Kimberley Region Of Australia Research Articles

“Speaking for the Dead to Protect the Living”: On Audre Lorde’s Biomythography, Law, Love, and Epistemic Violence in the Coronial Jurisdiction in the Kimberley

From 2017–2019 I was counsel representing the families in a coronial inquest which looked at Aboriginal youth deaths in the Kimberley region of Australia with a particular regard to self-harm. A coronial inquest is a judicial proceeding that investigates unexplained deaths, unusual deaths, or deaths in state custody. In this paper I consider the epistemic violence my clients experienced, and I particularly examine the potential for affect and relationality to create connectors between epistemes in the hope of a more emancipatory conception of justice. I draw on Audre Lorde’s corpus as one that is worthy of serious regard in critical legal studies and useful in my work. In particular, I turn my gaze inwards and draw on Audre Lorde’s creation of biomythography as a method for legal writing and legal practice, to offer an account of my role in the Inquest. Biomythography is a form of writing which grounds subjective individual and collective experience, and its interrelationship with history and myth to centre experiences of justice and injustice. In using this methodology, I consider ways the civil law, through its interpretive function and authority in the coronial jurisdiction, oppresses First Nations Australians. Through writing my biomythography I show that the Coroner’s fact finding role arrives at truth in a way inherently embedded in Western knowledge systems and I regard the Coroner’s truth determining function as violent. Finally, I consider the potential of affect as a connector between epistemes to create emancipatory possibilities for justice.

An Indigenous-Led Approach for Regional Knowledge Partnerships in the Kimberley Region of Australia

Scientists, Indigenous peoples, and local communities are increasingly seeking to combine their expertise to support sustainable management of social-ecological systems for diverse values, from local to global scales. In this paper we present an Indigenous-led approach to enable multiple evidence-based research, monitoring, and evaluation of the health of ‘Saltwater Country.’ This highlights the need to ensure knowledge can be shared, used, and co-developed to care for coastal and marine social-ecological systems within and across the Kimberley region of north-western Australia in an ethical and equitable manner. Structured yet fluid knowledge networks need to be negotiated and supported to enable Indigenous communities to implement this approach, which also requires coordinated institutional support and resourcing to produce useable knowledge that is easily translated into programs of action. We here present a process for regional-scale collaboration between Indigenous and local knowledge systems, western science, and other knowledge systems for the purpose of collaborative natural and cultural resource management and sustainable Indigenous futures.

Mixed methods participatory GIS: An evaluation of the validity of qualitative and quantitative mapping methods

Participatory mapping in social research is characterized by methodological pluralism, with two common methods being qualitative mapping using stakeholder interviews and quantitative methods that engage larger public samples through digital, internet mapping. To date, there has been no systematic evaluation of the extent to which mixed methods in participatory mapping yield valid results when applied to the same research setting and research questions. A mixed methods research design (combined exploratory sequential and convergent parallel) was implemented in a large research project to identify marine and coastal values in the Kimberley region of Australia. Qualitative interviews (n = 167) were completed with stakeholders to identify place-based values using polygon mapping methods and internet-based public participation GIS (PPGIS) methods (n = 578). We defined and operationalized the concepts of concurrent, commensurate, and convergent validity to assess mixed methods research outcomes. We found that qualitative and quantitative methods resulted in moderate to high concurrent validity when assessing the importance of place values in the study area. Convergent validity (spatial) was highly variable by place value, with stronger convergent validity found with mapped aesthetic, recreational fishing, tourism, biodiversity, and Aboriginal culture values, and weakest with existence, therapeutic, and commercial fishing values. Convergent validity was influenced by weak commensurate validity through the use of different geometric features (polygons versus points) for mapping values across a large study area. The utility of mixed methods for planning decision support in a convergent parallel design depends on demonstrating convergence in construct meaning, spatial location, and consistency in values in the sampling populations.

Indigeneity behind the Scenes: Invasion and Kriolisation

This paper seeks to explore the relations between Indigenous and Creole modes of existence and political situations. It combines a theoretical and ethnographic approach to explore the Aboriginal concept of “law and culture” as it emerged in the Kimberley region of Australia. In retracing the historical conjuncture that gave rise to the emergence of this concept into an Aboriginal regional organisation, it highlights important similarities between the developing politics of indigeneity in Australia and the processes of creolisation. Different translations of “law and culture”, a concept expressed in Kriol, allow for a processual understanding of cultural and political change within Aboriginal societies and in their relation to the broader Australian society. Although Kriol is considered a linguistic phenomenon rather than a cultural or political one in the Australian context, it points to specific historical and social processes that are crucial to understanding the conditions in which Indigenous subjects are able to enunciate and articulate their position. By situating creolisation in the broader context of settler colonialism, I argue that it is a necessary counterpart of indigeneity, but one that needs be silenced and made invisible

Cover and Issue Information

New PhytologistVolume 210, Issue 4 p. 1145-1148 Cover and Issue InformationFree Access Cover and Issue Information First published: 09 May 2016 https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.13667AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Graphical Abstract Cover Legend Air-exposed, desiccating leaf tips of the seagrass Enhalus acoroides in a shallow tropical pool in the Kimberley region of Australia. Courtesy of Ole Pedersen. (Pedersen et al. pp. 1207–1218) Volume210, Issue4June 2016Pages 1145-1148 RelatedInformation

Community participation in health service reform: the development of an innovative remote Aboriginal primary health-care service.

The aim of this study was to describe the reorientation of a remote primary health-care service, in the Kimberley region of Australia, its impact on access to services and the factors instrumental in bringing about change. A unique community-initiated health service partnership was developed between a community-controlled Aboriginal health organisation, a government hospital and a population health unit, in order to overcome the challenges of delivering primary health care to a dispersed, highly disadvantaged Aboriginal population in a very remote area. The shared goals and clear delineation of responsibilities achieved through the partnership reoriented an essentially acute hospital-based service to a prevention-focussed comprehensive primary health-care service, with a focus on systematic screening for chronic disease, interdisciplinary follow up, health promotion, community advocacy and primary prevention. This formal partnership enabled the primary health-care service to meet the major challenges of providing a sustainable, prevention-focussed service in a very remote and socially disadvantaged area.

Conducting communication assessments with school aged aboriginal children in the Kimberley region of Australia

Speech pathology assessment within cross-cultural contexts, where the assessor and client differ in their cultural backgrounds, can create many challenges for assessment usage and implementation. With Australia being home to people from many cultures, this isa particular challenge for speech pathologists working in this country. This paper outlines the development of an assessment specifically for Aboriginal children living in a discrete region of the Kimberley in Western Australia. This assessment was developed in collaboration with local language experts as well as speech pathologists experienced in the area of assessment with Indigenous children. Nearly all parts of the assessment were administered by a local co-worker in the children’s first language, Kimberley or Fitzroy Valley Kriol. The paper outlines the specific components of the assessment as well as the approaches taken to ensure fair and accurate assessment of children’s communication skills. It highlights the benefits of collaborating with local co-workers and provides those working with Indigenous children in Australia with practical activities to consider.

Twentieth century occurrence of the Long-Beaked Echidna Zaglossus bruijnii in the Kimberley region of Australia

The monotreme genus Zaglossus, the largest egg-laying mammal, comprises several endangered taxa today known only from New Guinea. Zaglossus is considered to be extinct in Australia, where its apparent occurrence (in addition to the large echidna genus Megalibgwilia) is recorded by Pleistocene fossil remains, as well as from convincing representations in Aboriginal rock art from Arnhem Land (Northern Territory). Here we report on the existence and history of a well documented but previously overlooked museum specimen (skin and skull) of the Western Long-Beaked Echidna (Zaglossus bruijnii) collected by John T. Tunney at Mount Anderson in the West Kimberley region of northern Western Australia in 1901, now deposited in the Natural History Museum, London. Possible accounts from living memory of Zaglossus are provided by Aboriginal inhabitants from Kununurra in the East Kimberley. We conclude that, like Tachyglossus, Zaglossus is part of the modern fauna of the Kimberley region of Western Australia, where it apparently survived as a rare element into the twentieth century, and may still survive.

Lungurra Ngoora - a pilot model of care for aged and disabled in a remote Aboriginal community - can it work?

The literature on the health of and services for older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations is relatively sparse. This study explored the development and implementation of a locally designed community service model of care for older people, and people with disability and/or mental health problems in remote Aboriginal Australia. Based on extensive community consultation with older people, families, carers, community members and stakeholders, a model of care was developed to address unmet needs for the target population and their carers in the remote community of Looma, in the Kimberley region of Australia. The model was implemented and evaluated over 12 months. The main outcome measures included the number of services (including home services, meals, transport, respite, personal care and advocacy) provided. Outcomes of community participation, capacity building, resources, partnerships, workforce, service delivery and cultural protection were assessed qualitatively by an external evaluator. The number of people receiving community care services in Looma increased from eight to 22, and services increased in all domains from 140 total services delivered for 1 month at baseline to 2356 by the final month of the program. The Lungurra Ngoora community care service model pilot project demonstrated a successful collaborative service model that addressed the care needs of older persons, those with disability and mental illness, and their carers in this remote community. The developmental approach, and model structure, could serve as a template for future delivery of services in remote Aboriginal communities.

Re-imagining youth justice: Cultural contestation in the Kimberley region of Australia since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody

Twenty years on from the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in Australia the picture appears bleaker than in the early 1990s. This article adopts a post-colonial stance to examine emerging Aboriginal strategies on youth justice in Western Australia that focus on building forms of Aboriginal ‘cultural capital’ and ‘community owned’ justice mechanisms on Aboriginal country as an alternative to failed strategies of incarceration and ‘community based’ justice. Aboriginal contestation, or what I call, after Edward Said, ‘contrapuntality’ increasingly takes place through subtle ‘inter-cultural’ work in various ‘engagement spaces’ in-between Aboriginal and mainstream cultures. These practices challenge mainstream government to practise what it preaches in relation to its claimed respect for Aboriginal cultural rights. The article reports on Aboriginal owned and controlled cultural processes in the Kimberley region of Western Australia that are contrapuntally challenging established ideas about the meaning of justice for Aboriginal youth.

Dementia in Aboriginal Australians

The Kimberley Region of Australia is an exceptional environment. It is three times the size of England but is inhabited by only 33,000 people. Its Aboriginal popula-tion speak in 30 different languages with English often as a third or fourth language, with low levels of literacy. They live in remote rural communities and small towns. In the Wet, the consistent temperature is around 38 ° to 40 ° C. Kimberley people are generally representative of more remote and distant-rural Aboriginal people who make up some 30% of the total Aboriginal population. However, around 70% of Australian Aboriginal people live in non-remote cities, urban settings or rural towns; the large majority of these are English speaking and liter-ate with at least basic schooling. Aboriginal Australians, both remote and urban, face profound socio-economic and educational disadvantage, trauma and stress com-pared to the non-Indigenous population. From Australian Bureau of Statistics data, health outcomes are equally poor and life expectancy reduced in both remote and urban settings and poorer than those in other Indigenous cultures within developed nations. In a previous paper, Smith and her colleagues found the prevalence of dementia by DSM-IV criteria to be 27% in the Aboriginal elderly aged over 65 years [1]. This estimate is fi ve times higher than the overall Aus-tralian population after age standardisation. In this issue, they now report their fi ndings on risk factors. The study is a remarkable achievement in its own right. There must have been many diffi culties in obtain-ing the fi ndings. Each of these diffi culties raises ques-tions when it comes to their interpretation. Accurate case ascertainment required fi rstly the identifi cation of the denominator of elderly individuals in communities where a person ’ s age is often not known, conducting an appro-priate clinical examination, and then obtaining clinically relevant information from informants. The latter might often be reluctant to portray older individuals as impaired in behaviour. There is then the crucial matter of applying diagnostic criteria that are valid for this group of Aborig-inal elderly. Importantly, the authors have previously validated their screening instrument (the KICA Cog) for this remote Aboriginal population with low literacy and English often a second language, using clinical assess-ment by geriatricians and psychiatrists experienced in dementia diagnosis and they have used this methodology in the current study [2]. When it comes to measuring exposure to risk factors, the authors have appropriately limited this initial survey to key demographic, lifestyle and clinical factors using culturally adapted instruments. The study has therefore been a major undertaking in the epidemiology of demen-tia. We now examine the signifi cance of the fi ndings both on prevalence and risk factors. Firstly, the strikingly high prevalence estimate calls for interpretation. The study was apparently not constrained by having any hypotheses before data collection started. It is unknown whether the investigators expected to fi nd higher or lower rates than in elderly Caucasians. Cases were ascertained in a two-phase design using their KIKA screening instrument. This was followed by reaching a diagnosis through clinical consensus, made by two specialists applying DSM-IV criteria. These criteria are now considered by some to have limitations for non-western populations because of the primacy accorded to memory impairment and their lack of operational defi nition. According to Prince

No continuing city: A postmodern story of social work

Rural social work is examined through the lens of postmodernism. Questioning modernist framings of rural social work as peripheral and deficit practice, the article offers an alternative reading that rural social work highlights the importance of reflective practitioner selves in achieving best practice in context. Working out from the actual and bodily lived experience of practitioners is suggested as a methodology of critical ethnography that might serve to bridge the gap between practitioners and academics in social work the gap between knowing and doing. Narratives of work done by a particular social worker, Don Gordon, in the Kimberley region of Australia during the seventies are used to convey the case for a postmodern reframing of social work. Practitioners need to work effectively across a range of contexts and cultures. Global social justice and humanitarian ends of social work often require local means for their achievement.