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Session U6.2: Governance, policy and identity in an urban environment

1. K. McCallum & M Meadows: Journalism and the Indigenous policy-making process

Full paper | Audio | Video | Slideshow pdf 508KB

Abstract

This paper reports on a research project which is investigating the relationships between media attention to Indigenous issues and policy development processes. Australian news media and Indigenous policy-making 1988-2008* is exploring how Indigenous policies emerge within specific discursive environments. We argue that the ways in which Indigenous issues are discussed through the public media as ‘intractible’ have concrete policy outcomes that impact on the lives of Indigenous Australians, and on the relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in urban, rural and remote settings.

An analysis of news media reporting of the terms ‘Indigenous’ and ‘violence’ in eight Australian newspapers from 2000-2008 found that, rather than being a routine feature of news reporting, stories about Indigenous people and issues were structured in terms of periodic crises or panics, and consistently suggested a narrow range of policy responses. The radical incursion into Indigenous people’s lives through the 2007 Northern Territory ‘Intervention’ is one example of a policy solution that emerged within the persistent coverage of Indigenous people and issues as intractable policy problems. We are conducting fine-grained analyses of media texts, policy documents and public statements to explore the shifting the nature and focus of Indigenous policy in Australia over the past 20 years. We will conduct interviews to explore journalists’ and public policy officials’ local knowledge of intersections between journalism and the policy-making process.

*Australian news media and Indigenous policy-making 1988-2008 (Australian Research Council Discovery Project DP 0987457, 2009-2011). University of Canberra & Griffith University.Dr Kerry McCallum.

Author bios

Kerry McCallum, PhD, (Chief Investigator 1) is Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies and member of the News Research Group at the University of Canberra. She researches public opinion about Indigenous issues in Australia, and has studied media representation of social issues including cultural diversity, suicide, mental illness and illicit drug use. Her professional background is in federal politics.

Michael Meadows, PhD, (Chief Investigator 2) is Associate Professor, School of Arts, Griffith University. He is a leading Australian researcher in journalism practice, Indigenous and community media, and public representation of Indigenous issues. He has worked with Indigenous communities for the past 20 years and brings extensive research and collaboration experience to the project.

2. R. Atkinson, E. Taylor, M.  Walter: Burying Indigeneity: the spatial construction of reality and Indigenous Australia

Full paper | Audio | Video | Slideshow pdf 997KB

Abstract

Berger and Luckman treat ‘reality’ as socially constructed in that our impressions of everyday life are subjectively understood and mediated by the primary groups of our social interaction. In this paper we use this as a framework to explore the social and spatial boundedness of white and Indigenous Australia, and its resonance into public policy engagements. We ask in what ways the de facto spatial, as well as social, separation of circuits of non-Indigenous life exaggerate a sense of Indigenous life, as something that is ‘other’, apart and unknown, which in turn might diminish any urgency to ameliorate the conditions and abject life-chances of Indigenous Australians? We begin by profiling the spatial distribution and relative segregation of Indigenous Australians within our urban spaces. We then consider the value of a socio-spatial perspective on public policy formulation wherein a predominantly urban Indigenous population remains out of the sight and mind of political administrations due to the limited scope of social interaction and perceived social difference. We argue that this spatial disjuncture between white and black lives in urban areas supports the burial of Indigenous life in the socio-spatial construction of reality for white Australians. Indigenous Australians remain marginal to the daily life of the majority population even when they, in fact, reside close by.

Author Bios:

Maggie Walter (PhD) is a trawlwoolway woman of the pymmerrairrener nation of north east Tasmania and a senior lecturer with the School of Sociology at the University of Tasmania. Her research interests centre on social policy issues especially around inequalities and she teaches and publishes across these areas. Her research passion is a commitment to engaging Indigenous research capacities and to bringing Indigenous research and Indigenous researchers to the forefront of Australian research terrains. Maggie is a member of the Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council (IHEAC), the Steering Group for the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (LSIC) currently being conducted and co-convenor of the Indigenous issues thematic group within the Australian Sociological Association. She is the editor and an author in the best-selling social research methods text: Social Research Methods: an Australian Perspective (2006 1st edition; 2nd edition due 2009, Oxford University Press) and co-author, with Daphne Habibis, of a new book Social Inequality in Australia: Discourses, Realities and Futures (2008 Oxford University Press).

3. Josée Goulet, Julie Cunningham and  E. Cloutier : Perspectives on urban life of the Aboriginal peoples in Québec (CANADA):  understanding a new reality and influencing policy through innovative research partnership

Full paper | Audio | Video | Slideshow pdf 1.3MB

Abstract

Increasing attention has been given to innovative ways for enhancing the social relevance of research in the last decade or so. Very much in line with participatory action research principles, the co-development and co-management of research agendas have become such avenues for doing research differently, in a manner that is respectful of aboriginal peoples worldviews, research needs and approaches. Two years ago, the Regroupement des Centres d’amitié autochtones du Québec, a network of aboriginal community development institutions, and researchers affiliated to the DIALOG Network have begun the process of setting up such a research partnership. After consultations involving aboriginal community and university representatives, an application was made to the Community-University Research Alliance Program (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) and funding was obtained in March 2009 to start a 5 year long interdisciplinary and multisectorial research program that would focus on aboriginal urban issues. This presentation will provide an overview of this research partnership’s construction process thus far, highlighting the needs, interests and capacities of both community and university partners. It will also provide reflections regarding the challenges brought by issues of decision-making, communication, liaison and sharing inherent to the establishment of collaborative research partnership between people working for organizations with different cultures, knowledge, experiences and sets of priorities.

Author bios

Since 1989, Edith Cloutier has been Executive Director of the Val-d’Or Native Friendship, a community development organization whose mission is to improve the quality of life of urban aboriginals in Québec. She is President of the provincial association of Friendship Centres, the “Regroupement des Centres d’amitié autochtones du Québec.” Since 2002, she has been a member of the Board of Directors of the “Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue” and has been the Chairperson of that Board since 2006. For the past 20 years, she has been actively involved in representing the interests of urban aboriginal people on different First Nations Boards of Directors, Commissions and Committees. She has been awarded distinctions for her commitment and dedication to the cause of her people. She is also a member of the steering committee of DIALOG and is the co-investigator of the CURA project.

Julie Cunningham is coordinator and research officer for the DIALOG network. Her responsibilities include developing knowledge mobilization tools, organizing activities enhancing the DIALOG’s researchers and aboriginal partners’ collaboration and connection, and ensuring the dissemination of various types of information in order to increase the overall integration and participation of the network’s members.
In the CURA project, she acts as a facilitator between community and university partners and she documents the processes surrounding issues of partnership and co-production of knowledge. She holds a MA in Public Administration and Public Policy from Concordia University and a BA in International studies from Université de Montréal.

Possessing a Bachelor's Degree in Social Services, with a major in Community Organization from Laval University, Josée Goulet joined the Regroupement des centres d’amitié autochtones du Québec (RCAAQ) in 2001, drawn by its mission of militancy and recognition of an urban Aboriginal cultural identity. With her solid professional background, Josée quickly showed positive leadership in accepting the position of Executive Director in 2004. In taking on the responsibility for guiding the RCAAQ in its mission to promote the rights, interests and identity of Aboriginal people in the urban setting, she began the arduous work to support the Quebec Native Friendship Centres Movement in their mobilization to improve the quality of life of Aboriginal people, the development of Aboriginal social economy, promote culture and foster mutual understanding among peoples.