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Spotlight on... awareness weeks

Awareness weeks guide

NAIDOC Week

NAIDOC Week

7-14 July 2024

NAIDOC stands for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee. Its origins can be traced to the emergence of Aboriginal groups in the 1920′s which sought to increase awareness in the wider community of the status and treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.

National NAIDOC Week celebrations are held across Australia in the first week of July each year (Sunday to Sunday), to celebrate and recognise the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. NAIDOC Week is an opportunity for all Australians to learn about First Nations cultures and histories and participate in celebrations of the oldest, continuous living cultures on earth. You can support and get to know your local Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander communities through activities and events held across the country.

 

SA events

NAIDOC specific resources

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander specific online resources

Podcasts

Articles

  • ‘We’re also healers’: Elders leading the way in Aboriginal community healing
  • Implementing ‘Closing the Gap’ policy through mainstream service provision: A South Australian case study
  • Co-designing a Health Journey Mapping resource for culturally safe health care with and for First Nations people
  • A beautiful bush space on Country: Indigenous women's perspectives on the cultural significance of a placenta garden
  • Returning love to Ancestors captured in the archives: Indigenous wellbeing, sovereignty and archival sovereignty
  • Empowering our First Nations workforce: evaluation of a First Nations COVID-19 vaccination training program
  • Exploration of My Aboriginal Heritage: An Autoethnography
  • Enhancing interprofessional practice through the co-design of a holistic culturally and developmentally informed First Nations child health assessment
  • Audit tools for culturally safe and responsive healthcare practices with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people: a scoping review
  • Strengths-based approaches to providing an Aboriginal community child health service
  • What resilience (Strength) means for Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health professionals and practitioners: An exploratory study
  • Introducing Indigenist Critical Policy Analysis: A rights-based approach to analysing public policies and processes
  • ‘Doing culture’ in contemporary south-eastern Australia: how Indigenous people are creating and maintaining strong cultural identities for improved health and wellbeing
  • Aboriginal self-determination, land rights, and recognition in the Whitlam Era: Laying groundwork for power sharing and representation
  • Indigenous voices: Using cultural knowledge for tourism
  • Conceptualising Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara mental health beliefs

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Articles

‘We’re also healers’: Elders leading the way in Aboriginal community healing
The findings inform policy stakeholders to consider the wisdom and voice of Elders in addressing Aboriginal community healing. Australian journal of primary health 31 May 2022

Implementing ‘Closing the Gap’ policy through mainstream service provision: A South Australian case study
The implementation of the Closing the Gap’ (CTG) strategy in Southern Adelaide was rushed, complex, and lacking Aboriginal control. This contributed to the marginalisation of Aboriginal leaders, and disengagement of families and communities. A more collaborative and Aboriginal led process for policy implementation is essential to reform policy implementation and address health inequity. Findings from this study suggest that policy has continued to be implemented in ways that reflect colonial power imbalances. Alternative processes that promote the recognition of Indigenous rights must be considered if we are to achieve the targets set within the CTG strategy. Health promotion journal of Australia 2 June 2024

Co-designing a Health Journey Mapping resource for culturally safe health care with and for First Nations people
The new HJM tools and resources effectively map diverse journeys and assist recognition and application of strengths-based, holistic and culturally safe approaches to health care. Australian journal of primary health 15 April 2024

A beautiful bush space on Country: Indigenous women's perspectives on the cultural significance of a placenta garden
First Nations women described placental burial as essential to strengthening their connection to culture and perceived that continuity of care with a culturally knowledgeable midwife facilitated connection. Women and birth 12 June 2024

Empowering our First Nations workforce: evaluation of a First Nations COVID-19 vaccination training program
The successful implementation of the vaccination training project was an example of First Nations led health care. Improving scope of practice for First Nations health staff can improve not just career retention and progression but also the delivery of primary care to a community that continues to bear the inequity of poorer health outcomes. Australian journal of primary health 18 December 2023

Returning love to Ancestors captured in the archives: Indigenous wellbeing, sovereignty and archival sovereignty
This paper explores the holistic needs of First Nations people in the archives to control their cultural heritage materials with dignity and respect. It highlights the importance of the archives supporting Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing. Indigenous people’s spiritual and emotional needs are addressed by considering the support for Indigenous people’s wellbeing in the archives. Models of social, emotional and cultural wellbeing are presented as alternatives to discussing the need for Indigenous cultural safety in the archives. A definition of Indigenous wellbeing, sovereignty and archival sovereignty provides an approach to caring for historical records with dignity and respect and a framework for the local care and protection of Indigenous people’s knowledge into the future. The concept of Returning Love to Ancestors Captured in the Archives (Thorpe 2022), extending the work of (Harkin 2019) and Baker et al. (2020), is offered as a significant reform needed in the approaches to managing historical archives. The paper concludes by sharing a case study of the In Living Memory photographic exhibition, drawn on images created by the former New South Wales Aborigines Welfare Board to demonstrate archival approaches supporting principles of trust, benefit sharing and reciprocal relationships. Combined, they respond to the pressing need for designing respectful archiving approaches for future generations that do not reproduce harm. Archival science 22 May 2024

Exploration of My Aboriginal Heritage: An Autoethnography
This autoethnography tells the story of myself, a blonde haired blue-eyed Aboriginal woman exploring identity and belonging. It begins with a brief overview of the dark history that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have experienced as a result of colonisation and policy makers. An autoethnographic journal was kept over the course of several months, documenting affective responses to questions concerning the aboriginal identity of the author. These subjective responses informed a written personal narrative as well as creating the foundation for retrospective reflections on the journal that appears later in the autoethnography. A number of theories are then explored in an effort to explain the phenomena behind finding and belonging to two cultures, white Australian and Aboriginal. Archival science 2 July 2021

Enhancing interprofessional practice through the co-design of a holistic culturally and developmentally informed First Nations child health assessment
Results demonstrate how the incorporation of interprofessional (IP) practices into a remote primary healthcare setting led to perceived benefits for both the health service staff and clients. Australian journal of primary health 14 November 2022

Audit tools for culturally safe and responsive healthcare practices with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people: a scoping review
What is already known on this topic:

  • Cultural safety and cultural responsiveness are proactive antiracism approaches that contribute to advancing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples self-determination and health equity reform agenda in Australia and the antiracism conventions of the United Nations.
  • Individuals and organisations are the drivers of transformational processes in creating culturally safe and responsive systems.
  • To support practice transformation, active accountability and sustainability of mechanisms, such as audit tools, that assess cultural responsiveness are critical.

What this study acts:

  • Individual and organisational transformation may be better facilitated with use of tools that incorporate all cultural responsiveness capabilities and reflect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing, being and doing.
  • Nursing and midwifery, in comparison to other mainstream healthcare practices, are leading the way in development and implementation of mechanisms to support culturally responsive practice.
  • Despite the abundance of existing audit tools, these tools require robust evaluation and opportunity for self-reflection and client feedback mechanisms that enable accountability and sustainability of genuine cultural responsiveness.

BMJ global health 5 February 2024

Strengths-based approaches to providing an Aboriginal community child health service
Adopting strength-based approaches reinstates power and control to Aboriginal communities, while nurturing decision making in the design and delivery of culturally contextualised approaches to addressing Aboriginal health and well-being. International journal of indigenous health 17 April 2024

What resilience (Strength) means for Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health professionals and practitioners: An exploratory study
This article explores the concept of resilience from the perspective of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health professionals and practitioners, with the aim of describing what it is and how it is practiced in the workplace. Interviews in the form of Yarns were conducted with ten Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health professionals in regional North Queensland. We found that for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health professionals and practitioners, resilience encompasses cultural identity and an ability to manage both Indigenous and western cultures and structures. Resilience, understood as ‘Strength’, draws on strong relationships to family and Country, often nurtured through strong women, who have overcome intergenerational trauma. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health professionals and practitioners, resilience is practiced through challenging the existing structural barriers experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients who must deal with racism and a system not organised to meet their needs. Further research on the relationship between culture and resilience/strength is required. Journal of the Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet 31 March 2024

Introducing Indigenist Critical Policy Analysis: A rights-based approach to analysing public policies and processes
This paper introduces Indigenist Critical Policy Analysis (ICPA). While mainstream policy evaluation assesses whether policies and processes have met the governments stated objectives, ICPA assesses whether they uphold or violate Indigenous rights. Australian journal of social issues 1 July 2024

‘Doing culture’ in contemporary south-eastern Australia: how Indigenous people are creating and maintaining strong cultural identities for improved health and wellbeing
Indigenous people in Australia experience far poorer health than non-Indigenous Australians. A growing body of research suggests that Indigenous people who are strong in their cultural identity experience better health than those who are not. Yet little is known about how Indigenous people create and maintain strong cultural identities in the contemporary context. This paper explores how Indigenous people in south-eastern Australia create and maintain strong cultural identities to support their health and wellbeing. BMC public health 26 June 2024

Aboriginal self-determination, land rights, and recognition in the Whitlam Era: Laying groundwork for power sharing and representation
This paper explores self-determination through the path-breaking work of the Woodward Aboriginal Land Rights Commission and the establishment of well-resourced land councils as authoritative and legitimate representatives of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory. The Whitlam government's willingness to experiment with power-sharing in the sensitive area of land ownership provided a valuable prototype for genuine engagement with First Nations people today, as Australia contemplates the failure of the constitutional referendum around a Voice to parliament. Australian journal of politics and history 19 May 2024

Indigenous voices: Using cultural knowledge for tourism
Highlights

  • Indigenous cultural knowledge assets for developing Indigenous tourism experiences
  • Knowledge management tools can assist in developing Indigenous tourism
  • Indigenous destination images provide alternatives and add to Western presentations
  • Indigenous yarning is culturally appropriate for qualitative tourism research

Annals of tourism research empirical insights 7 May 2024

Conceptualising Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara mental health beliefs
Key Points
What is already known about this topic:

  • Indigenous descriptions and explanations for the behaviours of ‘mental health’ differ from western versions.
  • Previous research has usually not involved Indigenous researchers.
    Previous research often does not let Indigenous peoples provide context for their descriptions and explanations.

What this topic adds:

  • Anangu elders added rich contexts to their descriptions and explanations for the behaviours of ‘mental health’ rather than generalizations.  
  • Having an Anangu researcher vastly improved the details given compared to a previous research study that did not.
  • Anangu elders kept western and Anangu contexts separate even with behaviours that superficially looked the same.

Australian Psychologist 8 April 2024

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