“Can’t be what you can’t see”: the transition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to higher education

This report presents the findings of an investigation into the processes, the data, the key issues, the pathways, the enablers, the constraints and the opportunities regarding the transition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students into higher education. Through an examination of qualitative and quantitative evidence, the report explores the nuances, dimensions and different perspectives of what constitutes successful transition to higher education from a range of Indigenous community contexts and diverse university settings. The accompanying literature review for this project examined relevant research, policy and programs in peer-reviewed, non-peer-reviewed and grey literature relating to the transitioning of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students into higher education, including case studies of promising practice models nationally and internationally. • The research was commissioned and supported by the Australian Government through the Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT). The project involved researchers from the Nulungu Research Institute and The University of Notre Dame Australia, from Southern Cross University and the Bachelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education (BIITE). It was completed under the expert leadership and guidance of Professor Lyn Henderson-Yates, Professor Marguerite Maher and Professor Patrick Dodson

Strong Culture, Strong Place, Strong Families: KALACC\u27s Community Research Practitioners - Changing the narrative on Aboriginal Cultural Research Practice

The Strong Culture, Strong Place, Strong Families project is a collaborative community led research project developed by the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre (KALACC) in Partnership with the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) ANU. It is being supported by the Nulungu Research Institute. The project is funded by the National Indigenous Australian\u27s Agency (NIAA) over three years, and aims to develop a Cultural Outcomes Impact Framework by which to enable Aboriginal community developed indicators of the evidence of cultural impact to better assist with direct investment in cultural activities and increase Aboriginal community wellbeing

Media, Machines and Might: Reproducing Western Australia’s Violent State of Aboriginal Protection

This paper addresses the prevalence of state violence directed at Aboriginal people. It examines how violence has been reproduced in recent years in the space of Western Australia through mutually-reinforcing relations of financial interest, and how the function of private capital accumulation – in state violence against sovereign Aboriginal people – has remained hidden in white sight. This paper argues that state violence is legitimised through a discourse of Aboriginal protection. After outlining how this discourse and violence have operated in Western Australia, the paper provides a substantive narrative challenging the routine reproduction of state violence against Aboriginal bodies through a close reading of public and media texts. These texts relate to state violence against a blockade preventing land-clearing machines from entering Aboriginal country in mid 2011; state violence against the Nyoongar Tent Embassy in early 2012; and, the government's announcement in May 2011 that it would amend the Aboriginal Heritage Act. Through this analysis, lines are drawn between media, machines and might for the purpose of enabling white sight to see private capital accumulation functioning within the reproduction of state violence against Aboriginal people

Indigenous Sustainability: Rights, Obligations, and a Collective Commitment to Country

Recent movements within sustainability have sought to integrate Indigenous relationships to natural resources as part of the sustainability paradigm. Australian Indigenous peoples, and Indigenous movements internationally, have also utilized the language of sustainability when promoting inherent Indigenous rights to land, aspirations of self-determination and obligations to ‘country’. However, in utilising sustainability as a field of negotiation, Indigenous participants generally speak of another dimension within this debate, an Indigenous approach to ‘country’ that is bound within Indigenous relationships to natural-cultural resources that cannot be divorced from cultural-spiritual relationships with our natural world

Blood History

Life in the Valley Fitzroy Crossing has been in the news again. Front-page newspaper images of women carryning slabs of VB home on pension day mirror the scenes outside the window of my donga in the centre of town. It\u27s Big Pay day in Big Pay week.1 More than this town\u27s fair share of community members are gripped in the teeth of grog. [Excerpt from publisher\u27s website: http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-85954-6.html

Alcohol restrictions in the Kimberley: Findings of two year evaluations of alcohol restrictions in Fitzroy Crossing and Halls Creek – Why Kimberley restrictions have been largely successful

Community initiated alcohol restrictions have been in place in the Kimberley for four years (Fitzroy Crossing) and three years (Halls Creek). Nationally, alcohol restrictions are regarded by many commentators and health professionals as an ineffective tool in dealing with systemic alcohol abuse afflicting regional communities. Yet, for two Kimberley towns two year qualitative and quantitative evaluations completed by the Nulungu Research Institute for the Drug and Alcohol Office (WA) have revealed significant overall health and social benefits as well as the creation of windows of opportunity for social reconstruction of communities suffering the effects of excessive alcohol consumption, due largely to these restrictions. This paper will reveal the findings of these two year studies and compare and contrast the results between the town of Fitzroy Crossing (the Fitzroy Valley) and Halls Creek (the central eastern Kimberley)

Episode 4: Everything Old is New Again

Sharing policy design for treaty, voice to Parliament and Closing the Gap.https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/fighting_for_aboriginal_self_determination/1003/thumbnail.jp

Episode 5: A Matter of Urgency

Fortitude and consistency at no small cost in the face of constant policy shifts.https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/fighting_for_aboriginal_self_determination/1004/thumbnail.jp

Episode 1: Hope Comes to the Kimberley

De-colonisation, leadership and land rights.https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/fighting_for_aboriginal_self_determination/1000/thumbnail.jp