Who Do I Serve?

A 
few 
years 
ago 
I 
was 
recalling 
fieldwork 
anxieties 
to 
a 
colleague. 
His 
response 
was to
 ask,
 ‘who
 do
 you
 serve?’
 The
 question
 threw
 me:
 I
 wanted
 to
 say,
 ‘No
 one,
 I’m
 Australian’. 
A 
simple 
provocation 
and 
I 
become
 a 
wild 
colonial 
girl. 
We 
had 
attended
 a 
conference 
in 
Delhi 
together 
and 
it 
got 
him
 reminiscing 
about 
his 
time 
as 
a 
student
 in 
India: 
he 
spent 
a
 few 
years 
studying 
and 
travelling, 
accumulating 
friends,
stories,
 bits 
and 
pieces 
of 
learning 
and 
love 
and 
devotion 
to 
the 
country. 
From
memory,
 the conversation
 took 
place 
after 
we’d
 returned
 to 
Melbourne. 
We 
were
having
 one
 of
 those
 nurturing
 collegial
 conversations:
 someone
 keeping
 me
 company
 as
 I
 gently
 worried 
away 
at 
the 
ethical 
conundrums
 of 
cultural 
research.
He 
told 
me 
that
 from
 his
 long,
 indolent
 time
 spent
 meandering
 around
 India
 it
 is
 the
 question
 from
 a
 student
 friend
 that
 returned
 to
 him 
most
 readily,
 keeping
 him 
in
 check.
 His
 friend
 asked
 matter‐a‐factly,
 ‘who
 do
 you
 serve?’
 It
 was
 intended
 as
 a
 straightforward
 question,
 assumed
 to
 have
 a
 ready
 answer:
 not
 designed
 to
 illicit
 consternation,
 anger
 and
 certainly
 not
 existential
 angst.
 He
 couldn’t
 answer.
 But
 he
 said
 now
 he
 regularly 
reflects 
upon 
it.
 The 
answer 
had 
become 
his 
navigational 
star

‘Calling our Spirits Home’: Indigenous Cultural Festivals and the Making of a Good Life

In a discussion about the problems affecting young people of Cape York, a local community health worker told me: ‘their spirits have wandered too far. We need to call them back to them’.  In the last five years mainstream notions of wellbeing have changed dramatically, but still there is little room for spirits and ancestors. It is now considered that the critical goods of health and wellbeing are leading a life with purpose, having quality connections with others, possessing self-regard and experiencing feelings of efficacy and control. For decades now Australia has demonstrated difficulty, if not failure, to construct appropriate responses to entrenched social problems within Indigenous communities. In this article I examine two Cape York festivals aimed at improving the wellbeing of Indigenous youth – Croc Fest and Laura Dance Festival. The former is driven by government agendas of enhancing education and health outcomes for Indigenous youth, while the latter’s purpose is to maintain and develop strong culture for the Cape and surrounding communities and respect the country’s spirits and ancestors.Why do mainstream and Indigenous responses to social problems continue to diverge so greatly, and what does each achieve and have to offer the other? In examining these festivals what can be seen is mainstream Australia’s failure to understand culture as a material expression of a vital life force, thus integral to wellbeing. I argue that a fundamental failure in mainstream responses to the ‘crisis’ in Indigenous Australia is to enable a life force derived from another sovereignty. In examining these festivals, mainstream and Indigenous, the disjuncture becomes clear. I propose that it is not only Indigenous youth whose spirits have wandered too far from them, but secular, neo-liberal Australia is lost in a world void of spirits, the ephemeral, and the power of country, forsaken for progress, individuality and the drive for statistical equality. How can we call our spirits home whilst respecting different sovereignties? What might Indigenous cultural festivals have to teach us about the making of a ‘good life’

Is any body home? - Rewriting the crisis ofbelonging in Margaret Sommerville\u27s body/landscape journals

Whilst attempting to write a paper about relationships to place, Margaret Somerville suffered from what she calls \u27a crisis of the body.\u27. She was in the early stages of a collaborative writing project with four Aboriginal women in which she was recording their oral histories of their connection to place. She says of the proiect: The women gave me multiple selves, the different I\u27s I want in the text: the pencil as opposed to the mouth, archaeologist, historian, oral historian, and so on, but the new question was how to write a bodily presence

Sovereign bodies: Australian Indigenous cultural festivals and flourishing lifeworlds

In 2008, I was an observer at a two-day workshop concerned with the future of the Laura Aboriginal Dance Festival. The delegates were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from across Cape York Peninsula, representing communities (Indigenous townships) that dance at this long-running event. There was an openfloor discussion; following cultural protocols, one by one elders got to their feet to speak for country. A highly respected elder told of how he and his family cared for country - walked, talked, sung, hunted, burned - to keep their ancestral lands healthy, as the land looked after them. He then passionately implored his audience to understand that dancing at the Laura festival is the same. My memory is of the old man becoming animated and agile, made young as his feet stomped the floor, his traditional country manifest in the room. As someone who has been to many Indigenous festivals, I saw dust rising, that old man dancing. After him, elders stressed their support for the festival and its role in gathering people from across the region to strengthen and affirm the Cape as a multicultural Aboriginal domain, and as a means to maintain and develop strong culture for the Cape and surrounding communities. All the participants then undertook an exercise to arrive at the festival purpose or mission statement. Despite the range of people and communities in the room, it did not take long for consensus to emerge. The countrymen were unanimous that the Laura Festival is a significant event for maintaining cultural integrity and passing on tradition to young people. That old man does not dance alone

Why does that old man dance? : Indigenous Cultural Festivals and the Possibilities for Life

In this paper, I examine Indigenous cultural festivals as creative commitments to the ontological primacy of land and non-western sociality, which emerges in a deeply intercultural world dominated by settler liberalism. Like many Indigenous festivals, those I am examining - Garma (NT), Laura Aboriginal Dance (FNQ), KALACC festivals (WA) and Milpirri (NT). - have a similar purpose: to maintain and strengthen culture. Yet it is Indigenous culture that worries so many people in the mainstream. A hope and aim of these events, I argue, is to compose anti-colonial relations, arguably whereby ‘culture’ is not a commodity to be scrutinized and judged but recognised as emanating from complex life worlds. I set out to understand whether and how Indigenous cultural festivals are public spaces where Indigenous people model a repertoire of possibilities of how to live (well) in the liberal settler state

My island home: Indigenous festivals and archipelago Australia

It’s raining in sunny Queensland. Rain wasn’t on my mind when I left wintry Sydney; then I was wondering: why so many Indigenous festivals now? What are they doing? Where did they come from? To what effect? Having fled a chilly Sydney mid-morning, I arrive Friday afternoon (Day 1 of the Dreaming Festival): after an easy one-hour flight to Brisbane, a clean and surprisingly on-time train to Caboolture, a local school bus toWoodford, I shareWoodford’s only taxi to the festival grounds.My companions are a motley crew; only later do I appreciate that they are somewhat representative of the festivalgoer. John from Nambour, taciturn to the point of almost mute, is meeting up with his young family; Eddie is an engaging, well-travelled Brisbane-based, Ethiopian-born security guard working at the festival; 20-year-old Sebastian, who spreads warmth and acceptance like a northern Queensland winter sun and looks like a suntanned angel, is working as a volunteer. Everyone is impressed that I’ve come from Sydney, bestowing upon me the valued status of the most travelled. Kate, the taxi driver, is like one of those Australian characters from a road movie: friendly and welcoming, overwhelming us with local knowledge and, in so doing, enclosing us within her world. She’s helpful and kind, yet a little paranoid: blissfully unaware of her own inconsistencies, whilst generously informing us of the ‘weird goings-on’ around town. It is like backpacking, with the luxury of home culture and language

Calling our Spirits Home: Indigenous cultural festivals and the making of a good life

Speaking about the problems affecting Wik youth of Aurukun, Cape York, a local community health worker, Derek Walpo, lamented that ‘their spirits have wandered too far. We need to call them back’. The poignant reflection was made at a debriefing session following a social and wellbeing festival in Aurukun.1 The five‐day event culminated in a Mary G concert, in which almost all the township gathered to laugh and cheer the indomitable Broome ‘lady’. It was not just Mary G’s ribald humour that vitalised and galvanised the crowd, but also her performance that playfully reflected back and validated some of the locals’ experiences and values, such as humour in the face of hardship. Derek was emphasising the importance of community celebrations and cultural ceremony as vehicles for improving the wellbeing of Aboriginal youth and community. Without denying or eclipsing the specificity of his remark, I would suggest that he was referring to an existential problem: the young people are overwhelmed by the dominant culture and fracturing local life and have lost a purpose of existence. His words underscore the ephemeral qualities that are vital to a good life. More, he evokes Indigenous life worlds that the settler colonial state finds difficult to countenance

Built environment assessment: Multidisciplinary perspectives.

Context:As obesity has become increasingly widespread, scientists seek better ways to assess and modify built and social environments to positively impact health. The applicable methods and concepts draw on multiple disciplines and require collaboration and cross-learning. This paper describes the results of an expert team׳s analysis of how key disciplinary perspectives contribute to environmental context-based assessment related to obesity, identifies gaps, and suggests opportunities to encourage effective advances in this arena. Evidence acquisition:A team of experts representing diverse disciplines convened in 2013 to discuss the contributions of their respective disciplines to assessing built environments relevant to obesity prevention. The disciplines include urban planning, public health nutrition, exercise science, physical activity research, public health and epidemiology, behavioral and social sciences, and economics. Each expert identified key concepts and measures from their discipline, and applications to built environment assessment and action. A selective review of published literature and internet-based information was conducted in 2013 and 2014. Evidence synthesis:The key points that are highlighted in this article were identified in 2014-2015 through discussion, debate and consensus-building among the team of experts. Results focus on the various disciplines׳ perspectives and tools, recommendations, progress and gaps. Conclusions:There has been significant progress in collaboration across key disciplines that contribute to studies of built environments and obesity, but important gaps remain. Using lessons from interprofessional education and team science, along with appreciation of and attention to other disciplines׳ contributions, can promote more effective cross-disciplinary collaboration in obesity prevention

Troubling School Toilets: Resisting discourses of 'development' through a critical disability studies and critical psychology lens

This paper interrogates how school toilets and ‘school readiness’ are used to assess children against developmental milestones. Such developmental norms both inform school toilet design and practice, and perpetuate normative discourses of childhood as middle-class, white, ‘able’, heteronormative, cissexist, and inferior to adulthood. Critical psychology and critical disability studies frame our analysis of conversations from online practitioner forums. We show that school toilets and the norms and ideals of ‘toilet training’ act as one device for Othering those who do not fit into normative Western discourses of 'childhood'. Furthermore, these idealised discourses of ‘childhood’ reify classed, racialised, gendered and dis/ablist binaries of good/bad parenting. We conclude by suggesting new methodological approaches to school toilet research which resist perpetuating developmental assumptions and prescriptions. In doing this, the paper is the first to explicitly bring school toilet research into the realms of critical psychology and critical disability studies