Boyfriends, babies and basketball: present lives and future aspirations of young women in Ngukurr

In the rhetoric of Aboriginal communities, young people are frequently positioned by adults as the key to future improvements. They talk about a time when the young people will be trained to take over the important positions in the community and there will be no more need for outsiders. In community development women are often considered to be the most important facilitators of change, as Sen (1999:203) writes: Nothing arguably, is as important today in the political economy of development as an adequate recognition of political, economic and social participation and leadership of women. Young women, therefore, can be seen as having a double responsibility for the futures of their communities. This paper explores the aspirations and expectations of a group of young women aged thirteen to twenty-three in a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory of Australia. It examines how these hopes and expectations are influenced and moulded by the reality of their everyday lives and the extent to which the young women consider that they are able to influence the course of their lives and become agents for change in their own communities

Boyfriends, babies and basketball: present lives and future aspirations of young women in Ngukurr

In the rhetoric of Aboriginal communities, young people are frequently positioned by adults as the key to future improvements. They talk about a time when the young people will be trained to take over the important positions in the community and there will be no more need for outsiders. In community development women are often considered to be the most important facilitators of change, as Sen (1999:203) writes: Nothing arguably, is as important today in the political economy of development as an adequate recognition of political, economic and social participation and leadership of women

Re-thinking knowledge landscapes in the context of grounded aboriginal theory and online health communication

The Aboriginal people of North East Arnhem Land, Australia, are a diverse community speaking several languages, but united through a kinship system connecting individuals and clans between two moieties of the Yolngu nation: the Yirritja and Dhuwa

Ngukurr at the Millennium: A Baseline Profile for Social Impact Planning in South East Arnhem Land

Rapid change arising from large-scale development projects can place severe strain on the physical infrastructure and social fabric of affected communities, as well as providing opportunities for betterment. The remote Aboriginal town of Ngukurr, together with its satellite outstations in the southeast Arnhem Land region of the Northern Territory, faces the prospect of such change as a result of mineral exploration activity currently underway, instigated by Rio Tinto. This study, which is comprehensive in its scope, provides a synchronistic baseline statistical analysis of social and economic conditions in Ngukurr. It emphasises several key areas of policy interest and intervention, including the demographic structure and residence patterns of the regional population, and their labour force status, education and training, income, welfare, housing, and health status. The result is an appraisal of Ngukurr?s social and economic life after a generation of self management and land rights, immediately prior to a possible period of major introduced economic development based on mineral exploitation. Thus it presents both a summary of the development effects of post-assimilation policy and the ?before? stage of a comparison-in-waiting. It forms a basis for social impact planning by establishing planning benchmarks across a range of key policy areas, and demonstrates the capacity that exists for rapid appraisal of remote Aboriginal communities.Made available by the Northern Territory Library via the Publications (Legal Deposit) Act 2004 (NT).Preface -- The cope and content of the analysis -- The demography of south-east Arnhem Land -- Labour force status -- Income status and welfare -- Education: participation and outcomes -- Housing and infrastructure -- Health status -- Implications for social impact planning -- Reference

Automatic age estimation based on facial aging patterns

While recognition of most facial variations, such as identity, expression, and gender, has been extensively studied, automatic age estimation has rarely been explored. In contrast to other facial variations, aging variation presents several unique characteristics which make age estimation a challenging task. This paper proposes an automatic age estimation method named AGES (AGing pattErn Subspace). The basic idea is to model the aging pattern, which is defined as the sequence of a particular individual\u27s face images sorted in time order, by constructing a representative subspace. The proper aging pattern for a previously unseen face image is determined by the projection in the subspace that can reconstruct the face image with minimum reconstruction error, while the position of the face image in that aging pattern will then indicate its age. In the experiments, AGES and its variants are compared with the limited existing age estimation methods (WAS and AAS) and some well-established classification methods (kNN, BP, C4.5, and SVM). Moreover, a comparison with human perception ability on age is conducted. It is interesting to note that the performance of AGES is not only significantly better than that of all the other algorithms, but also comparable to that of the human observers.<br /

Moving beyond the restrictions : the evaluation of the Alice Springs alcohol management plan

There have been a number of evaluations of alcohol management in the Alice Springs region. Interestingly, an evaluation in 1975 emphasised the need for government and other agencies to view the issues holistically and to address them accordingly. The outcomes of this evaluation point to a similar situation with comparable recommendations. The situation in Alice Springs is unique in some respects but has parallel characteristics to other towns and communities in Australia. Alice Springs is an important regional supply, service-orientated, and tourism town. Its people have diverse backgrounds and appear as durable as the environment they live in. Associated with this is a hard drinking culture that permeates the community with a range of issues regardless of one&rsquo;s cultural background. The research group found a community that in many ways is ruptured and fragmented when it comes to the ways and means of how such challenges can be confronted. This situation is exemplified by the perception that alcohol problems are confined to a minority of drinkers that seemingly pervades the dialogue surrounding drinking and its effects in the town. Nevertheless, a positive outcome of such discourse is the fact that people do care about their community and are very keen to live in a town where there are more responsible attitudes toward drinking. There is some way to go; the first thing that everyone needs to accept is that it is a community problem. Non-Indigenous and Indigenous individuals, groups and organisations all have a responsibility therefore in addressing the challenges and working toward better solutions. Government have an important role of course, however the acceptance by the community that it is a community problem is paramount. Some of the community and government initiatives are having a positive effect on drinking in the town. However, some of the initiatives, such as certain restrictions, can and should not be considered, on their own, as long-term solutions. Other processes need to be implemented, oversighted and managed in an effective manner. An important component of such processes is data that is well managed, available, and appropriate for those agencies involved

A Gudbala Laif? : health and wellbeing in a remote Aboriginal community - what are the problems and where lies responsibility?

The the sis is a study of a single community, its health, expectations and aspirations. It is a study of understand in g and responsibility in the context of dependence. The primarily ethnographic work for this thesis was undertaken in Ngukurr over thirteen months between 1999 and 2002. Ngukurr is a remote town on the south east border of Arnhem Land in Australia’s Northern Territory. Its long term residents are Aboriginal people. The thesis presented here examines these people’s understanding of health and illness in their community and their attainment of a good life. My study focuses on issues around people’s engagement with and disengagement from, the management of their health and health service delivery. My thesis is guided by the following questions: • how do people assess their health status? • how a republic health services perceived? • what expectations does the community have about the type and quality of the services provided ? • do people seek an active role in the management of their health ? People’s attitudes to and expectations for their health are examined in the context of a history of direct welfare dependence till the mid nineteen seventies; followed by local self government in which fiscal and administrative responsibility were held by Government or outside individuals. The evidence for health status, morbidity, and mortality among the remote indigenous population is significantly worse than non indigenous Australians and h a s been the subject of extensive Commonwealth and State health programs to little obvious effect. The literature I survey shows that people in poor communities rate their health more highly than the objective data suggests. Ngukurr residents rate their health in a similar way, b u t their apparent satisfaction masks complex beliefs about illness and concerns about health. I demonstrate that the community believes that outside influences are more important than personal actions as a cause of poor health, that there is little respect for the community’s view of health or health services, and in consequence there is little point in taking personal or collective responsibility. Ngukurr residents are not disinterested in health. They are acutely aware of the patterns of morbidity and mortality in their community and consider these to have a negative impact on their quality of life. Their ability to bring about changes in these patterns is limited by different paradigms of health and illness which sometimes appear as fatalism, powerlessness in the non-Aboriginal domain, loss of confidence due to poor communication with non indigenous providers, and consequent low expectations with regard to personal and community health. This creates a challenge for current policies to devolve management responsibility for health services to local communities. Policy makers should make considerable efforts to u n d e rs tan d local health beliefs and value systems and ensure that changes are appropriate, rather than making changes in health systems based on non-indigenous understandings of needs

Double perspective in the Colonial present

This paper will explain the concept of double perspective and the impact that this cultural understanding may have on the health of the Indigenous peoples of Scandinavia. In inter-cultural communication, one set of meanings may be discernible to the outsider while a whole extra set of restricted or underlying meanings are only accessible for those people who have the cultural knowledge to discern them. These diferent sets of meanings embody a double perspective. It is not dual perspectives on the same reality but rather seeing two separate but overlapping realities. We will discuss the layers of meaning which are involved in the interactions between public healthcare institutions, clinicians and staf, and Indigenous people including the Sámi. These interactions are infuenced by the impact of colonization and the ongoing epistemicide of Indigenous thought. By realising the improved resilience that a double perspective brings to Indigenous peoples, an awareness of the inclusion and exclusion of Indigenous persons, cultures and histories should become established in public institutions and in everyday life. A double perspective carries Sámi resilience, and should be understood as a key to support individual health, and also the collective wellbeing of a people living on their traditional yet colonized land.publishedVersio