The Evolving Governance of Aboriginal Peoples and Torres Strait Islanders in Marine Areas in Australia

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Godden
Keyword(s):  
Aboriginal Peoples ◽  
Torres Strait ◽  
Marine Areas

What's in a Name?: Exploring the Implications of Eurocentric (Re)naming Practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nomenclature in Australian Education Practices

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Weuffen ◽  
Fred Cahir ◽  
Margaret Zeegers
Keyword(s):  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Torres Strait Islander ◽  
Aboriginal Peoples ◽  
Indigenous Australians ◽  
Australian Curriculum ◽  
Curriculum Assessment ◽  
Australian Education ◽  
History Of ◽  
Torres Strait ◽  
Naming Practices

The aim of this article is to provide teachers with knowledge of ways in which Eurocentric (re)naming practices inform contemporary pedagogical approaches, while providing understandings pertinent to the mandatory inclusion of the cross-curriculum priority area: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2015). While we have focused on Eurocentric naming practices, we have also been conscious of names used by Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders to name themselves and others and as non-Indigenous Australians we acknowledge that it is not our place to explore these in detail, or offer alternatives. In this article, we have explored the history of nomenclature as it relates to original inhabitants, the connotations of contemporary (re)naming practices in Australian education and discussed the importance of drawing on cultural protocols and engaging local communities for teaching and learning of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. It is anticipated that discussions arising from this article may open up spaces where teachers may think about ways in which they approach Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures.

scholarly journals Resetting the Narrative in Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nutrition Research

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Annabelle Wilson ◽  
Roland Wilson ◽  
Robyn Delbridge ◽  
Emma Tonkin ◽  
Claire Palermo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Torres Strait Islander ◽  
Production Systems ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Government Policies ◽  
Aboriginal Peoples ◽  
Australian Aboriginal ◽  
Nutrition Research ◽  
Torres Strait

ABSTRACT As the oldest continuous living civilizations in the world, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have strength, tenacity, and resilience. Initial colonization of the landscape included violent dispossession and removal of people from Country to expand European land tenure and production systems, loss of knowledge holders through frontier violence, and formal government policies of segregation and assimilation designed to destroy ontological relationships with Country and kin. The ongoing manifestations of colonialism continue to affect food systems and food knowledges of Aboriginal peoples, and have led to severe health inequities and disproportionate rates of nutrition-related health conditions. There is an urgent need to collaborate with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to address nutrition and its underlying determinants in a way that integrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ understandings of food and food systems, health, healing, and well-being. We use the existing literature to discuss current ways that Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are portrayed in the literature in relation to nutrition, identify knowledge gaps that require further research, and propose a new way forward.

Placing Torres Strait Islanders on a Sociolinguistic and Literate Continuum: A Critical Commentary

1991 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 39-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Nakata
Keyword(s):  
Torres Strait Islander ◽  
Educational Achievement ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Aboriginal Peoples ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Aboriginal Education ◽  
Torres Strait Islander People ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Critical Commentary ◽  
Torres Strait

Much of the literature on Torres Strait Islander, as well of Aboriginal, education begins from the assumption that oral traditions and cultures have a profound effect on educational achievement. But how easy is it to plot Islanders on an oral/literate continuum (cf. Goody, 1978)? The purpose of this paper is a critical examination of a sociolinguistic model designed to describe Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal peoples in terms of oracy and literacy by Watson (1988). As part of her attempt to explain mathematics education as it relates to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, her continua attempt at an analysis via a theoretical framework built on socio-demographic and linguistic differences between orate and literate traditions. Watson (1988, p.257) suggest that, “...there exists the same type of continuum linking use of Torres Strait Islander languages and English.”

scholarly journals Understanding practitioner professionalism in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health: lessons from student and registrar placements at an urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander primary healthcare service

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah A. Askew ◽  
Vivian J. Lyall ◽  
Shaun C. Ewen ◽  
David Paul ◽  
Melissa Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Primary Healthcare ◽  
Healthcare Service ◽  
Torres Strait Islander ◽  
Medical Curriculum ◽  
Aboriginal Health ◽  
Aboriginal Peoples ◽  
Medical Professionalism ◽  
Clinical Placements ◽  
Torres Strait

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples continue to be pathologised in medical curriculum, leaving graduates feeling unequipped to effectively work cross-culturally. These factors create barriers to culturally safe health care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. In this pilot pre-post study, the learning experiences of seven medical students and four medical registrars undertaking clinical placements at an urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander primary healthcare service in 2014 were followed. Through analysis and comparison of pre- and post-placement responses to a paper-based case study of a fictitious Aboriginal patient, four learning principles for medical professionalism were identified: student exposure to nuanced, complex and positive representations of Aboriginal peoples; positive practitioner role modelling; interpersonal skills that build trust and minimise patient–practitioner relational power imbalances; and knowledge, understanding and skills for providing patient-centred, holistic care. Though not exhaustive, these principles can increase the capacity of practitioners to foster culturally safe and optimal health care for Aboriginal peoples. Furthermore, competence and effectiveness in Aboriginal health care is an essential component of medical professionalism.

Rock Art and Ethnography in Australia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liam M. Brady ◽  
Robert G. Gunn ◽  
Claire Smith ◽  
Bruno David
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Aboriginal Peoples ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Indigenous Australians ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Torres Strait

This chapter discusses the contribution of ethnography to the study of Australian rock art. With more than 100 years of ethnographic enquiry into rock art from across the country, valuable insights into the meaning, motives, function, and symbolism of images have been identified. However, with this information comes challenges with its use (and abuse), as well as the necessity to understand the cultural contexts of interpretation and meaning-making. This chapter explores the various ways Indigenous Australians (Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders) engage with and describe their understandings of rock art in a variety of contexts. This review also highlights the complex nature of the interpretative process and the ethnographic gaze in which it is embedded. At its core, ethnographic approaches to Australian rock art reveal the multidimensional referential qualities of images found across the landscape.

scholarly journals The Uluru statement

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse John Fleay ◽  
Barry Judd
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
Torres Strait Islander ◽  
Aboriginal Peoples ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Social Reconstruction ◽  
The Road ◽  
Australian State ◽  
Commonwealth Government ◽  
Torres Strait ◽  
Economic Future

From every State and Territory of Australia, including the islands of the Torres Strait over 200 delegates gathered at the 2017 First Nations National Constitutional Convention in Uluru, which has stood on Anangu Pitjantjatjara country in the Northern Territory since time immemorial, to discuss the issue of constitutional recognition. Delegates agreed that tokenistic recognition would not be enough, and that recognition bearing legal substance must stand, with the possibility to make multiple treaties between Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders and the Commonwealth Government of Australia.  In this paper, we look at the roadmap beyond such a potential change. We make the case for a redistributive approach to capital, and propose key outcomes for social reconstruction, should a voice to parliament, a Makarrata[1] Commission and multiple treaties be enabled through a successful referendum. We conclude that an alteration of the Commonwealth Constitution (Cth) is the preliminary overture of a suite of changes: the constitutional change itself is not the end of the road, but simply the beginning of years of legal change, which seeks provide a socio-economic future for Australia’s First Peoples, and the oldest continuing cultures in the world. Constitutional change seeks to transform the discourse about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander relations with the Australian state from one centred on distributive justice to one that is primarily informed by retributive justice. This paper concerns the future generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, and their right to labour in a market that honours their cultural contributions to humanity at large.   [1] Yolŋu ceremony for coming together after a struggle.

Coral Sea Cultural Interaction Sphere

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian J. McNiven
Keyword(s):  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Aboriginal Peoples ◽  
Cultural Interaction ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Exchange Networks ◽  
The Past ◽  
Coral Sea ◽  
Torres Strait

Cultural interactions between Aboriginal peoples of northeastern Australia and Melanesian peoples of southern New Guinea have caught the attention of anthropologists and archaeologists since the nineteenth century. Moving away from older models of one-way diffusion of so-called advanced cultural traits from New Guinea to mainland Australia via Torres Strait, this article elaborates the concept of the Coral Sea Cultural Interaction Sphere (CSCIS) as a framework to investigate two-way interactions, gene flow, and object movements across Torres Strait. The CSCIS centres on a series of ethnographically known, canoe-voyaging, and long-distance maritime exchange networks that linked communities over a distance of 2000 km along the south coast of mainland Papua New Guinea and the northeast coast of Australia. Archaeological evidence for temporal changes in the geographical spread of pottery and obsidian use indicates that the CSCIS was historically dynamic, with numerous reconfigurations over the past 3000 years. The CSCIS developed as the confluence of major cultural changes and demographic expansions that took place in northeastern Australia and southern mainland Papua New Guinea.

scholarly journals Crime, justice and social capital in the Torres Strait region

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Scott ◽  
Zoe Staines
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Crime Rates ◽  
Aboriginal Peoples ◽  
Report Data ◽  
Torres Strait

While there has been much research into Indigenous crime and justice, previous research draws largely on Aboriginal peoples, who are culturally distinct from Torres Strait Islanders. The Torres Strait region offers a unique opportunity to observe how justice is practised in remote contexts. Through statistical analysis and qualitative fieldwork, this study documents crime rates, community and customary justice practices and impediments to justice, to identify best practices unique to the Torres Strait region. Crime-report data indicate relatively low rates of crime in the Torres Strait region. While under-reporting and under-policing can partly explain these differences, strong levels of social capital, as well as unique justice practices, also play important roles in preventing crime in the region.

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