments intend to work. As such, health planning principles should be reflected in health policy across the cycle of planning, implementation and evaluation. Such principles should be reflected in the process of governments commissioning and funding evaluation, and in the work of those commissioned to do evaluation on behalf of governments.MethodsWe reviewed health planning policy documents to identify principles Australian State and Territory and National governments stated as being important to the work they do within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health contexts. Evaluation tenders and reports relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health policy, programs and service for the period 1-Jan-2007 to 1-Jan-2017 were retrieved and assessed as to whether they embedded principles governments state as important.ResultsIn Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health planning policy contexts, Australian governments outline shared responsibility, cultural competence, engagement, partnership, capacity building, equity, a holistic concept of health, accountability, and evidence-based as fundamental principles that will underpin the work they will do.In total, we identified 390 publicly advertised evaluation tenders, but were only able to retrieve 18 tenders and 97 reports. Despite strong rhetoric placing importance on the abovementioned principles, these were not consistently embedded in tenders released by government commissioners, nor in reports largely commissioned by governments. Principles most widely incorporated in documents were those corresponding to Closing the Gap - accountability, evidence-based and equity. Principles of holistic concept of health, capacity building, cultural competence and partnership do not appear well applied in evaluation practice.ConclusionNotwithstanding the tensions and criticism of current practice that sees dominant governments policing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations and defining what principles should inform health policy and evaluation practice, this paper reveals shortcomings in current evaluation practice. Firstly, this paper reveals a lack of transparency about current practice, with only 2% of tenders and 25% of reports in the public domain. Secondly, this paper reveals that governments do not ‘walk the talk’, particularly when it comes to principles relating to Aboriginal participation in health.

Who knows best? Paternalism in Aboriginal policy

Through colonial eyes, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are seen as subjects void of agency. They have been treated by the Australian polity as though they are in great need of saving. This paper explores the ways in which well-intended policies and initiatives implemented by successive governments have failed to recognise and support Indigenous Australians as functioning sovereign beings.

Deficit discourse – the ‘regime of truth’ preceding the Cape York Welfare Reform

ABSTRACT The Cape York Welfare Reform (CYWR) income management regime commenced in 2008. While this regime was supported and funded by the Queensland and federal governments, it was essentially developed by the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership (CYI), which was known as an Aboriginal policy development think tank. Income management in Cape York involves quarantining between 60% and 90% of a person's social security payment, if the person is deemed to have breached particular social responsibilities. The decision to income manage social security payments of CYWR community members, was based on a belief and writings by the CYI that there was a social norms deficit in Cape York communities, which income management could play a role in addressing. The language used by the CYI to describe Cape York community life was negative in the extreme, dramatic and evocative. This language, which I describe as deficit discourse, commanded a response to what was described as a dire situation. This article frames this deficit discourse in the broader and continuing context of colonisation. This discourse has been applied consistently throughout Australia's colonial history, perpetuating racial discrimination and justifying continuous governmental intervention into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's lives.

The View from the Office, the View from the Field: Sport in Queensland Aboriginal Reserves

Sport played an important role in Aboriginal reserves that were established throughout Queensland, Australia, in the colonial era and continued into the 1980s. Despite the historical prominence of sport in these government-run settlements and church-based missions, little is known about either the role of sport as a mechanism of official control or its meanings to Aboriginal inmates of the reserves. The general administration of the reserves has been well explored, but sport has appeared mainly as a footnote in this broader narrative. Likewise, the meanings of sporting practices at a community level have been neglected. In this paper, the aim is to help rectify this situation by investigating both perspectives over the period 1897–1967. Official rationales for sport – the view from the office – are charted against the contours of Aboriginal policy to reach a better understanding of sport as a mechanism of control within the broader apparatus of government power. Aboriginal voices are sought in order to bring new perspectives – the view from the field – to understanding sport within and among communities.

Victorian local government priority for Aboriginal health and wellbeing: a mixed-methods study.

The aim of this study is to identify if Victorian local governments prioritise Aboriginal health and wellbeing issues through policy and explore the key factors influencing policy and program development and implementation. A sequential explanatory mixed-methods study design utilised a survey to quantify commitment to Aboriginal health policy followed by in-depth interviews that explored how and why policy or programs were in place. Data were analysed separately and then interpreted together. Representatives from 39 of Victoria's 79 local governments (49%) responded to the survey and 14 were interviewed. Seventy-four per cent had policy and programs addressing Aboriginal health and wellbeing. The key factors influencing policy and program development were: (i) the process of policy and program development and implementation and the role of other policies; (ii) the influence of Aboriginal community characteristics; and (iii) advocacy for Aboriginal health and wellbeing. Underpinning these factors was that local government is 'working together (in partnership and through collaboration) towards reconciliation'. Victorian local governments that participated in this study appear to prioritise Aboriginal health and wellbeing, especially where collaboration with the Aboriginal community is strong. The effect of policies and their subsequent programs on the health of Aboriginal peoples warrants further exploration.

Benevolent Benedictines? Vulnerable missions and Aboriginal policy in the time of A.O. Neville

[Eliza] must understand distinctly that when she reaches Perth she is under my control, and must do as she is told. Subsequently Eliza was brought to me by Policewoman Dugdale, and she [Eliza] claimed that she was the daughter of a half-caste by a white father, and was not therefore subject to the provisions of the Aborigines Act in regard to her movements and our desire to send her back to the Mission.

Cultural Genocide in Canada? It Did Happen Here.

This article explores the significance of the TRC’s assertion that the establishment and operation of residential schools were a central element of Canada’s Aboriginal policy that can be described as cultural genocide, against the backdrop of Canada’s historical position on cultural genocide and in view of residential schools litigation. It analyzes the deliberations over the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (The Genocide Convention) in various United Nations (UN) organs, Canada’s historical position, and the selective adoption of the Genocide Convention in Canadian law. My argument is threefold; first, I argue that the TRC assertion is indeed timely. Cultural genocide is not an inferior second-rate type of genocide, although it is not included in the Genocide Convention. Conceptually, cultural genocide is a full-blown genocide, even if it is not legally actionable. Second, Canada shielded itself legally above and beyond claims of genocide as it transplanted the Genocide Convention into Canadian law. Finally, while the cultural genocide phraseology may facilitate a wider scope of tort claims, the absence of appropriate legislation changes means Aboriginal people are likely to continue to view Canadian law as an oppressive settler-state mechanism.The first section of this article explores the notion of genocide as the destruction of cultures and the contextualization of the colonial experience within this notion. The second outlines briefly the drafters’ justification for the exclusion of cultural genocide in the Genocide Convention, the Canadian position with regard to cultural genocide, and the selective manner in which the Genocide Convention was incorporated in Canada’s criminal code. Section three analyzes residential schools litigation within Canada’s narrow, individual-based tort law. Finally, the significance and implications of the TRC conclusion will be discussed.

Prospective Teacherss Perceptions: A Critical Literacy Framework

The education of Aboriginal youth is, in some respects, in crisis. Aboriginal communities in Ontario (Canada) are as a group currently experiencing marginalization within the education system. As such it is imperative that efforts be made to better understand the system to improve the success rate for Aboriginal youth. The Ontario First Nation, Metis and Inuit Education Policy Framework (2007) has committed to “improve achievement among First Nation, Metis and Inuit students and to close the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students”. English and Language Arts teachers (K to 12) are compelled to consider how the policy discourse of the 2007 Aboriginal Policy Framework implicates upon the socio-political and socio-historical currency of literacy in their instruction. Consequently, this qualitative study examined one component of a large-scale project, in the tradition of grounded theory, including the implications of Aboriginal education policy discourse on literacy instruction as it applies to over 200 prospective teachers enrolled in a Teacher Education Program in Ontario, Canada. Participants identified two themes that they believed Aboriginal students would find most challenging, including: (i) tension with provincial curriculum and, (ii) feelings of misrepresentation.

‘Little Gunshots, but with the blaze of lightning’: Xavier Herbert, Visuality and Human Rights

Xavier Herbert published his bestseller Capricornia in 1938, following two periods spent in the Northern Territory. His next major work, Poor Fellow My Country (1975), was not published until thirty-seven years later, but was also set in the north during the 1930s. One significant difference between the two novels is that by 1975 photo-journalism had become a significant force for influencing public opinion and reforming Aboriginal policy. Herbert’s novel, centring upon Prindy as vulnerable Aboriginal child, marks a sea change in perceptions of Aboriginal people and their place in Australian society, and a radical shift toward use of photography as a means of revealing the violation of human rights after World War II. In this article I review Herbert’s visual narrative strategies in the context of debates about this key historical shift and the growing impact of photography in human rights campaigns. I argue that Poor Fellow My Country should be seen as a textual re-enactment, set in Herbert’s and the nation’s past, yet coloured by more recent social changes that were facilitated and communicated through the camera’s lens. Like all re-enactments, it is written in the past conditional: it asks, what if things had been different? It poses a profound challenge to the state project of scientific modernity that was the Northern Territory over the first decades of the twentieth century.

The Italo‐Abyssinian Crisis and Australian Settler Colonialism in 1935

AbstractBy exploring the themes of settler colonialism and modernity in Australian commentary about Italy's invasion of Abyssinia in 1935, this paper sets out to consider Italy's war in north Africa as an international crisis with significance for Australian progressive narratives about Aboriginal conditions, status and rights important to Australia's international reputation. Thus, Australia's role as a member of the League and a mandatory power will be read in the context of international debate about Italy, modernity, race and violence.My case study draws from the experiences of Bessie Rischbieth, alternate delegate for Australia to the League of Nations in 1935, who observed the Abyssinian protest being made before the Assembly. Rischbieth was seemingly persuaded by Italy's claims to the right to land and territory in the context of immigration restrictions into the United States (and we might add, in relation to Australia) and was provided evidence of slavery in Abyssinia mobilised by Italy and earlier by the Anti‐Slavery Society in London in defence of the civilising influence of Europe upon a fellow (non‐European) member of the League. However, Rischbieth was also an activist within liberal humanitarian networks critical of Aboriginal policy in Australia in this same era. Her responses to the crisis in African and League affairs offer some insight into the proximities between settler colonialism in Australia and the ‘race’ issues raised by the annexation of Abyssinia by Italy, and its implications for collective security and global governance.

“Apartheid in a parka”? Roots and longevity of the Canada–South Africa comparison

Comparisons between Aboriginal policy in Canada and apartheid in South Africa appear frequently in public discourse, often with claims of actual links between the two systems. This paper interrogates these supposed links, using an analysis of land policy and the pass system in each country to demonstrate the improbability of the claims of direct influences. The paper then goes on to analyze the intellectual history of these comparisons, asking why they have been, and continue to be, made by many different actors in the face of a lack of historical evidence. The paper argues that the claims have served the needs of many different groups in different ways and thus maintained a hold despite their lack of historical foundation. However, good policy must be founded on clear analysis of history, and this paper argues that it is important to de-link South Africa and Canada, and understand oppression in each context on its own terms.

The Harper Government, the Aboriginal Right to Self-Determination, and the Indian Act of 1876

A debate on the reform of the frequently criticized Indian Act of 1876 – the basic law governing the rights and responsibilities of First Nations and their special status within Canada – is getting more intense with the ongoing socio-economic problems of Aboriginal peoples. Whereas the federal government emphasizes self-sufficiency and financial responsibility, First Nations require the assertion of their constitutional rights to self-determination and self-government in any future reform. This paper examines various proposals to reform the Indian Act and their potential effect on the status of First Nations. In particular, it focuses on Aboriginal policy stances of the Harper Government and the First Nations’ reaction to the federal government’s approach. The author concludes by arguing that any effort to change the current situation will run into problems because of the discrepancy of ideas on how to implement the reform of the Indian Act and how to enforce the right to self-determination. Keywords: Canada, First Nations, Indian Act of 1876, right to self-determination, Idle No More DOI: 10.14712/23363231.2016.3

A new model for making Aboriginal policy? Evaluating the Kelowna Accord and the promise of multilevel governance in Canada

AbstractGovernment policy‐making affecting Indigenous communities in Canada has often been met with stiff resistance from Indigenous leadership. We examine multilevel governance as an alternate model for Aboriginal policy‐making by examining a particular case study: the process leading up to the 2005 Kelowna Accord. We find that although multilevel governance may have the potential to produce highly desirable outcomes, its emergence seems to depend heavily on political agency. Meaningful and enduring change to Aboriginal policy‐making will therefore likely require significant institutional adjustments to the Canadian federation.

One people: Aboriginal assimilation and the White Australia ideal

This article uses a series of Commonwealth government assimilation propaganda booklets published between 1957 and 1963 as the starting point for an exploration of the relationship between Aboriginal assimilation policy and changing conceptions of Australian nationhood. It argues that the ethnic nationalism that provided the foundations of the White Australia policy in the federation era, and of Aboriginal policy for much of the interwar period, was giving way in the 1950s and 1960s to a stronger emphasis on civic nationalism; and that the Commonwealth promoted this shift in the interests of securing the national inclusion of indigenous Australians.

Examining the Urban Aboriginal Policy Gap: Impacts on Service Delivery for Mobile Urban Aboriginal Peoples in Winnipeg, Canada

In recent decades, Aboriginal peoples in Western settler nations have become increasingly urbanized. In many cases, urbanization has been associated with notably high levels of geographic mobility between rural/reserve areas and cities, as well as within cities. Despite the increasing urbanization of Aboriginal peoples in Canada, the policy environment in Canada remains focused on the reserve-based population. Drawing upon thirty-nine in-depth interviews with mobile, urban Aboriginal peoples and urban Aboriginal service providers in Winnipeg, Canada, this article demonstrates that colonial-rooted policy and legislation, along with federal downscaling and privatization of social services, have impacted how service providers operate. This has resulted in service gaps between urban and rural/reserve areas, as Aboriginal migrants seek out information and support from housing, employment, education, health and social-related services. This leaves Aboriginal migrants often unprepared for their transition from rural/reserve areas to cities. Intra-city movers also experience difficulty maintaining continuous social and health service care as they travel across urban neighbourhoods. The research findings suggest a need for urban Aboriginal policies that reflect the right to self-determination and adequate service delivery, as service providers remain constrained by neoliberalism, government funding restrictions, and service delivery models that do not acknowledge urban Aboriginal peoples’ mobility experiences.

Public Policies toward Aboriginal Peoples: Attitudinal Obstacles and Uphill Battles

AbstractThis paper examines public attitudes towards aboriginal policy in Canada, focusing on evidence from two surveys conducted in Saskatchewan, a province with a large and growing Aboriginal population. We show that although non-Aboriginals are collectively divided on Aboriginal public policies, expressing considerable support for some, but strong reservations when it comes to others; the individual-level evidence indicates that there is a single Aboriginal policy agenda in the minds of non-Aboriginal Canadians. Support for, and opposition to, the privileging of Aboriginal claims is structured in part by prejudice toward outgroups but also by non-Aboriginal people's more general position on the role of government in society. Moreover, the impact of positions about the role of government in society on attitudes toward Aboriginal policies is moderated by people's level of political sophistication: the more educated and politically interested they are, the greater the impact of those ideological views.

An Urban Frontier: Respatializing Government in Remote Northern Australia

This essay draws on ethnographic research with Aboriginal Australians living in the parks and bush spaces of a Northern Australian city to analyze some new governmental measures by which remoteness comes to irrupt within urban space and to adhere to particular categories of people who live in and move through this space. To address this question in contemporary Northern Australia is also to address the changing character of the Australian government of Aboriginal people as it moves away from issues of redress and justice toward a state of emergency ostensibly built on settler Australian compassion and humanitarian concern. It also means engaging with the mediatization of politics and its relation to the broader, discursive shaping of such spatial categories as remote and urban. I suggest that remoteness forms part of the armory of recent political efforts to reshape Aboriginal policy in Northern Australia. These efforts leverage remoteness to diagnose the ills of contemporary Aboriginal society, while producing remoteness itself as a constitutive feature of urban space.