working with aboriginal community harry blagg_uwa.pdf · country in aboriginal english is not only...
TRANSCRIPT
Working with Aboriginal Community
Professor Harry Blagg
Settler colonialism
• ‘The magical trick that settler colonialism performs is to denaturalize the right to belong of the local population — to make them foreigners, while naturalizing the foreigner as the person who has the right to belong. Foreigners become natives and natives become foreigners.’ Suren Pillay.
• .
THE THREE ‘Rs’
• Resistance Resisting oppression
• Refusal Refusing to assimilate
• Resurgence Strengthening Culture
A Justice System?• Violence is inherent in the prison system.• Physical, psychological and other forms of abuse are systemic, even for children
Don Dale NT
• Indigenous boys and girls were dehumanised through being segregated in ‘cages’ for 23 hours per day, treated like ‘dogs’, denied food, water and basic hygiene and stripped naked by guards; they were reduced to bare life ......Their cells smelt like sewage, were dark, filthy and lacking airflow and oppressively muggy.
• The guards would swear at the children, calling them ‘stupid black cunts’, ‘camp dogs’, ‘oxygen thieves’, ‘waste of space’, ‘little black poofters’ and ‘fucking sluts’, including in conjunction with physical abuse and threatening acts...
Aboriginal Detention
Aboriginal youth are massively over‐represented in the Australian criminal justice system. In Western Australia they constitute around 73% of all young people in custody, while making up roughly 7% of the relevant population (AIHW, 2018).In the NT all youths in detention are Aboriginal Girls are a small but growing group
‘A fact of life…’
Aboriginal customary law is a fact of life for most Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory, not just those in Aboriginal communities. This is because it defines people’s rights and responsibilities, who a person is, and it defines a person’s relationships to everybody else in the world. (Northern Territory Law Reform Commission 2005: 16)
Methods and Ethics• Maggie Walter points to the key tenets of Indigenous
methodologies and ethics, These are: reciprocity, respect, equality, responsibility, survival and protection, and spirit and integrity.
• Knowledge should be useful for Indigenous people and further their community‐owned safety strategies. engaging Indigenous people in the research design and being accountable to Indigenous communities.
• It requires strengths‐based representations of Indigenous cultures, knowledges and connections to country; and peoples, families, organisations, communities and nations. It recognises the value of Indigenous sovereignty and the right to assert and enjoy cultural distinctiveness (Walter 2016: 102).
‘Who speaks for place, who defends it?’ Antonio Escobar
Country in Aboriginal English is not only a common noun but also a proper noun. People talk about country in the same way that they would talk about a person: they speak to country, sing to country, visit country, worry about country, feel sorry for country, and long for country (Bird Rose 1996: 9).
‘Aboriginal Culture Sits in Place’
For Indigenous societies, land is peoplehood, relational, cosmological, and epistemological. Land is memory, land is curriculum, land is language. “Land” also refers to water, sky, underground, sea (Rowe and Tuck, 2017: 4).
Yiriman Culturally Secure &‘On Country’
The Yiriman Project reconnects young people to their Elders, to their Country, empowering historical and contemporary identities, strengthening identity through language and Culture
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Corrections
Policing
Youth Justice System
Judicial
Family and Children
Governance
Community Based Orders
Family & Domestic Violence Services
Multi-Purpose Policing Facilities
Out of Home Care
Outreach/Mentoring/advocacy
‘Closing the Gap’ Structures
Diversion/Juvenile Justice Teams
Youth Services Sector Counselling
Education Alternative education
Therapeutic Jurisprudence
‘Holding’
Cultural mentoring
‘Yiriman’ Cultural Camps
Cultural security
Language and Culture
Cultural governance
Creating an Inter-cultural
Engagement Space’WHERE?
WHO WITH?
Health
Family Healing Places
Cultural Health and WellbeingCommunity Health
Aboriginal Courts/Circle Courts
Restorative Justice
COMMUNITY BASED COMMUNITY OWNED
Cultural Authority
Work Camps
‘On Country’
Men Business/Women’s Business
Caring for Country
Dispute Resolution
Law
Elders
Ceremony
Land
Community Based Orders
The Silos
Juvenile Justice‘Front End’ Diversion
Multi‐Agency Work
Criminal Courts Elders
A ‘decolonising’ alternative: PLACING COUNTRY IN THE CENTRE
Cultural Healing
Country
Parole
Outstations
Aboriginal Justice
CommunityJustice
Policing
TraumaAwareness
CBOs
Family Conferencing
Corrections
Care and Protection Treatment
Programs
Mentally Impaired Accused Act
Men and Women
Family
Screening
Assessment
JJTs
Prevention
Young Offenders Act
Other LegislationFamily Court
Bail Support
Schools
Youth Work
Bail Act
Culture