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1 – 10 of 338Alana Rovito and Audrey R. Giles
Purpose – In this chapter we examine the creation and implementation processes of an arts-based recreation programme for Aboriginal youth development in Canada…
Abstract
Purpose – In this chapter we examine the creation and implementation processes of an arts-based recreation programme for Aboriginal youth development in Canada called Outside Looking In (OLI) to determine if and how OLI’s staff and Board members perceive the programme to be influenced by Eurocentric ideas of programming and the impact this may in turn have on achieving Aboriginal self-determination.
Design/methodology/approach – Informed by postcolonial theory, we employed a case study design and collected data using semi-structured interviews, fieldnotes and a review of archival documents.
Findings – We contend that while OLI reproduces some aspects of Eurocentric programming, it also provides avenues to contribute to Aboriginal self-determination.
Research limitations – A limitation to this research is the absence of interviews with OLI’s programme participants; nevertheless, this research provides a starting point upon which future research can build.
Originality/value – Our research provides an insight into how youth development through recreation programmes for Aboriginal peoples are created and implemented. Most importantly, it provides evidence of the need to further reflect upon the ways in which such programmes can enable Aboriginal self-determination.
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Laura Elizabeth Pinto and Levon Ellen Blue
This paper aims to explore Canadian in/exclusion of Aboriginal groups to/from access to mainstream business resources and opportunities. The focus is one prominent…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore Canadian in/exclusion of Aboriginal groups to/from access to mainstream business resources and opportunities. The focus is one prominent non-governmental program, the Canadian Aboriginal Prosperity and Entrepreneurship (CAPE) Fund, designed to provide equity to Aboriginal businesses. Do programs such as CAPE Fund promote Aboriginal entrepreneurship that liberates “others” on their own terms? or are they “civilizing missions” that attempt to impose Euro-centric practices and values?
Design/methodology/approach
The authors critically analyze the “promises” of entrepreneurship through CAPE Fund using TribalCrit, a framework rooted in critical race theory (CRT) and postcolonialism. The authors used a CRT research method highlighting two organizational narratives, describing CAPE Fund financing in two separate ventures. The research allowed to test the theory’s use in practical situations.
Findings
This paper develops a postcolonial conception of entrepreneurship to address the realities and needs of Aboriginal communities. Analysis of Canada’s CAPE Fund within two organizational narratives identified aspects of promise (active Aboriginal business ownership) and shortcomings (practices that attempted to erase inequity in ways that led to neocolonial subjugation).
Research limitations/implications
This paper attempts to build theory while engaging in CRT research that relies on organizational narratives. Narrative approaches offer depth of understanding but are not generalizable because of the limited scope of organizations studied.
Practical implications
The research methods used and framework developed offer researchers new approaches to better understand Indigenous and Aboriginal entrepreneurship outcomes. The findings point to specific Aboriginal funding issues that can be addressed by other funding agencies who wish to create more inclusive structures.
Social implications
Financial programs that might improve the possibility of self-determination of Aboriginal peoples within the postcolonial ideal must “hold both economic and non-economic objectives in tension” (Overall et al., 2010 p. 157) in ways that typically disadvantage Aboriginal entrepreneurs.
Originality/value
This is the first, fully articulated framework for postcolonial entrepreneurship, grounded in CRT and applied to analyze Canada’s CAPE Fund.
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This systematic review will attempt to begin the fusion of Aboriginal health and Aboriginal education to show the need for strategic research and policy development that brings…
Abstract
Purpose
This systematic review will attempt to begin the fusion of Aboriginal health and Aboriginal education to show the need for strategic research and policy development that brings these two important fields together for the benefit of improving the lives of Aboriginal people regardless of residency or socioeconomic conditions.
Methodology/approach
A search of published and gray literature that examined Aboriginal health and Aboriginal education was conducted. Through computerized database (PubMed, PsycInfo, ERIC, Google Scholar, and Google) searches were performed in November 2014 to find abstracts, articles, gray literature, and reports pertaining to Aboriginal health and Aboriginal education in Canada.
Findings
Inadequate datasets impede the ability to look at Aboriginal health and education in Canada as there are no national datasets that adequately provide data to do more than cross-sectional analysis. By conducting research in a pan-Aboriginal manner negates that there is traditional worldviews that individuals, families, and communities embrace and embody in their daily lives. It is necessary for the Canadian government and society to work with Aboriginal people to change the fundamental ways in which the macro-level systems work together in order for true social change to occur which will lead to increased self-determination specifically in Aboriginal health and education.
Originality/value
The chapter reveals that Aboriginal health and education are key determinants to the health and well-being of Aboriginal people. Identity, self-determination, and Aboriginal worldviews need to be a part of research studies in order to have “two-eyed seeing” of the intertwined and interconnectedness of health and education.
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Examines the issues arising from the enforcing of a Western form of accountability on the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) peoples. Aboriginal organizations…
Abstract
Examines the issues arising from the enforcing of a Western form of accountability on the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) peoples. Aboriginal organizations such as the ATSI Commission (ASTIC) are set up under a policy of self‐determination. Policy makers need to balance the tension between the policy of self‐determination and the need for accountability. This tension may be expressed as a conflict between Aboriginal organizations’ (or agents’) accountability to governments (or principals) and their responsibility to “higher principals”, their “Dreaming Law”. Seeks an understanding of Aboriginal culture and highlights areas of conflict between systems of financial accountability and Aboriginal culture. Unless systems of accountability applied to the Aboriginal context take into account Aboriginal culture, they can be disempowering and alienating. Recommends further dialogue with the ATSI peoples to develop a more enabling form of accountability.
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Belinda MacGill, Kay Whitehead and Lester Rigney
This article explores the childhood, professional life and social activism of Alice Rigney (1942–2017) who became Australia's first Aboriginal woman principal in 1986.
Abstract
Purpose
This article explores the childhood, professional life and social activism of Alice Rigney (1942–2017) who became Australia's first Aboriginal woman principal in 1986.
Design/methodology/approach
The article draws on interviews with Alice Rigney along with newspapers, education department correspondence and reports of relevant organisations which are read against the grain to elevate Aboriginal people's self-determination and agency.
Findings
The article illuminates Alice/Alitya Rigney's engagement with education and culture from her childhood to her work as an Aboriginal teacher aide, teacher, inaugural principal of Kaurna Plains Aboriginal school in Adelaide, South Australia; and her activism as a Narungga and Kaurna Elder. Furthermore, the article highlights her challenges to racial and gender discrimination in the state school system.
Originality/value
While there is an expanding body of historical research on Aboriginal students, this article focuses on the experiences of an Aboriginal educator which are also essential to deconstructing histories of Australian education.
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Self-determination policies and the expansion of bilingual schooling across Australia's Northern Territory (NT) in the 1970s and 1980s provided opportunities for Aboriginal…
Abstract
Purpose
Self-determination policies and the expansion of bilingual schooling across Australia's Northern Territory (NT) in the 1970s and 1980s provided opportunities for Aboriginal educators and communities to take control over schooling. This paper demonstrates how this occurred at Shepherdson College, a mission school turned government bilingual school, at Galiwin'ku on Elcho Island in North East, Arnhem Land, in the early years of the policies between 1972 and 1983. Yolŋu staff developed a syncretic vision for a Yolŋu-controlled space of education that prioritised Yolŋu knowledges and aimed to sustain Yolŋu existence.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses archival data as well as oral histories, focusing on those with a close involvement with Shepherdson College, to elucidate the development of a Yolŋu vision for schooling.
Findings
Many Yolŋu school staff and their supporters, encouraged by promises of the era, pushed for greater Yolŋu control over staffing, curriculum, school spaces and governance. The budgetary and administrative control of the NT and federal governments acted to hinder possibilities. Yet despite these bureaucratic challenges, by the time of the shift towards neoliberal constraints in the early 1980s, Yolŋu educators and their supporters had envisioned and achieved, in a nascent way, a Yolŋu schooling system.
Originality/value
Previous scholarship on bilingual schooling has not closely examined the potent link between self-determination and bilingual schooling, largely focusing on pedagogical debates. Instead, this paper argues that Yolŋu embraced the “way in” offered by bilingual schooling to develop a new vision for community control through control of schooling.
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Pat Dudgeon, Angela Ryder, Carolyn Mascall and Maddie Boe
In partnership with the University of Western Australia (UWA), the strengths-based National Empowerment Project (NEP) brought together researchers from across Australia and began…
Abstract
In partnership with the University of Western Australia (UWA), the strengths-based National Empowerment Project (NEP) brought together researchers from across Australia and began to address issues surrounding Aboriginal wellbeing and, in particular, the high rates of Aboriginal deaths by suicide. The NEP utilised participatory action research (PAR) and was concerned with promoting positive cultural, social, and emotional wellbeing (CSEWB) and building capacity and resilience within Aboriginal communities. Throughout the NEP, consultations with 11 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities led to the development of a CSEWB program. The program seeks to increase self-determination and empowerment, developing participants’ awareness of a variety of issues relevant to wellbeing. This enables participants to gain a greater understanding of the holistic nature of CSEWB and the complex influences on Aboriginal wellbeing at individual, family, and community levels. This chapter is concerned with the development and delivery of the CSEWB program within three community sites in Perth, Western Australia. Shared philosophical approaches of the CSEWB program, between UWA and Aboriginal communities were human rights and social justice, community ownership, community capacity building, a strong focus on resilience, empowerment and partnerships, respect for local knowledge, and the delivery of community consultations. Investigation into the impacts of the program are based in an anti-colonial space, employing Indigenous Standpoint Theory and PAR approaches. This chapter demonstrates the success of the CSEWB program, links this success to the vital importance of Indigenous research ethics, and positions the research within an empowering and capacity-building context.
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Juanita Sherwood and Thalia Anthony
Over recent decades, research institutions have prescribed discrete ethics guidelines for human research with Indigenous people in Australia. Such guidelines respond to concerns…
Abstract
Over recent decades, research institutions have prescribed discrete ethics guidelines for human research with Indigenous people in Australia. Such guidelines respond to concerns about unethical and harmful processes in research, including that they entrench colonial relations and structures. This chapter sets out some of the limitations of these well-intentioned guidelines for the decolonisation of research. Namely, their underlying assumption of Indigenous vulnerability and deficit and, consequently, their function to minimise risk. It argues for a strengths-based approach to researching with and by Indigenous communities that recognises community members’ capacity to know what ethical research looks like and their ability to control research. It suggests that this approach provides genuine outcomes for their communities in ways that meet their communities’ needs. This means that communities must be partners in research who can demand reciprocation for their participation and sharing of their knowledge, time and experiences. This argument is not purely normative but supported by examples of Indigenous research models within our fields of health and criminology that are premised on self-determination.
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Ellie Norris, Shawgat Kutubi, Steven Greenland and Ruth Wallace
This study explores citizen activism in the articulation of a politicised counter-account of Aboriginal rights. It aims to uncover the enabling factors for a successful challenge…
Abstract
Purpose
This study explores citizen activism in the articulation of a politicised counter-account of Aboriginal rights. It aims to uncover the enabling factors for a successful challenge to established political norms and the obstacles to the fullest expression of a radical imagining.
Design/methodology/approach
Laclau and Mouffe's theory of hegemony and discourse is used to frame the movement's success in challenging the prevailing system of urbanised healthcare delivery. Empirical materials were collected through extensive ethnographic fieldwork.
Findings
The findings from this longitudinal study identify the factors that predominantly influence the transformational success of an Yaṉangu social movement, such as the institutionalisation of group identity, articulation of a discourse connected to Aboriginal rights to self-determination, demonstration of an alternative imaginary and creation of strong external alliances.
Originality/value
This study offers a rich empirical analysis of counter-accounting in action, drawing on Aboriginal governance traditions of non-confrontational discourse and collective accountability to conceptualise agonistic engagement. These findings contribute to the practical and theoretical construction of democratic accounting and successful citizen activism.
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