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Session abstracts

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U1.1-1.3 Indigenous identity in the urban space

U2. Identity and community

U3. Living in urban country

U4. Cultural expression & identity

U5. Economics and socioeconomics

U6.1. Governance, policy and identity in an urban environment

U6.2. Governance, policy and Identity in an urban environment

D1. Collecting and analysing data on urban Indigenous populations

Around three quarters of Indigenous Australian live in major cities or regional areas. However, the vast majority of urban Indigenous Australians live in towns or suburbs that are predominantly non-Indigenous. This relatively scattered distribution causes a number of problems for the collection and analysis of statistical data on urban Indigenous Australians as well as the delivery of policy and services. This series of presentations and papers will look at two aspects of the outcomes of urban Indigenous populations. In the first session, new data and research from Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Productivity Commission will be presented that gives new insights into the socioeconomic and health outcomes of the Indigenous population. Recognising that a person’s neighbourhood context matters, the second session looks at residential settlement patterns and the processes that underlie them. Additional insights will be gained from this session by comparing the situation of urban Indigenous Australians with the Canadian Aboriginal population. Subject to discussion with AIATSIS, it is also proposed that a final session be structured around a panel discussion with some of the authors from the previous two sessions on the role policy and research can play in improving the lives of the urban Indigenous population.

D2. Settlement patterns and processes

Around three quarters of Indigenous Australian live in major cities or regional areas. However, the vast majority of urban Indigenous Australians live in towns or suburbs that are predominantly non-Indigenous. This relatively scattered distribution causes a number of problems for the collection and analysis of statistical data on urban Indigenous Australians as well as the delivery of policy and services. This series of presentations and papers will look at two aspects of the outcomes of urban Indigenous populations. In the first session, new data and research from Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Productivity Commission will be presented that gives new insights into the socioeconomic and health outcomes of the Indigenous population. Recognising that a person’s neighbourhood context matters, the second session looks at residential settlement patterns and the processes that underlie them. Additional insights will be gained from this session by comparing the situation of urban Indigenous Australians with the Canadian Aboriginal population. Subject to discussion with AIATSIS, it is also proposed that a final session be structured around a panel discussion with some of the authors from the previous two sessions on the role policy and research can play in improving the lives of the urban Indigenous population.

D3. Policy and research for the urban Indigneous population

Around three quarters of Indigenous Australian live in major cities or regional areas. However, the vast majority of urban Indigenous Australians live in towns or suburbs that are predominantly non-Indigenous. This relatively scattered distribution causes a number of problems for the collection and analysis of statistical data on urban Indigenous Australians as well as the delivery of policy and services. This series of presentations and papers will look at two aspects of the outcomes of urban Indigenous populations. In the first session, new data and research from Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Productivity Commission will be presented that gives new insights into the socioeconomic and health outcomes of the Indigenous population. Recognising that a person’s neighbourhood context matters, the second session looks at residential settlement patterns and the processes that underlie them. Additional insights will be gained from this session by comparing the situation of urban Indigenous Australians with the Canadian Aboriginal population. Subject to discussion with AIATSIS, it is also proposed that a final session be structured around a panel discussion with some of the authors from the previous two sessions on the role policy and research can play in improving the lives of the urban Indigenous population.

E1. Successful education

E2. Education policy

E3. Early childhood learning

This session will look at current research questions in early childhood learning. How do we care for children from 0 to 8 in early childhood settings? What are their needs, especially in achieving their developmental milestones, and what sort of services do we need to provide to their carers to ensure the best possible early childhood development. Pertinent questions and issues to be discussed may include: language, nutrition, health and safety, medical needs, and developmental milestones. How can we best provide to the range of carer groups - from young mothers to grandparents. What are the differences between the services (and information) available for urban and remote women? How do carers navigate the information provided by western and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sources about early childhood development to ensure the best outcomes? Are their particular needs in the urban areas? Are these services and information sources accessed and, if not, how can this be facilitated?

E4.1.Providing effective schooling: Indigenous knowledge(s), education and culture

E4.2. Providing effective schooling: Indigenous knowledge(s), education and culture

E5. Training, employment and informal learning

E6. Tertiary education: enrolement, retention and post-graduate intake

E7. Tertiary education and teaching

CH1.1.-1.2 Indigenous archaeologies and the urban environment: maintaining our culture and heritage

Managing and protecting our significant Indigenous sites and places of  cultural significance continues to be a challenge faced by our people across Australia.  Within Urban settings these challenges are multiplied by the every increasing pressures of urban development  and expansion, the lack of indigenous land ownership and irrelevance  of native title.  This session provides for the first time a gathering and presentation  by some of Australia's Indigenous archaeologists and Elder Custodians  on the some of the challenges and successes we have faced in maintaining our culture and heritage in urban  environments. The papers will present a range of case studies and a  reflection of views from Indigenous archaeological managers and  custodians.

CH2. Water issues for urban people

CH3.1 -3.3 Reconnecting urban and remote communities via new technologies

The majority of curated cultural heritage is stored in urban areas. In recent years, Indigenous communities in both urban and rural/remote locations are increasingly engaging with innovative technologies to reconnect to their heritage housed domestically and overseas. This session considers the ways in which Indigenous communities are focusing on the ‘repatriation’ of digital material (and whether this should indeed, be termed ‘repatriation’), the way that this may influence their relationships and interactions with holding institutions; and the challenges and opportunities surrounding the development of online collections.

R1.1 - 1.2 Art, representation and identity

The contemporary urban Aboriginal artistic expression which emerged in the 1980s in association with land rights and self determination is hybrid, fluid and heterogeneous – a reflection of  a complex and conflicted Indigenous identity.  In a myriad of ways artists use cultural representations to challenge existing stereotypes, interrogate the events of colonial history and engage with an exploration of family and self.  This session explores individual and community perspectives across a range of contemporary and historical experiences from an earlier generation working in the era of assimilation and the first bold assertions of a contemporary Aboriginality in the 1980s to a younger generation who easily traverse the politics of cultural identity to openly critique colonial ideologies.

R.2. Health, community well being and cultural practice

Across southeast Australia individuals and communities are engaged in cultural projects directly linked to rebuilding the health and well being of Aboriginal people. Frequently these projects involve artists and community representatives working in collaboration with institutions who assist by providing access to archives and collections.  Driven by the determination for cultural revival, cultural protocols come to the fore in negotiations with communities resulting in story telling and renewed connections with the past.  Through the transmission of cultural knowledge, the retrieval of skills and the opportunity to reconnect with traditional land these projects contribute to education, social health, and a sense of individual and community identity.

R3. Representation in museums, films, and literature

CE1. Connecting to culture from an urban base: cultural expression, traditional knowledge and property rights

CE2. Contemporary Indigenous music in an urban setting

UH1. Re-exploring urban histories

UH2. Perth histories

UH3. Urban centres and social protest

H1. Unpack the Gap 1. Defining the Gap in an urban context: what is it and what are the drivers?

H2. Unpack the Gap 2. Navigating the Gap: whose gap is it anyway?

H3. The Effects of racism on health and wellbeing

H4. Understanding health care in urban environments: innovative research and new methodologies

H5. Addressing health needs: identifying community role and developing community partnerships

H6. Child health and safety of young people

H7. Mental health

H8. Men's Health

H9. Health and the Criminal Justice System

HO1. Research from historical and current policy context: homelessness, housing careers, status and challenges

HO2. Issues for practitioners. Does mainstream housing address Indigenous needs?

HO3. The future and what are the research gaps?  What is the impact of a 'shift to mainstream' ideology?

This session will examine and discuss issues surrounding the provision of community housing for Aboriginal people in urban areas. Addressing housing needs is fundamental to 'Closing the Gap', yet it is largely invisible in the debate. What are the urban housing needs, now and in the projected future? What are the differences in housing needs between urban and remote areas, and are these reflected in government policy? What is the disparity between need and provision, and why? What is the current policy direction and how is it informed? What are the policy frameworks that control Aboriginal housing and are they working? What is the relationship between housing, health, education and employment?

MM1. Mobility and urban settings

MM2.1-2.2. Urban Migration: disconnections, continuity and change

CP1. Solid work you mob are doing

CP2. Working together in an urban space: community partnerships

CP3. Notions of Aboriginality in cross-cultural training

Government departments, agencies and NGOs are a central point of connection between Indigenous and non-Aboriginal Australians.

Robyn Forest, from the Department of Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA), has been focusing on developing cross-cultural training programs for departmental staff who engage with Indigenous clients. Naomi Parry, working with Community Connections Solutions Australia (CCSA), has been developing a training program for use in the early childcare sector. Their pilot scheme, aimed at increasing Indigenous parents and carers’ participation in birth-to-five childcare facilities, will be implemented nationally in 2010.

Central to both programs are the way Indigenous Australians are defined, and in what ways training programs can provide nuanced responses to help non-Indigenous Australians in their professional engagements with their Indigenous client base.

The programs challenge simplistic notions that privilege remote and traditional communities as authentic, whilst defining urban-based Indigenous people as inauthentic. Most clients in the training programs are urban: the CSSA pilot program is running in western Sydney’s Mt Druitt (the largest concentration of Indigenous people in NSW), while the FaHCSIA programs are also urban-based.

Resources like The Little Red Yellow Black Book: An Introduction to Indigenous Australia (Pascoe and AIATSIS) are valuable tools in providing accessible information; the first step towards an improved understanding of Indigenous identities, and reconciliation for government department staff and educators.

LRE1 - 3. Language, revitalisation and education

This session focusses on reviewing and evaluating broad issues in the field of Aboriginal languages and education in urban environments. The role of Aboriginal languages in education is an ongoing issue for many urban Aboriginal communities, which are engaged in efforts to maintain, revitalise and reclaim traditional languages. This session aims to review this issue, with a view to developing a set of principles of effective program design

LKH1 -3. Language, kinship, heritage

This session will focus on the features and use of kinship systems in urban Aboriginal Australia and will provide an introduction to kinship systems in Aboriginal languages for people who are working to recover and revitalise their heritage. While traditional systems of kinship and the means of referring to family members in traditional Aboriginal societies has received considerable attention from linguists and anthropologists, little is documented on how kinship systems are maintained or revitalised in contemporary urban Aboriginal communities. Questions to be explored in this session include: have traditional kinship terms been maintained in urban Aboriginal communities? Have their meanings changed? Are English terms are used in contemporary Aboriginal languages such as Kriol and Aboriginal English, and do they have different meanings to Standard Australian English? Are differing kinship systems maintained when multiple Aboriginal groups live in the one urban environment, or is there some merging of systems? This session aims to bring together urban Aboriginal people, linguists and anthropologists to explore these phenomena.