Living on the fringe

"This paper will focus on the stereotypical portrayal of the Aboriginal person created through colonial discourse and how this image continues to be displayed as an authentic version of Aboriginality. The original inhabitants of North America, regardless of significant differences in attire, climate, and customs became molded into a caricature representative of all North American Aboriginal peoples, regardless of inherent differences. The Plains people, with their elaborate fringed attire and exuberant headdress became the epitome of difference; the great signifier between Us and Them and therefore became the mold into which all other Aboriginal people were pressed. The outcome of this caricature was a typical ‘Red Man’ wearing romanticized ‘Indian dress– namely fringe, feathers, beads, and the headdress. This amalgamation will be further explored and it will be detailed how this image was perpetuated through the mendacious discourse written by the colonizers about Aboriginal people"--From page 7.

Living on the fringe

"This paper will focus on the stereotypical portrayal of the Aboriginal person created through colonial discourse and how this image continues to be displayed as an authentic version of Aboriginality. The original inhabitants of North America, regardless of significant differences in attire, climate, and customs became molded into a caricature representative of all North American Aboriginal peoples, regardless of inherent differences. The Plains people, with their elaborate fringed attire and exuberant headdress became the epitome of difference; the great signifier between Us and Them and therefore became the mold into which all other Aboriginal people were pressed. The outcome of this caricature was a typical ‘Red Man’ wearing romanticized ‘Indian dress– namely fringe, feathers, beads, and the headdress. This amalgamation will be further explored and it will be detailed how this image was perpetuated through the mendacious discourse written by the colonizers about Aboriginal people"--From page 7.

Using bridges made by others as scaffolding and establishing footings for those that follow: Indigenous women in the Academy

The first recorded Aboriginal person to graduate with an undergraduate qualification from any Australian university was Aboriginal woman Margaret Williams-Weir in 1959 ( Melbourne University, 2018 ). Williams-Weir graduated with a Diploma in Education. There have now been six decades of graduating Indigenous Australian women in the discipline of education, and many other disciplines. In this article, we explore Indigenous women’s presence in higher education through the narratives of our lives as Aboriginal women within education and the lives of other Indigenous women, noting their achievements and challenges. We acknowledge that while the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women participating in university study and becoming engaged in education as a discipline at undergraduate and postgraduate levels has increased, we are still significantly underrepresented. Similarly, while we have seen increases in Indigenous university staff within the education discipline, the employment of Indigenous academics has not reached parity with non-Indigenous academics levels and too few are employed in the professoriate and in senior management positions. We will show how we would not have been able to develop our education careers within higher education without the bridges built by those like Dr Williams-Weir and others who went before us. We will share how we have worked to establish the footings for those Indigenous women who will follow us and others. In this way, we work within the context that is for the now and the future.

Bold Women of the Warlpiri Diaspora Who Went Too Far

This chapter attempts to move beyond traditionalist notions of the Australian Aboriginal person. It accepts that personhood is porous and likely to change as general social conditions change. It explores this idea through mini-biographies of four Warlpiri matriarchs who have moved to diaspora locations and deliberately placed themselves at some distance from the social norms operating in their remote homeland settlements. Accounts of traditional Aboriginal personhood emphasised the spiritually emplaced and socially embedded person. In contrast, the lives of the four Warlpiri matriarchs demonstrate the extension of social networks beyond kin, pursuit of their own projects and the rejection of some aspects of traditional law that constrained them. The vectors of these changes include Western education, religious conversion and escape from traditional marriage.

An Opportunity for Healing and Holistic Care: Exploring the Roles of Health Care Providers Working Within Northern Canadian Aboriginal Communities

Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative study was exploring what the roles and challenges of health care providers working within Northern Canadian Aboriginal communities are and what resources can help support or impede their efforts in working toward addressing health inequities within these communities. Design: The qualitative research conducted was influenced by a postcolonial epistemology. The works of theorists Fanon on colonization and racial construction, Kristeva on semiotics and abjection, and Foucault on power/knowledge, governmentality, and biopower were used in providing a theoretical framework. Methods: Critical discourse analysis of 25 semistructured interviews with health care providers was used to gain a better understanding of their roles and challenges while working within Northern Canadian Aboriginal communities. Findings: Within this research study, three significant findings emerged from the data. First, the Aboriginal person’s identity was constructed in relation to the health care provider’s role of delivering essential health services. Second, health care providers were not treating the “ill” patient, but rather treating the patient for being “ill.” Third, health care providers were treating the Aboriginal person for being “Aboriginal” by separating the patient from his or her identity. The treatment involved reforming the Aboriginal patient from the condition of being “Aboriginal.”

Descent, Culture, and Self-Determination: States and the Definition of Indigenous Peoples

Canada’s concept of “status” – the definition of who is an Aboriginal person under the Indian Act – has its analogies in the administrative practices of many countries. However, the European colonial expansion produced great variety, with contemporary states now relying on multiple categories of definition; descent from an enrolled historical population is often arbitrarily combined with particular cultural or demographic attributes. Effective activism has, in recent decades, pushed states towards policies of Indigenous self-definition. However, this remains constrained and uneven. While the initial goal here is a critical survey of definitions of Indigenous status in the “settler states” of Australia, New Zealand/Aotearoa and the US, the paper examines practices in Latin America, Scandinavia and Russia as well as Asia and Africa. It concludes with a discussion about ongoing challenges for state practices of definition, including the implications of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Relationships matter: Supporting Aboriginal graduate students in British Columbia, Canada

The current Canadian landscape of graduate education has pockets of presence of Indigenous faculty, students, and staff. The reality is that all too often, Aboriginal graduate students are either among the few, or is the sole Aboriginal person in an entire faculty. They usually do not have mentorship or guidance from an Indigenous faculty member orally, that is, someone who is supportive of Indigenous knowledges and Indigenity. While many institutions are working to recruit and retain Aboriginal graduate students, more attention needs to be paid to culturally relevant strategies, policies, and approaches. This paper critically examines the role of a culturally relevant peer and faculty mentoring initiative—SAGE (Supporting Aboriginal Graduate Enhancement)—which works to better guide institutional change for Indigenous graduate student success. The key findings show that the relationships in SAGE create a sense of belonging and networking opportunities, and it also fosters self-accountability to academic studies for many students because they no longer feel alone in their graduate journey. The paper concludes with a discussion on the implications of a culturally relevant peer-support program for mentoring, recruiting, and retaining Aboriginal graduate students. It also puts forth a challenge to institutions to better support Aboriginal graduate student recruitment and retention through their policies, programs, and services within the institution.

Funding and Ethics in Métis Community Based Research

Recent ethical guidelines developed by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research along with the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans stress the importance of Aboriginal community engagement in research. Although these are positive changes meant to ensure respectful and responsive research relationships between communities and researchers, the understanding of 'community' employed by the new guidelines is problematic. In this sense, the guidelines rely on hegemonic understandings of what it is to be an Aboriginal person in Canada, as well as white spatial imaginaries of Aboriginal geographies. In this way, the guidelines codify Aboriginality and its spatiality as that of well-structured, landed, bounded and distinct rural communities. However, the contemporary Métis communities with whom the authors have worked rarely fit into hegemonic imaginaries of Aboriginality and its geographies in Canada. Rather, Métis communities are often institutionally weak, geographically dispersed and sociologically complex. Thus, we argue that the guidelines instantiate a territorialisation of society and space that risks re-marginalising Métis communities.

Stepping-Stone or Saving Story?

Why does one enter graduate studies? What does it mean to do research on Indigenous education as an Aboriginal person? What is the significance of attaining a master’s degree? In this paper I speak to how the experience of inquiring into the educational stories of five of my relatives, and into my own lived experiences, helped me understand the importance of stories and the impact of the autobiographical narrative inquiry on myself and my family.