Indigenous Well-Being: Connecting to Country and Culture

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Genealogy invites contributions to the topic “Indigenous Well-being: Connecting to Country and Culture”. It is focused on Indigenous ways of being, knowing, and doing and seeks to explore the use of cultural practice and creative arts to achieve ‘Indigenous Thriving’.

Social and emotional well-being in Indigenous cultures encompasses spiritual and cultural connections to people, places, animals, and plants. Indigenous people worldwide have long advocated (Nakata, 2007, Tuhawi Smith, 1999, Wilson, 2008, Rigney, 1999) for Indigenous cultural-led responses to dismantle the deficit Eurocentric oppression of Indigenous people, which typically focuses on the ‘problems’ and ‘ill health’ (Bond & Singh 2020) of Indigenous people and are not grounded in Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing (Moreton-Robinson, 2013). There is a dire need for ‘deep listening’ to Indigenous voices. This Special Issue responds to the need for Indigenous-led responses to strengthen Indigenous well-being by shifting the current dominant focus from the statistical ‘gap’ deficit model (Aboriginal Affairs NSW, 2017) to an Indigenous culturally strength-based standpoint defined by Indigenous people.

We seek to explore and highlight culturally led, practice-based programs and initiatives that are supporting Indigenous people to strengthen their social and emotional wellbeing through connection to Country and culture in Indigenous communities in Australia. We invite Indigenous Australian scholars and practitioners from across Australia working in interdisciplinary ways to contribute manuscripts, oral histories, artworks, photography and poetry that speak to the topic of Indigenous cultural, spiritual, social and emotional wellbeing.

Potential areas of focus may include the following:

• Practice-based projects and programs;
• Indigenous place, nation, and community-based health and well-being initiatives;
• Indigenous methodologies and research paradigms;
• Creative arts as a contemporary cultural and spiritual practice;
• Indigenous autobiography / autoethnography;
• Resilience;
• Connections to country and culture;
• Relationality;
• Multimedia;
• Intergenerational knowledge exchange.

Dr. Fabri Blacklock
Dr. Lynette Riley
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Genealogy is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Indigenous well-being
• connection to country and culture
• art and well-being
• social, emotional and cultural well-being
• Indigenous thriving
• Indigenous standpoint
• deep listening
• Indigenous artistic practice
• self determination
• Indigenous ways of doing, knowing, being