Search Results (4)

Aim: To understand the factors that influence family violence towards First Nations women, to inform practises and policies to support these women and improve their engagement in maternal child health services. Design: A qualitative study, using narrative inquiry integrated with the Indigenous philosophy ‘Dadirri’, and thematic analysis of the data. Materials and Methods: Survey of 10 Maternal Child Health nurses in 2019, and interviews of 35 Aboriginal mothers in 2021. Results: The nurses identified drugs, alcohol, socio-economic issues, the history of effects of colonisation on First Nations peoples, and stress as perceived factors influencing family violence, and acceptance, fear, cultural beliefs, and mistrust, for women’s low reporting of violence. Factors that influenced nurses’ ability to identify family violence were mistrust and understanding of Aboriginal culture. Low self-esteem, lack of belonging, and not being heard were identified by the mothers as factors that influence family violence. Fear of child protective services, shame, mistrust, and poor rapport with the nurses contributed to their low reporting of violence. The most significant factor for the mothers to disclose violence is fear of losing her child, mistrust, and the questioning process. Conclusions: Nurses’ understanding of Indigenous culture is critical to develop trust and improve the engagement of First Nations women. A significant difference in the synthesis of data between the nurses and their First Nations consumers was conspicuous. Research regarding the benefit of models and interventions that recognise the social determinants of health and well-being on health outcomes as well as the value of culturally strong health services aimed to encourage an earlier identification of risk, ideally from the antenatal period to the child’s fifth birthday, is imperative. The implications of this research are of international importance for First Nations families and challenge current nursing practises to address the human rights challenge of the inequity in health outcomes between First Nation and non-First Nation children, their exposure to family violence, and their over-representation in child protection services. Full article

Colonisation, genocide, ecocide, and climate derangement are ongoing, unfurling, global tragedies. In so-called Australia, spiritual practitioners can respond to these crises by deepening their engagement with Aboriginal perspectives/practices. This paper contends that some Eurocentric habitual categorisations subtly misinterpret Aboriginal experiences of the sacred, such as identifying creation myths as beliefs comparable to post-Enlightenment representations of the sacred and identifying the performance of sacred activity with similar characteristics to separateness and priesthood. This leads to erroneous characterisations of Aboriginal ritual practices as being based on a strong hierarchy, distinctive castes, and esotericism. We argue that an embodied and practice-based sense of sacredness guides Aboriginal spirituality. As a living culture, Aboriginal ongoing care for Country provides an enfleshed, real, palpable enactment of human spirituality. We argue that Aboriginal spirituality has been fetishised to the neglect of a call to care for Country in the most ‘mundane’ sense of tending to food, water, air, etc., as embodied religious experiences. Delving into dadirri and death, we elucidate contemporary cases of practical care for Country that illustrate how being on, in, and with Country can be a contemplative experience. We conclude by outlining how caring for Country ‘layers’ the various expressions of Aboriginal religious experience socially, psychologically, interpersonally, and ritually. Full article

Aboriginal culture intuitively embodies and interconnects the threads of life that are known to be intrinsic to human wellbeing: connection. Therefore, Aboriginal wisdom and practices are inherently strengths-based and healing-informed. Underpinned by an Indigenist research methodology, this article presents findings from a collaboration of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples to develop an Australian Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) Indigenous Framework during 2021 to 2023. The FASD Indigenous Framework unfolds the changes that non-Aboriginal clinicians and Aboriginal peoples each need to make in their respective ways of knowing, being and doing in order to facilitate access to healing-informed, strengths-based and culturally responsive FASD knowledge, assessment, diagnosis and support services among Aboriginal peoples. Drawing on the Aboriginal practices of yarning and Dadirri, written and oral knowledges were gathered. These knowledges were mapped against Aboriginal cultural responsiveness and wellbeing frameworks and collaboratively and iteratively reflected upon throughout. This article brings together Aboriginal wisdom (strengths-based, healing-informed approaches grounded in holistic and integrated support) and Western wisdom (biomedicine and therapeutic models) in relation to FASD. From a place of still awareness (Dadirri), both forms of wisdom were drawn upon to create Australia’s first FASD Indigenous Framework, a new practice in the assessment and diagnosis of FASD, which offers immense benefit to equity, justice, support and healing for Aboriginal families with a lived experience of FASD. Full article

This article is based on research with over 160 First Nations women in prisons in New South Wales, Australia. The research identified the lived experience of prison sentences for First Nations women in prison. Our research methodology was guided by an Aboriginal women’s advisory body called sista2sista. It was based on the principles of Dadirri in which we listened to the stories of First Nations women in prison on their terms. Consequently, many stories we heard were not about the criminal sentencing process itself, but about the impacts of imprisonment on their capacity to be caregivers in the community, including as mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, teachers and role models. The findings from this research are dual. First, the importance of listening to and empowering First Nations women in prison in policy making that concerns First Nations women. Second, the need to decarcerate First Nations mothers and listen and respond to their needs, expectations, priorities and aspirations, to ensure they are supported in fulfilling their role and responsibility to care, nurture, strengthen and lead their families and communities. Full article