Planning research and educational partnerships with Indigenous communities : practice, realities and lessons

Increasingly planning practice and research are having to engage with Indigenous communities in Australia to empower and position their knowledge in planning strategies and arguments. But also to act as articulators of their cultural knowledge, landscape aspirations and responsibilities and the need to ensure that they are directly consulted in projects that impact upon their &lsquo;country&rsquo; generally and specifically. This need has changed rapidly over the last 25 years because of land title claim legal precedents, state and Commonwealth legislative changes, and policy shifts to address reconciliation and the consequences of the fore-going precedents and enactments. While planning instruments and their policies have shifted, as well as research grant expectations and obligations, many of these Western protocols do not recognise and sympathetically deal with the cultural and practical realities of Indigenous community management dynamics, consultation practices and procedures, and cultural events much of which are placing considerable strain upon communities who do not have the human and financial resources to manage, respond, co-operate and inform in the same manner expected of non-Indigenous communities in Australia. This paper reviews several planning formal research, contract research and educational engagements and case studies between the authors and various Indigenous communities, and highlights key issues, myths and flaws in the way Western planning and research expectations are imposed upon Indigenous communities that often thwart the quality and uncertainty of planning outcomes for which the clients, research agencies, and government entities were seeking to create.<br /

Payment for ecosystem services markets on Aboriginal land in Cape York Pensinsula: potential and constraints

[Extract] In the global arena, improving environmental outcomes at the same time as ensuring social equity outcomes for disadvantaged landholder groups has become increasingly important. This is especially true in regions with pressing environmental problems populated by low-income indigenous land stewards. The ability of Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes to lift poor people out of poverty and, in particular, the potential for PES schemes to improve social and welfare conditions in remote Australian indigenous communities is increasingly being recognized. Based on research in Cape York, Australia, this paper argues that a new approach to environmental management is needed to incorporate PES market participation by indigenous landowners. This is because the current framework for environmental management on Cape York is failing on two fronts: it is delivering suboptimal environmental outcomes and constraining the economic development aspirations of traditional owners. Current barriers to participation by indigenous communities in the Cape York Peninsula in PES markets — including legislative constraints and the existence of weak Aboriginal land and property rights — must be overcome

Power, Culture, Economy (CAEPR 30)

Research over the past decade in health, employment, life expectancy, child mortality, and household income has confirmed that Indigenous Australians are still Australia’s most disadvantaged group. Those residing in communities in regional and remote Australia are further disadvantaged because of the limited formal economic opportunities there. In these areas mining developments may be the major—and sometimes the only—contributors to regional economic development. However Indigenous communities have gained only relatively limited long-term economic development benefits from mining activity on land that they own or over which they have property rights of varying significance. Furthermore, while Indigenous people may place high value on realising particular non-economic benefits from mining agreements, there may be only limited capacity to deliver such benefits. This collection of papers focuses on three large, ongoing mining operations in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory under two statutory regimes—the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 and the Native Title Act 1993. The authors outline the institutional basis to greater industry involvement while describing and analysing the best practice principles that can be utilised both by companies and Indigenous community organisations. The research addresses questions such as: What factors underlie successful investment in community relations and associated agreement governance and benefit packages for Indigenous communities? How are economic and non-economic flows monitored? What are the values and aspirations which Indigenous people may bring to bear in their engagement with mining developments? What more should companies and government do to develop the capacity and sustainability of local Indigenous organisations? What mining company strategies build community capacity to deal with impacts of mining? Are these adequate? How to prepare for sustainable futures for Indigenous Australians after mine closure? This research was conducted under an Australian Research Council Linkage Project, with Rio Tinto and the Committee for Economic Development of Australia as Industry Partners

Knowing and teaching: the impact of teachers’ knowledge on students’ early literacy achievement

Children in rural and remote schools typically underperform in measures of literacy achievement (e.g., NAPLAN) from as early as year three. Data collected over time indicate that as children get older, the gap increases between those students who meet the national benchmarks and those who do not. Additionally, Indigenous children are overrepresented in this group of students who are underperforming in measures of literacy achievement. This study seeks to explore the conditions surrounding this phenomenon and to tease out the complexities present in rural and remote contexts that might contribute to this underachievement. One remote and six remote‐rural schools in Western Australia were the focus of the study. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used to collect data over three years. Qualitative data were collected using an ethnographic approach, through classroom observations and informal and formal interviews with students, teachers, school leaders, support staff and some parents. From these observations and interviews, teacher and student case studies were constructed. Quantitative data were collected from children through a range of early literacy assessment tasks. Around 60 children were assessed each year for three years. Approximately half of the children each year were Indigenous and half non‐Indigenous. The notion of educational criticism and connoisseurship (Eisner, 1985) was used as a way to describe, interpret and evaluate the literacy teaching practices which occurred in schools and classrooms. Habermas\u27s (1971) “knowledge constituent interests” were used as lenses through which to interrogate the data. The quantitative data informed the technical interest, while the qualitative data were interrogated using the practical and critical lenses. The study indicated that barriers to children’s academic success may exist at a number of levels. First, many children enter such schools with limited knowledge to support the development of school English literacy, therefore particular attention needs to be paid to this during their first years of schooling. While all children are likely to make progress in developing school English literacy, for many children the extent and rate of progress is dependent on focussed and knowledgeable teaching. Second, such schools are typically staffed by teachers in the early years of their career, who need support to develop their pedagogical, content and cultural knowledge to the degree necessary for successfully teaching early literacy in such contexts. Additionally, the relative remoteness of the context in which they are working often makes it difficult for them to access ongoing professional learning and support. Third, school leaders are typically in their first position in that role, with the consequence that they may be less able to support new teachers at the classroom level. This study is significant because it seeks to unravel the complicated web of factors that impact on the quality of literacy instruction that is provided for children in in remote and remote‐rural schools in Western Australia. There needs to be available a range of measures at every level, that can be tailored to fit the needs of a particular school at any given time