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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in Australian schools continue to have poor education and health outcomes, and the introduction of a new national curriculum may assist in redressing this situation. This curriculum emphasises recommendations which have been circulating in the sector over many years, to require teacher education institutions to provide their students with an understanding of past and contemporary experiences of Indigenous Australians, as well as the social, economic and health disadvantages that challenge Indigenous communities, and to equip them to integrate Indigenous issues into their future teaching programs. This article, while focusing on teacher education developments at the University of Tasmania (UTAS) to meet National Standards and Frameworks for preservice teachers, provides some general background, and identifies recently developed resources, including the potential for Indigenous centres within universities to assist educators.

A good education is essential for making a successful life in the modern world. This book argues that Australia's Indigenous students are not being well served by the education systems. There are exceptions and some programs work well, but the system fails the majority of students. The book analyzes the reasons for this failure by looking at the context, history and social realities affecting Aboriginal education. Well researched and strongly argued chapters on the family, language, health, attendance, classroom management and the criminal justice system locate education as a dynamic part of society. The interaction between school and other agencies is given special attention. As well as looking at problems, the book provides directions for solutions. The dilemmas of the remote area school are addressed, and a number of programs are examined which are succeeding in providing a better education for Aboriginal youth.

The Indigenous Community Governance Project (ICGP) is an Australian Research Council Linkage Project between the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) at the Australian National University, and Reconciliation Australia (RA). The Project is exploring the nature of Indigenous community governance in diverse contexts and locations across Australia through a series of case studies — to understand what works, what doesn’t work, and why. This document presents some key messages emerging from a summary of the comparative analysis of the Project’s 11 current Indigenous case studies, after the first phase of a longer study.

Their Way: Towards an Indigenous Warlpiri Christianity

Benjamin Disraeli originally coined the phrase 'Two Nations' in 1845 to characterise the chasm between rich and poor in Victorian England. While the differential in access to resources has been reduced this century by the development of the welfare state, there is ongoing concern about the level of inequality in Australia. This paper attempts to develop, and sustain, the metaphor that there are three Nations in Australia: the rich, the poor non-indigenous Australians and indigenous Australians. That is, indigenous Australians are different from other poor and rich Australians in the nature and extent of destitution experienced in much of their community. The paper is written in six sections. First, a discussion of several case studies and personal accounts in order to illustrate the indigenous experience of poverty. Second, an introduction of several conceptual and empirical issues for measuring the multi-faceted nature of indigenous poverty. Third, a description of the data and method used to analyse indigenous poverty. Fourth, a presentation of data which illustrates the multi-dimensional nature of indigenous poverty. The penultimate section canvasses strategies for tackling indigenous poverty while the final section provides some concluding remarks. Indigenous experiences of poverty – some case studies Research into poverty frequently appears rather distant from the reality of poverty. Case studies, from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and the 'Stolen Generations' Inquiry, illustrate the day-to-day grind of indigenous poverty in modern Australia and the need for a multi-dimensional approach to indigenous poverty. Conceptual issues in measuring indigenous poverty The conceptual problems for measuring indigenous poverty include: the role of non-market work, family size and composition, relative prices and the geographic distribution the population. The command over resources is undeniably a major factor determining whether a person is poor. However, one cannot live on bread alone and people need access to adequate health care, housing and justice. The Scandinavian levels-of-living measures of poverty use several indicators that capture the standard of living. The disadvantage of the Scandinavian approach is that it over-emphasises the autonomy of these indicators of poverty. While it is important to recognise the differences in facets of poverty, it would be a mistake to ignore the behavioural inter-relationships between spheres of living. For example, chronic health problems may have long-term implications for income earning potential. The depth of disadvantage in income, housing, health, arrests and land among indigenous Australians One of the major findings of this paper is that indigenous poverty is not sensitive to changes in measurement methodology. That is, indigenous people are about 2 to 3 times more likely to be impoverished than the non-indigenous population irrespective of the equivalence scale used. While the same methodology must be applied across time if trends in poverty are being examined, the facts of indigenous poverty are so stark that the use of different methods will not materially change the findings at any point in time. Esoteric debates about the efficacy of using the Henderson poverty line do not alter the substantial and consistent differences between indigenous and non-indigenous populations. Notwithstanding the robustness of the results, future research into indigenous poverty must continue to ensure that differences in household sizes are properly accounted for. The multi-faceted nature of indigenous poverty is illustrated by describing several welfare indicators, including housing, health and security. Indigenous households ranked by (equivalent) income and the average outcomes for the relevant indicators are measured for five equally sized groups of households. Of all facets of indigenous poverty, health stands out as a major concern. Long-term health problems are evident in one-third of indigenous households in both low and high income groups. Since poor outcomes in non-monetary indicators are endemic among indigenous households it is inappropriate to focus solely on income poverty. For example, overcrowded housing is an issue for relatively advantaged indigenous families. Similarly, the high level of arrest and victimisation of indigenous people in both high and low income households means that income based measures do not tell the whole story of indigenous poverty. Unsurprisingly high income groups are more likely to be employed, have better and more educational qualifications and are more likely to live in capital cities. What is interesting is the level of concentration of these characteristics among the well off. There also appears to be an important feedback between the number of dependents relative to the number of adults and the ability to participate in the labour market. The results for indigenous poverty need to be contextualised with an analysis of non-monetary poverty in the non-indigenous population. Obtaining roughly analogous arrest data for non-indigenous people requires the combination of the overall number charged in local New South Wales courts for 1994 with 1991 census postcode data on household income and composition. High income indigenous households are much more likely to be arrested than their non-indigenous counterparts in both relative and absolute terms. Living in relatively affluent households is obviously not an effective means for indigenous Australians to avert negative experiences with the justice system. The 1992 National Health Strategy establishes a strong correlation between socioeconomic status, income and health outcomes for non-indigenous Australians. In contrast, high income indigenous families are only 1.2 percentage points less likely to experience long-term health problems than low-income indigenous families. The metaphor that Australia contains three 'Nations', the rich, the poor and indigenous Australians is easily justified. Indigenous living standards are qualitatively and quantitatively different to other poor and rich Australians. Poor health and significant interactions with the criminal justice system are common experiences for even the relatively advantaged indigenous households. Health and justice issues probably require the concerted attention of policy-makers if there is to be any hope that indigenous welfare will catch up with that of the rest of the Australian community. More attention needs to be paid to the depth of indigenous poverty in the other spheres of life.

The three case study communities in this study are located in Queensland (Palm Island), South Australia (Mimili) and the Northern Territory (Maningrida). All three are culturally, historically and environmentally distinct, and home to three very different communities. However, despite these differences, the communities were found to share many housing problems, due to: their common experiences of remoteness; the legacy of chronic under-funding for housing, infrastructure and services; and the lack of local education, training and employment opportunities. The studies of housing in Mimili, Maningrida and Palm Island identified significant liveability problems related to a lack of concern for core cultural issues, inappropriate settlement planning, the lack of liveability of internal and external spaces, and the ineffective management of the housing process. Most significantly, also, the housing procurement and construction processes in all three communities failed to leave an ‘economic footprint’ in terms of enhanced livelihoods for residents.

Indigenous sovereignty as an area of study is usually analysed by legal scholars and political theorists who locate it within a judicio-political framework. This article is offered as a work in progress to stimulate sociological thinking about Indigenous sovereignty in a different way. The article considers recent work in Whiteness studies in Australia and abroad, as well as literature using Foucault's idea of the relationship between race, sovereignty and war.

Traditional Aboriginal medicine is a complex system closely linked to the culture and beliefs of the people, knowledge of their land and its flora and fauna. Its survival is explained by its “embeddedness” in the social fabric of Aboriginal culture. Reid (1978) has shown that, though Aborigines living at Yirrkala in the Northern Territory choose western medicine to treat the majority of their sicknesses, they continue to explain the causes of these sicknesses through their traditional beliefs. Western medicine is primarily interested in the recognition and treatment of disease. Traditional medicine seeks to a provide meaningful explanation for illness and to respond to the personal, family and community issues surrounding illness. Traditional medicine explains not only the “how” but also the “why” of sickness. The Aboriginal approach to health care is a holistic one. It recognises the social, physical and spiritual dimensions of health and life. Their concept of health in many ways is closer than that of Western medicine to the WHO definition of health, ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’. The Warlpiri Aboriginal tribe have described health as “life” or ‘Wankaru’. Their definition takes in a whole of life cycle. The front of their Health Centre at the Aboriginal settlement of Yuendumu is adorned with the painting depicted below. It shows family life, food, shelter, warmth, water and exercise, all essential for health.

This paper draws on the lessons learned from an evaluation of a program designed to support Indigenous people into employment. The program (TrainingPlus), managed by the Desert Peoples Centre (DPC) in Alice Springs, uses vocational training offered by the Centre for Appropriate Technology (CAT) and the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education (BIITE) as a vehicle for achieving employment outcomes. What makes this program different from a plethora of others trying to do the same, is the intentional use of a case management approach where Indigenous cultural brokers support learners through a transition in their identity from being ‘unemployable’ through to becoming ‘employable’. This requires a significant shift for trainees as they come to terms with different norms and values in training and workplace contexts. It also takes considerable time, understanding and effort on the part of the cultural brokers to effect a sustained change. While the evaluation highlighted a number successes associated with the TrainingPlus approach, it also highlighted a number of tensions that arise for DPC as it attempts to straddle the space between mainstream and Indigenous cultural contexts. The implications that emerge from the findings are discussed in the broader policy context as it relates to Indigenous affairs, education, training and employment.

For a number of years, Nungalinya College, based in Darwin, has provided accredited training for Yolu from Arnhem Land. One course called Bilingual Family and Community Studies, partly funded by Caritas Australia, has been developed over almost 10 years to assist Yolu, who speak English as another language make the transition into mainstream employment. Caritas’ funding has enabled Nungalinya to employ a Yolu facilitator, enabling a bilingual approach to be taken. This paper is based on an evaluation of the program. Apart from the bilingual aspect, an important feature of this program is that it unpacks western worldview values and assumptions before delivering the content of the training package, a Certificate I in Access to Employment and Further Study. This process identifies aspects of western culture while at the same time supporting English language, literacy and numeracy skills. The Nungalinya program is designed to address these worldview concerns. The paper presents an overview of the course and the evaluation’s findings. It suggests that the learnings from Nungalinya’s experience are applicable to training delivered in remote Indigenous communities, where ‘turbulent times’ are represented in the form of various ‘interventions’, policy changes, and a range of local community challenges. The paper raises questions about the capacity of training providers to effectively respond to the needs of learners and suggests that funding for training programs for people from remote communities needs to take these issues into account.

According to the Australian Indigenous Doctors’ Association (AIDA), there are currently about 90 Indigenous doctors in Australia. This amounts to 0.18% of the medical profession, despite 2.4% of the Australian population being Indigenous. Many organisations have called for an increase in the numbers of Indigenous doctors and other health care workers as part of a strategy to improve the health and wellbeing of Indigenous Australians and to reduce the terrible disparities between their health and that of the general Australian population. These increasingly urgent calls have come from the Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council, the Australian Medical Association (AMA), AIDA, and many other leading Australian health, human rights, aid and development organisations. To increase the proportion of Indigenous doctors to the non-Indigenous level, the AMA estimated in 2004 that 928 more doctors need to be trained. As a start, AIDA has identified a goal of 350 extra Indigenous students enrolled in medicine by 2010. Although many medical schools have strategies to recruit and retain Indigenous students (Box), the goal set by AIDA may not be easy to achieve. Three of the schools are recognised as “leaders” in Indigenous medical education — the University of Newcastle, the University of Western Australia and James Cook University. We interviewed key representatives from each of these schools to discover what they have achieved, their strategies, and their plans for the future.

Indigenous academic researchers are involved in Indigenist, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, all of which present problems and opportunities for Indigenous knowledge traditions. Transdisciplinary research is different from interdisciplinary research because it moves beyond the disciplinarity of the university and takes into account knowledge practices which the university will never fully understand. Indigenous knowledge traditions resist definition from a Western academic perspective - there are Indigenous knowledge practices which will never engage with the academy, just as there are some branches of the academy which will never acknowledge Indigenous knowledge practices. In this paper I present the story of my own non-Indigenous perspective on Indigenous research and what happens to it in a university. I am not concerned here with the knowledge production work Aboriginal people do in their own ways and contexts for their own purposes, but rather turn my attention to some of the issues which emerge when transdisciplinary research practice involves Australian Indigenous communities.

By the 1970s, the Indigenous population had undergone a series of systematic fluctuations in fertility and mortality levels, uneven over space and time, but ultimately comprehensive and uniform in effect. Current interest is on progress in the prevailing demographic regime of declining natural growth rates based on reductions in both fertility and mortality, with recent trends suggesting that this process may be stalled. Also of interest is the emergence of additional contributors to Indigenous population growth. These include Indigenous births to non-Indigenous women as well as an increased propensity for individuals to declare Indigenous status on census forms. In the more distant past, sociological and political processes have effectively excluded or devalued Indigenous representation in official statistics. In the more recent politics of data collection, efforts are made to encourage identification.

Providing a ground-breaking answer to the questions of how to solve the problems of cross-generational trauma, Trauma Trails moves beyhond the rhetoric of victimhood, and provides inspiration for anyone concerned about Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities today

Recent educational attainment targets set by Australian governments recognise education and training as pivotal to the economic and social well-being of Australians. The targets seek to close the gaps in attainment that socially and economically divide the population, and, in doing so, raise the levels of skills of the workforce and improve the ways in which education and training are delivered. TVET will play a critical role as it provides important programs for raising Year 12 completion rates, for re-engaging early school leavers, and for helping adults acquire qualifications after many years away from formal study. This paper examines some of the prospects and challenges that confront the TVET system in engaging with new populations and helping promote lifelong education for the most disadvantaged: early school leavers, the indigenous, people from poor families, those located in rural and remote areas and those with disabilities.

Most researchers are on a quest for deeper understanding, new and greater knowledge and recognition of their learnings. We value critical thought. We often pride ourselves in finding ‘truth’. But what if we have got it all wrong? What happens if our own version of reality is so displaced that the things we learn and understanding we gain takes us away from the truth and not closer to it? This presentation discusses research in the context of remote education, particularly in communities where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders make up most of the population. Educators often talk about scaffolding—building on a framework of past learnings. However, what happens when those of us who come from non-Indigenous backgrounds are confronted by a different culture, a different worldview, different values, is that we either become very confused because what we see does not match what we ‘know’ to be right and true, or we tend to make judgements about what we see based on what we ‘know’ to be right and true. Either way, we can easily end up with errant results and even more errant conclusions—unless we first unlearn our cultural assumptions and so begin to learn from those who belong to a different world. John Guenther has for a number of years been part of and led research and evaluation projects across the Northern Territory. His experiences have led him to reflect on the research process in these complex and intellectually challenging contexts. As a non-Indigenous researcher he will share from these experiences—and in particular talk about what he has unlearnt about himself, and then what he has gained from his experiences working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers and community members.

The document contains guidelines for ethical health research on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. In accordance with guidance from Aboriginal people it is written around a framework of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander values and principles. Over the course of the previous two triennia (1994–6 and 1997–9), the previous Australian Health Ethics Committee (AHEC) reviewed and revised the NHMRC Statement on Human Experimentation and Supplementary Notes (1992). These were the guidelines on the ethics of health research for the whole community, to provide protection to all Australians, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. That review led to the issuing in 1999 of the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Research Involving Humans (the National Statement). When revising the National Statement, AHEC was informed, both in submissions and in personal representations at public forums, that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, researchers and health organisations still saw a clear need for a separate, complementary set of guidelines covering research in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health. They also heard that the 1991 Interim Guidelines on Ethical Matters in Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Health Research (the Interim Guidelines) were in need of review and updating. In response to that feedback AHEC undertook to follow up the new National Statement by reviewing the 1991 Interim Guidelines over the course of AHEC’s three-year term, which finished in mid-2003. It is noteworthy that the Interim Guidelines took a number of years to develop. Three major meetings facilitated by the National Aboriginal and Islander Health Organisation and/or the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) were held over the last years of the 1980s. These meetings involved a wide range of stakeholders and led eventually to the current 1991 Interim Guidelines, which have had a high degree of community ownership. Much has changed since the development of the Interim Guidelines. New collaborative partnerships involving research institutes and the community, including the Aboriginal community controlled health sector, have emerged. There are now more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people involved in research as researchers. The level of interest in research as a way to contribute to the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples has grown and with it the level of NHMRC funding. However, some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and organisations remain mistrustful of the enterprise of research itself.

An important focus of National Crime Prevention (NCP), the Commonwealth’s crime prevention program, is to identify priorities for violence prevention in Indigenous communities, where statistics show it is occurring at higher rates than for the rest of the Australian population. The aims of the research consultancy were to: 1 identify priorities concerning the prevention of violence in Indigenous communities through a review of literature and through consultations with key stakeholders across disciplines and sectors 2 develop a strategic framework to incorporate policy recommendations designed to address the prevention of violence in Indigenous communities, and proposals on how to implement the policy recommendations 3 produce recommendations explicitly designed to inform the development of at least one demonstration project that would centre on the prevention of violence in Indigenous communities When we began this study, the term ‘domestic violence’ was felt to be unsuitable for any analysis of violence in Indigenous households and was replaced with the term ‘family violence’ for this report. ‘Family violence’ was broadly defined to encapsulate not only the extended nature of Indigenous families, but also the context of a range of violence forms, occurring frequently between kinspeople in Indigenous communities. The notion of ‘family violence’ may be summarised as follows: ❙ family violence may involve all types of relatives. The victim and the perpetrator often have a kinship relation ❙ the perpetrator of violence may be an individual or a group ❙ the victim of violence may also be an individual or a group ❙ the term ‘family’ means ‘extended family’ which also covers a kinship network of discrete, intermarried, descent groups ❙ the ‘community’ may be remote, rural or urban based; its residents may live in one location or be more dispersed, but nevertheless interact behave as a social network ❙ the acts of violence may constitute physical, psychological, emotional, social, economic and/or sexual abuse ❙ some of the acts of violence are ongoing over a long period of time, one of the most prevalent examples being spousal (or domestic) violence

The Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs on behalf of the Australian Council of Children and Parenting commissioned the National Child Protection Clearinghouse to undertake a project examining the strengths and barriers to the recruitment, assessment, training and support of carers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, and the strengths and barriers in the provision of services to Indigenous children in care. A series of papers discussing the findings can be downloaded.

This report is a study of remote Indigenous community and describes how both English and the local Indigenous languages are used in reading and writing by adults. Explores this community's quest to implement a culturally appropriate form of health delivery not only for physical well-being but also for cultural well-being. In remote Indigenous communities in Australia there are minimal labour market opportunities, with the majority of jobs under the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP), and limited education and training services. Yet Indigenous communities are under increasing pressure from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) and the government to build sustainable communities with a social, cultural and economic capital base, and share responsibility for community well-being and capacity building. Simultaneously, the delivery of primary and secondary Indigenous education is under great scrutiny as outcomes fall behind commensurate levels in the wider Australian society. There is also increasing emphasis on ensuring that 'culturally appropriate' vocational education and training (VET) opportunities in remote Indigenous communities are made more accessible, so that Indigenous people can gain the employment skills to ultimately take control of their communities. Conversely, adult literacy is increasingly seen as a major factor affecting the participation of Indigenous people in training and the subsequent delivery and management of services in remote communities. This study investigates and describes how both the English and the local Indigenous language are used in reading and writing by adults, through a case study of a community-controlled health service in a remote Indigenous community in the Northern Territory. In addition, it analyses the social context of literacy use; that is, how (for what purposes and functions) people use reading and writing in everyday life in the community. Although Western education has a short history in the region - schooling was first introduced in the area in 1969 - access to schooling for all children was only made available as late as 2003. The case study explores this community's quest to implement a culturally appropriate form of health delivery that encompasses not just physical well-being but also the interrelationship between the social, emotional and cultural well-being of the community as a whole. The health service leadership in this community is seeking to develop a model that integrates the training and employment of local Indigenous people into a process of strengthening community capacity. Intrinsic to this process is a growing awareness that an emerging training and employment model must reflect existing tribal authority structures and processes, and be integrated into the social and cultural schema of the community, rather than be imposed from the outside. That is, the leadership is aspiring to develop a 'both ways' model of community capacity that ensures cultural control in the short-term and, in the long-term, leads to the development of skilled, literate adults, who have also maintained Indigenous law and culture, and are able to manage change and sustain community development. In this case study, it was found that there is a demonstrated trust that the institution of Western education will deliver worthwhile outcomes. Learning English is seen as a necessity and this is interrelated with meeting everyday functional needs and social obligations. However, adult literacy levels are generally low and it would appear that most adults do not have sufficient proficiency in English language, literacy and numeracy to meet the VET sector's training requirements. The provision of vocational education and training in this region has been ad hoc, short- term and compartmentalised into disconnected sectors of health and education and from a range of registered training organisations. Community employment opportunities are minimal and vocational education and training is primarily linked with the limited employment opportunities available in the education and health sectors

The first edition of Successful practice was published in 2006, but related to work from the previous four or five years. It included mostly case study material from the What Works website and, like the case studies in general, was intended to provide a sampler, illustrating successful strategies used in a variety of settings around Australia. Those interested in getting more details could follow up by going to the website. Our hope is that teachers don’t replicate strategies exactly, but rather use them to provide direction and even inspiration for work to improve educational outcomes for Australian Indigenous students. That improvement is the sole reason for the existence of these materials. This second edition of Successful practice takes a similar approach to the first, providing glimpses of action drawn mostly from case studies prepared for the What Works website since 2006. We again make the point that these materials describe what was happening at a particular place, at a particular point in time. As such, they cannot be ‘up to date’ but they can provide useful ideas and strategies for others to consider. We also make the point that the material presented here ranges from large scale action across regions to accounts of individual classrooms. Everyone can make a difference in their own setting. Times have changed since the first edition of Successful practice. In particular, we have seen the following: • Development of more sophisticated and comprehensive approaches to partnerships between schools and their Indigenous communities. • Strategic planning receiving more emphasis generally and state and territory jurisdictions developing more explicit goals and targets. • Longer-term targets expressed in terms of ‘closing the gap’. • More encouragement for groups of schools to work together. • The greater use of Personalised Learning Plans (PLPs) for Indigenous students. • Greater focus on data-driven approaches, and the introduction of NAPLAN testing. This booklet illustrates how Indigenous and non-Indigenous people working in schools across Australia have responded to those developments. Their primary objective, though, has always been to see better educational outcomes for their Indigenous students. The work is not always easy, and we don’t want to give the impression that it is, but these are people who are committed to improvement and know what is achievable. We would like to acknowledge them again for their contribution and, as previously, thank them for their generous permission to use their own voices and tell their own stories. They are real people working in real circumstances.

The What Works materials are all about helping people in schools take systematic action to improve outcomes for Indigenous students. Nothing else. They are not about ‘professional development’ for teachers (unless it leads to action). They are not about background reading (unless it leads to action). They are not about sharing experience (unless it leads to action). The Workbook that you are holding in your hands can support that action but it’s not meant for cataloguing and placing on a shelf in the library either. It’s supposed to be written in, carried around, referred to, shown and shared. If it gets dog-eared, that’s great because that’s how it was meant to get. It contains a series of tools and ideas to assist planning for improved outcomes for Indigenous students. You could work through the tools one after the other, or you could pick and choose. You could download them and modify them to suit your local needs. You could use them in conjunction with the website www.whatworks.edu.au, where you will find more detail and lots of examples of the action other people have taken.

The colonial practice of rationing goods to Aboriginal people has been neglected in the study of Australian frontiers. This book argues that much of the colonial experience in Central Australia can be understood by seeing rationing as a fundamental, though flexible, instrument of colonial government. Rationing was the material basis for a variety of colonial ventures: scientific, evangelical, pastoral and the post-war program of 'assimilation'. Combining history and anthropology in a cultural study of rationing, this book develops a new narrative of the colonisation of Central Australia. Contents 1. Rationing the inexplicable 2. Rationed actors 3. Rural central Australia, 1914-40 4. Town, cash and supervision 5. 'A christian cannot be a parasite' 6. The world war in town and hinterland 7. 'Assimilation' 8. The crisis of managed consumption 9. Settlements and families 10. Alice Springs and its town camps.

The Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs on behalf of the Australian Council of Children and Parenting commissioned the National Child Protection Clearinghouse to undertake a project examining the strengths and barriers to the recruitment, assessment, training and support of carers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, and the strengths and barriers in the provision of services to Indigenous children in care. A series of papers discussing the findings can be downloaded.

INTRODUCTION The Way It Is PART ONE: THE YOLNGU OF ARNHEM LAND CHAPTER 1: Wangarr’s Gift is Broken; The Fifty Year War; The Madayin; The Wind Traders; Table 1. Quantities and Tariff value of recorded imports into the Northern Territory from Macassar, 1894-1903; Contact with White Humans; The First Pastoral War; The Second Pastoral War; The Loss of International Trade; The Third War; The Lesser of Two Evils; Balayni; The Fourth War; The Battle for Survival Continues; CHAPTER 2: A Crisis in Living; Into the Self-determination Era; Yolngu Life Pre-1970; From Dreams to Nightmares; Confusing Balanda Structures; The Collapse of Industries and Services; Galiwin’ku Fishing Industry ; Galiwin’ku Garden; Bank Agencies; Yolngu Workers Displaced; New Decision-Makers; New-style Resource Staff; Yolngu Elders Lose Control; Changed Community Attitudes; The Resulting Nightmare; CHAPTER 3: ‘The Trouble with Yolngu is…!’; Official and Unofficial Views on the Current State of Yolngu Health; Perspectives on the Health Crisis; Naming, Blaming, Lecturing; What Yolngu say; The Effects of Naming; Direct Effects on the People; Policies and Programs That Fit the Naming ; The Factor of Naming; PART TWO: A WAR OF ‘WORDS' CHAPTER 4: The Essence of Human Interaction - Communication; The Crisis in being Understood; The Role of Communication; Effects of Poor Communication; Tumour—A Boil or a Cancer?; Communication Problems and Health Delivery; Difficulties with Diagnosis; Sunday Afternoon with an English Doctor; Using Health Workers as Interpreters; The Two-way Crisis; Communication Mores; A Problem with Silence; The Victims of this War; CHAPTER 5: ‘What Language Do You Dream In?’; Uncharted English; Strange New Words; English versus Yolngu Matha; Language Is Not Taken Seriously; ‘English Makes Me Tired’; ‘It’s Like a Bomb Being Thrown Down in Front of You’; What’s So Hard About English?; Coping with a Foreign Language; Specific Difficulties with English; Computers Are Understood—Humans Are Not; Uncharted Languages; Patient/Doctor Communication: A Yolngu Perspective; A Grieving Mother; The Foreign Language Learning Process; Knowing but Not Knowing; The Importance of the People’s Own Language CHAPTER 6: Thirteen Years of Wanting to Know; World-view—as Important as Language; David’s Thirteen-Year Search; From Experience to World-view; The Effects of World-view on Communication; Trained Professionals Are Essential CHAPTER 7: ‘You Can Hear the Grass Grow’; Understanding the People’s Cultural Knowledge Base; Pre-existing Knowledge; Get Behind, Brother!; The Role of a Cultural Knowledge Base in the Learning Process; Using the Cultural Knowledge Base to Bridge the Gap in Knowledge; The Effects of Different Cultural Knowledge Bases on Learning; Education and the Cultural Knowledge Base CHAPTER 8: Is the Age of Knowledge and Thinking at an End?; Why Cross-Cultural/Cross-Language Education Is Failing; The Degeneration of Yolngu Education; The Need to Know ‘How the New World Works’; The High Cost of Ineffective Education: • Because of ineffectual education, Yolngu learn to feel inferior and unintelligent. • Because of ineffectual education, Yolngu discount their elders and traditional knowledge. • Because of ineffective education, Yolngu lose the ‘cause and effect’ relationship in their thinking about how the world operates. • Because of ineffective education, Yolngu come to believe that dominant culture knowledge is of a superior, mystical quality and unattainable. • Because of ineffective education, Yolngu learn that ritual, rather than productive action, is all-important in the dominant culture world. • Because of ineffective education, Yolngu lose all interest in gaining knowledge. Inappropriate Responses to Given Situations; A Visit to the Doctor; But Our Children Grew Bigger; Sweet Equals Good Food?; Is Knowledge and Thinking at an End for Yolngu? PART THREE: THE COST OF BEING DIFFERENT CHAPTER 9: ‘Witch Doctor is the Real Doctor?’; Health, Healing and Traditional Authority; Traditional Yolngu Health Matters; The Yolngu Classification of Foods; Table 2. The Yolngu Classification of Foods; Marr`gitj—the Authorised Healers and Doctors; Confusion in a Balanda-Controlled World; Old Knowledge Rediscovered; An Encounter with the Local ‘Witch Doctor’; Traditional Practices—Holy or Evil?; So What Has Happened to the Traditional Doctors?; Chief Medical Officers Locked Out; The Midwives Also Lose Control ; The Cultural Clash; The Disappearance of Knowledge; The Question of Law and Authority; Confusion About Dominant Culture Systems of Law; ‘Who Ever Asked Us?’; Pseudo Schemes and Structures; The Effect on Health Workers; Dying with Dignity; The Unhealthy Cost of Being Different CHAPTER 10: ‘Living Hell’; Welfare and Dependency and their Effect on the People; A New Way of Living?; Welfare—A Yolngu Perspective; The Fish and the Shadow; Administering the 'Last Rights'; Learned Helplessness; Roy’s Story; Dependency and Its Effect on the People; Loss of Roles; Loss of Mastery ; Hopelessness; From Drug Abuse to Violence; The Real Violence CHAPTER 11: ‘Stop the World — I Want to Get Off!’; The Stress of Living between Two Cultures; Culture Shock ; Dominant Culture Personnel and Culture Shock; Yolngu and Culture Shock; The Serious Effects of Culture Shock; Future Shock; Was It Always This Way?; Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma; Just Get On With Things; You Can’t Say No To Balanda ; Psychological Scarring; Steel of Character?; Transmission of Trauma to Children; Captives of the Dominant Culture; Community Violence; Re-Traumatisation and the Agents of Trauma; Stop the World I Want to Get Off PART FOUR: WARRIORS THEY WERE AND WARRIORS THEY CAN BE AGAIN CHAPTER 12: Owners of Information; The Traditional Learning Process; Acquiring New Information—Not What, but How; The ‘Right’ Process in Balanda Society; The ‘Right’ Process in Aboriginal Society CHAPTER 13: Treating the Symptoms or the Cause?; An Analysis of the Problem; A Look at the Past; Looking for the Primary Cause; The Babies on the River; Posing the ‘Million Dollar’ Question; The Trip up the River; Others in the Same Boat; The Symptoms and the Primary Causes; ‘Victims of Progress’—A World-wide Reality CHAPTER 14: Rewriting the Future; The Way Ahead; Five Steps to a More Yolngu-friendly Environment; Take the People’s Language Seriously; How Do We Take the People’s Language Seriously?; What Are ‘Leaking Kidneys’?; Train Dominant Culture Personnel; Why Should Dominant Culture People Be Trained? ; It’s Just Too Expensive; Approach Education and Training in a Different Way; Who Designs Yolngu Education?; Education Around Concepts Needs to Happen First; Discovery Education; Our Young People Are Sniffing Petrol—Can Someone Help Us?; Replace Existing Programs with Programs That Truly ; Empower the People; The Galiwin’ku Melioidosis Education Program; A Program That Empowered the People; Deal with Some Basic Legal Issues; A Security of Tenure; A Rule of Law; Warriors Once More PRONUNCIATION: A GUIDE FOR YOL~U MATHA WORDS Vowels Consonants Some Additional Rules