Completed research projects

Health and wellbeing

The National Trachoma and Eye Health Program history project: an Aboriginal perspective
Researchers: Gordon Briscoe, Jilpia Nappaljari Jones, and Leila Smith

The National Trachoma and Eye Health Program (NTEHP) was a national survey on the eye health of rural, and particularly Indigenous, Australians, which was conducted from 1976 to 1978. NTEHP project workers travelled through every state and territory, visiting remote towns, properties and offshore islands including the Torres Strait Islands. In addition to the survey work, the program provided treatment for eye health problems. The NTEHP history project surveyed surviving NTEHP project workers about the work of the Program. This project focuses on the significance of the NTEHP in the history of Indigenous health.

The Muuji Regional Centre for Social and Emotional Wellbeing project
Researchers:  Jodie Fisher and the Muuji Regional Centre team, and Graham Henderson 

The Muuji Regional Centre for Social and Emotional Wellbeing is a consortium of three Aboriginal community controlled health and medical services: Winnunga Nimmityjah Aboriginal Health Service (Canberra), Riverina Medical and Dental Aboriginal Corporation (Wagga Wagga), and Katungul Aboriginal Corporation and Community Medical Service (Narooma).  This research project is investigating one of the four core objectives of the National Regional Centre Program for Social and Emotional Wellbeing. This objective relates to the development of information systems to clarify the level of emotional and social wellbeing need in the region and to inform the operations of the Muuji Regional Centre.  We are developing an information base using survey questionnaire instruments.  The aim is to understand the needs of the community in this region and the services that are available.

The Winnunga Nimmityjah Aboriginal Health Service Prison project
Researchers: Julie Tongs, Peter Sharp, Jodie Fisher, Jo Victoria, Katja Mikhailovich, Nerelle Poroch, John Van den Dungen, and Graham Henderson

This research project was initiated by Winnunga Nimmityjah Aboriginal Health Service in response to the decision by the ACT government to build a prison within the ACT.  Currently people convicted in the ACT are sent to prisons outside the ACT.  Winnunga provides a health service to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander inmates of the Goulburn and Cooma jails in NSW, Belconnen Remand Centre and Quamby Youth Detention Centre, both in the ACT.  This project aims to develop a best practice model of holistic health care delivery to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander inmates of the new jail and their families and Aboriginal health workers involved in their care.

Education and cultural transmission

Access to Knowledge/Creative Commons movements
Researchers: Jae Anderson and Kathy Bowrey (UNSW)
This work invites critical reflection upon the cultural agendas produced through networks of power and imaginary politics within the commons movement. It asks what or where is the public interest in the production of an information commons and whether there is scope for recognising that the public is not all of one kind? The central concern for this research that the ‘common’ ground upon which the access to knowledge movement (A2K) seeks to tread, that is, the notion of humanity sharing a commons, is actually a fault line of significant proportions that involves colonial and post-colonial conflict, politics, power, economics and histories of human relationships.

Intellectual property and Indigenous knowledge: access and control of cultural materials
Researcher: Jane Anderson
The outcomes from this project include a significant research report, Guidelines on the Legal Implications of Intellectual Property for Cultural Institutions, and a Framework for Protocols for IP and Indigenous Communities. These documents target the discrete practical needs of Indigenous communities and their engagement with cultural institutions across the country. The Guidelines seek to raise the standard of institutional responsibility in their relations with Indigenous people, communities and cultural materials. The Framework for Protocols will address practical community needs and expectations around intellectual property law, and control of knowledge between individuals, communities and external researchers.

The Australian Collaboration funded Success in Indigenous Communities project 
Researchers: Julie Finlayson, Jo Lunzer (Research Assistant)
AIATSIS has been funded by the Australian Collaboration and other organisations to conduct research of factors that lead to success in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations. The results of the pilot study for this project are published in Success in Aboriginal Communities: A Pilot Study, Australian Collaboration/AIATSIS, Canberra, 2004 (2 Vols). Dr Julie Finlayson is the primary researcher and author of that study. Prof. Larissa Behrendt, AIATSIS Council; Emeritus Professor David Yencken, The Australian Collaboration; ATSIC representatives; and Dr Luke Taylor, AIATSIS comprised the Steering Committee for the Stage 1 project. AIATSIS is currently conducting the Stage 2 study with support from Aboriginal Affairs Victoria, the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, Reconciliation Australia and the Australian Collaboration. Mr Geoff Scott and Dr Peter Veth, AIATSIS have been added to the Steering Committee and Ms Jo Lunzer is assisting Dr Julie Finlayson with the research.

Aboriginal song cycles from the Simpson Desert and the Cooper: An integrated linguistic and musicological study
Researcher: Grace Koch
Grace Koch is working with Dr Luise Hercus on a three-year ARC grant to analyse and document song cycles of the Wangkangurru people of the Lake Eyre Basin.
 
In the 1960s and early 1970, Luise Hercus recorded considerable data on Aboriginal traditions in the north-eastern part of the Lake Eyre Basin from elders, now deceased. Some of the song texts match up with those written down by Police Trooper Samuel Gason in 1879 and by J.G. Reuther more than 6 decades earlier. Analysis of this data provides the basis for the project, the aim of which is to make a detailed analysis of the most important Wangkangurru song-cycles.
The work will provide detailed musicological and linguistic analysis for endangered language material, filling in a gap in knowledge of the geographical area inhabited by Wangkangurru people. We have arranged for digitisation of the tapes held by Hercus and are producing a volume incorporating a textual analysis of the songs, musical transcription, mapping and a study of the song styles. Also, we hope to produce a CD of the songs, in conjunction with the wishes of the community.
At present, two song series, Fish and Crane and Two Boys, have been notated and documented linguistically and historically. 

Smart kids managing schooling
Researcher: Anthea Jo Taylor
This research project involves conducting an ethnography, through a focus group of Indigenous children, and tracking their progress through kindergarten, pre-primary and year one to identify what spaces exist for cultural transmission and cultural reproduction in the mainstream school in urban settings.  This project seeks to identify and understand important points of potential implicit and explicit tension for Indigenous children in this socio-cultural interface.  Specifically the study will focus on three interrelated aspects of cultural transmission - language, interaction style(s) and power (and authority) - and aims to discern cultural understandings in the communicative language, literacy and interaction of Indigenous students, their parents and the Aboriginal and Islander education workers (AIEWs and ALOs) with whom they are associating, teachers and non-Indigenous children.  A particular emphasis of this project is the development of ways to make findings and resultant understandings accessible and of practical use to education practitioners.
It is planned to undertake blocks of participant observation for extended periods (8-10 weeks) during first and fourth terms for two and a half to three years and to visit the sites for occasional days to ensure that children, their parents and caregivers remain familiar with the researcher over the period of the research.

Indigenous landscapes on the Canning Stock Route
Researcher: Peter Veth
Peter has carried out research on Aboriginal use of the Canning Stock Route for over 20 years. Located in the Little, Great and Sandy Deserts most work has focussed on the archaeology, ethnoeconomics, contact history and totemic geography of this remote portion of the Western Desert. Work has been carried out with Martu people from communities such as Jigalong, Kunawariji, Parngurr, Wiluna and further north on the CSR. Collaborative projects in the past have involved dating occupational history, studying plant use and firing regimes, documenting rock art in its economic and totemic context and recording contact narratives from people who made contact with 'outsiders' as late as the mid-`1970s. Current research focuses on collaboration with Ngaanyatjarra Land Council, management stakeholders and rock art/anthropological colleagues in the development of a management and interpretive strategy for the Canning Stock Route. This will form the basis of an ARC Linkage bid in the October 2007 Round and is planned to run from 2008-2010.

Strangers on the shore: first contacts between Indigenous Australians and outsiders
Researcher: Peter Veth
A Conference by this title was held at the National Australian Museum at end of march 2006. Its main aim was to examine and give voice to Indigenous experiences of first contacts with outside colonial and commercial regimes and to explore the diversity and dynamics of these encounters. The Conference had 16 invited papers (Plenaries by Professors Dodson, Langton and Mulvaney) and Discussants Drs Ian Keen, Nancy Munn and Mr Steve Kinnane. Case studies were presented from all over Australia - from the Dutch in 1606, the Macassans, through to the French in Tasmania and the English off the eastern seaboard. The proceedings will be published as a major volume by the national Museum of Australia and is scheduled to be edited by a team co-ordinated by Peter Veth.

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Indigenous language and cultural expression

Aboriginal Child Language Acquisition Project external
Researcher: Patrick McConvell

An ARC project with University Of Melbourne and University of Sydney 2004-7, involving four indigeous communities in Central Australia with four Ph.D students and Indigenous research assistants. The aim is to see how children are learning languages in a sitiation where there are several languages spoken and the traditional languages are endangered.

AUSTKIN Kinship Mapping  
Researcher: Patrick McConvell

Web mapping of kinship terms and systems and social features  on Australian base maps. In partnership with Laurent Dousset of the Centre for the documentation of Oceania, Paris. Linked to another project 'Australian Society in the last 10,000 years'

EthnoER Ethnographic E-Research external
Researcher: Patrick McConvell

A one-year ARC special initiative project with a number of Australian and overseas partners developing web tools for video and audio annotation of indigenous cultural materials (stories, conversation, music) for distributed use by different repositories.

Loanword Typology Project external
Researcher: Patrick McConvell

With a team looking at languages around the world, this project is investigating which words have been borrowed into Gurindji language of the Victoria River District from which sources and when.

Victoria River District Languages and Cultures Documentation project of DoBeS external
Researcher: Patrick McConvell

Victoria River District Languages and Cultures Documentation project 2005-8  of DoBeS, the Documentation of Endangered Languages project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, focussing on five engangered languages both Pama-Nyungan and non-Pama-Nyungan, and associated indigenous knowledge.  On the website linked to above, it is listed as Jaminjung.)

Governance

Living Country, Working Country: A Sustainability Strategy for the Kimberley Region of Western Australia
Researcher: Steve Kinnane

The project facilitates the investigation of sustainable occupation of country in the Kimberley region through documenting and critiquing past, present and planned developments within the region and their impact upon and relevance for Indigenous communities. This involves negotiation with and investigation of the practices of Indigenous Land and Sea Management Units (LSMU) within the Northern Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance (NAILSMA), the Kimberley Development Commission, and regional government and non-government development agencies.

The project investigated avenues by which Indigenous approaches to sustainable development of Country through culturally appropriate economies are operating in the region, and identifed necessary strategies for the support and development of sustainable practices within the region that benefit Indigenous peoples and operate within Indigenous aspirations to development in the region. It evaluated the viability and efficacy of partnership projects, market-based projects and government-based Natural Resource Management (NRM) against mainstream sustainability principles, policies and movements, as well as identified Indigenous aspirations and visions for the region.

The project will result in an overall report titled ‘Living Country, Working Country: A Sustainability Strategy for the Kimberley Region of Western Australia’, comprising five sections ( a Regional Sustainability Discussion Paper, case studies of bioregional areas of saltwater country, desert country and freshwater country, and draft sustainability strategy for the region).

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