Bronwyn L. Fredericks

Reempowering Ourselves: Australian Aboriginal Women

The arrival of the colonists, the invasion of Aboriginal lands, and the subsequent colonization of Australia had disastrous effects on Aboriginal women, including ongoing dispossession and disempowerment. Aboriginal women’s lives and gendered realities were forever changed in most communities. The system of colonization in Australia deprived Aboriginal women of land and personal autonomy and restricted the economic, political, social, spiritual, and ceremonial domains that had existed before colonization. It also involved the implementation of overriding patriarchal systems. This is why Aboriginal women may find understanding within the women’s movement and why feminism might offer them a source of analysis. There are some connections in the various forms of social oppression that give women connection and a sense of sharing some issues. However, imperialism and colonialism are also part of the women’s movement and feminism. This essay demonstrates why attempts to engage with feminism and to be included in women‐centered activities might result in the denial and sidelining of Aboriginal sovereignty and in the further oppression and marginalization of Aboriginal women. Moreover, strategies employed by nonindigenous feminists can result in the maintenance of white women’s values and privileges within the dominant patriarchal white society. By engaging in these strategies, feminists can also act in direct opposition to Aboriginal sovereignty and Aboriginal women. This essay states clearly that women who do not express positions or opinions in outright support of these activities still benefit from their position of silence by proxy and contribute to the cultural dominance of nonindigenous women. I argue that Aboriginal women need to define what empowerment might mean to themselves, and I suggest reempowerment as an act of Aboriginal women’s healing and resistance to the ongoing processes and impacts of colonization.

What Health Services within Rural Communities Tell Us about Aboriginal People and Aboriginal Health

Abstract There is a growing body of literature within social and cultural geography that explores notions of place, space, culture, race and identity. When health services in rural communities are explored using these notions, it can lead to multiple ways of understanding the cultural meanings inscribed within health services and how they can be embedded with an array of politics. For example, health services can often reflect the symbolic place that each individual holds within that rural community. Through the use of a rural health service case study, this paper will demonstrate how the physical sites and appearances of health services can act as social texts that convey messages of belonging and welcome, or exclusion and domination. They can also produce and reproduce power and control relations. In this way, they can influence the ways that Aboriginal people engage in health service environments–either as places where Aboriginal people feel welcome, comfortable, secure and culturally safe and happy to use the health service, or as places where they utilise the service provided with a great deal of effort, angst and energy. It is important to understand how these complex notions play out in rural communities if the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal people is going to be addressed.

Which way? Educating for nursing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

Abstract Cross-Cultural Awareness Training has been seen as a way to improve nurses’ knowledge and understanding of Indigenous peoples in Australia (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders) and therefore to improve service delivery and therapeutic care to them. Nurses may have undertaken this type of training in their workplace or as part of nurse education in an undergraduate degree program. In asking ‘Which Way’, with regard to this type of training and education, this paper includes the views of a selection of Aboriginal women and highlights the need to extend beyond Cross-Cultural Awareness Training to Anti-Racism Training. Further, Anti-Racism Training and addressing white race privilege is required in order to address inequities within the health system, as well as the marginalisation and disempowerment of Indigenous peoples.

“Yarning” as a Method for Community-Based Health Research With Indigenous Women: The Indigenous Women's Wellness Research Program

This project explores yarning as a methodology for understanding health and wellness from an indigenous womans perspective. Previous research exploring indigenous Australian womens perspectives have used traditional Western methodologies and have often been felt by the women themselves to be inappropriate and ineffective in gathering information and promoting discussion. This research arose from the indigenous women themselves, and resulted in the exploration of using yarning as a methodology. Yarning is a conversational process that involves the sharing of stories and the development of knowledge. It prioritizes indigenous ways of communicating, in that it is culturally prescribed, cooperative, and respectful. The authors identify different types of yarning that are relevant throughout their research, and explain two types of yarning—family yarning and cross-cultural yarning—which have not been previously identified in research literature. This project found that yarning as a research method is appropriate for community-based health research with indigenous Australian women. This may be an important finding for health professionals and researchers to consider when working and researching with indigenous women from other countries.

Beyond the accolades: a postcolonial critique of the foundations of the Ottawa Charter

Introduction: The Ottawa Charter is undeniably of pivotal importance in the history of ideas associated with the establishment of health promotion. There is much to applaud in a charter which responds to the need to take action on the social and economic determinants of health and which seeks to empower communities to be at the centre of this. Such accolades tend to position the Ottawa Charter as ‘beyond critique’; a taken-for-granted ‘given’ in the history of health promotion. In contrast, we argue it is imperative to critically reflect on its ‘manufacture’ and assess the possibility that certain voices have been privileged, and others marginalized. Methods: This paper re-examines the 1986 Ottawa Conference including its background papers from a postcolonial standpoint. We use critical discourse analysis as a tool to identify the enactment of power within the production of the Ottawa health promotion discourse. This exercise draws attention to both the power to ensure the dominant presence of privileged voices at the conference as well as the discursive strategies deployed to ‘naturalize’ the social order of inequality. Results: Our analysis shows that the discourse informing the development of the Ottawa Charter strongly reflected Western/colonizer centric worldviews, and actively silenced the possibility of countervailing Indigenous and developing country voices. Conclusion: The Ottawa Charter espouses principles of participation, empowerment and social justice. We question then whether the genesis of the Ottawa Charter lives up to its own principles of practice. We conclude that reflexive practice is crucial to health promotion, which ought to include a preparedness for health promotion to more critically acknowledge its own history. (Global Health Promotion, 2013; 20(2): 22–29)

Utilising the Concept of Pathway as a Framework for Indigenous Research.

Drawing on Gregory Cajete’s (1994, p.55) explanation of Pathway (Path denoting structure, Way implying a process), a research framework was developed exploring Aboriginal women’s perceptions and experiences of health and health services. Developing the research methodology was like laying out the Path, as a well thought out structure or the plan for the research. It relates as an external landscape not just in terms of the Path itself, but also the research process within the landscape of the site of the research. The Way, being the process, involved enabling a clear, thought out process for me to follow and additionally one for me within my Self. The research was informed and guided by Aboriginal women. I also travelled an internal landscape in the journey of the Self, within my own learning and coming to terms with myself as an Indigenous researcher within the Pathway.

The Need to Extend beyond the Knowledge Gained in Cross-cultural Awareness Training

In the Health Sector, Cross-Cultural Awareness Training has been seen as a way to improve knowledge and understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to therefore improve service delivery and therapeutic care to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Health personnel may have undertaken this type of training in their workplace or as part of their education in an undergraduate degree program. Other sectors additionally undertake Cross-Cultural Awareness Training for similar reasons and in similar educational settings. This paper includes the views of a selection of Aboriginal women and highlights the need to extend beyond knowledge gained through Cross-Cultural Awareness Training to Anti-Racism Training. Furthermore, that Anti-Racism Training and addressing white race privilege is required in order to address the inequities within the health system, the marginalisation and disempowerment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

RESEARCHING WITH ABORIGINAL WOMEN AS AN ABORIGINAL WOMAN RESEARCHER

Tewa man Gregory Cajete describes the concept of Pathway as it relates to Indigenous learning and education: The concept of Pathway, revealed in numerous ways in Indigenous education, is associated with mountains, winds, and orientation. Learning involves a transformation that unfolds through time and space. Pathway, a structural metaphor, combines with the process of journeying to form an active context for learning about spirit. Pathway is an appropriate metaphor since, in every learning process, we metaphorically travel an internal, and many times external, landscape. In travelling a Pathway, we make stops, encounter and overcome obstacles, recognise and interpret signs, seek answers, and follow the tracks of those entities that have something to teach us. We create ourselves anew. Path denotes a structure; Way implies a process (Cajete 1994, 55). I drew on the work of Cajete to develop a framework for my PhD research exploring ‘how the relationship between health services and Aboriginal women can be more empowering from the viewpoints of Aboriginal women’. The assumption underpinning this thesis was that empowering and re-empowering practices for Aboriginal women can lead to improved health outcomes. The research methodology can be understood as laying out the Path, as a well developed structure or the plan for the research. It relates as an external landscape not just in terms of the Path itself, but also the research process within the landscape of the site of the research, Rockhampton. The Way, being the process, involved enabling a clear, stepped out process for me to follow and also one for me within my Self. In undertaking my thesis research I, travelled an internal landscape in the journey of the Self and came to terms with myself as an Indigenous woman researcher. I came to learn that I needed to make stops, that I would encounter and need to overcome obstacles, recognise and interpret signs, seek answers and follow the tracks of others that had been before me and who had something to teach me. I also understand that, within the Pathway of the research, I have created new ways for others to see Aboriginal women, new ways for Aboriginal women to have voices, share voices and more fully comprehend themselves and each other within a research process that they participated in developing. I know that I have come to understand myself more clearly as an Indigenous woman researcher, and that I have come to view myself in new ways. This paper will firstly provide a brief overview of issues pertaining to Aboriginal research, issues that I needed to consider when contemplating and undertaking research with Aboriginal women within the community of Rockhampton. This is the broader landscape in which the research was based and which I believe may be used to inform research with Aboriginal women in other areas. Secondly, I explore issues specific to myself as a researcher and, more importantly, as an Indigenous woman researcher. It shows the issues connected with being an Indigenous researcher, that is, as a new traveller within the broader landscape of research. Thirdly, I give a brief overview of how the research process was developed, how supervisors were selected for this research, and some of research methodologies as they relate to this research project with Aboriginal women.

Look before You Leap: The Epistemic Violence That Sometimes Hides behind the Word 'Inclusion'

This paper demonstrates how Indigenous studies is controlled in some Australian universities in ways that continue the marginalisation, denigration and exploitation of Indigenous peoples. Moreover, it shows how the engagement of white notions of “inclusion” can result in the maintenance of racism, systemic marginalisation, white race privilege and radicalised subjectivity. A case study will be utilised which draws from the experience of two Indigenous scholars who were invited to be part of a panel to review one Australian universitys plan and courses in Indigenous studies. The case study offers the opportunity to destabilise the relationships between oppression and privilege and the epistemology that maintains them. The paper argues for the need to examine exactly what is being offered when universities provide opportunities for “inclusion”.

Postpartum care for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal women with Gestational Diabetes Mellitus across urban, rural and remote locations: A protocol for a cohort linkage study

BackgroundGestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is increasing, along with obesity and type 2 diabetes (T2DM), with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Aboriginala) women in Australia particularly affected. GDM causes serious complications in pregnancy, birth, and the longer term, for women and their infants. Women with GDM have an eightfold risk of developing T2DM after pregnancy, compared to women without GDM. Indigenous women have an even higher risk, at a younger age, and progress more quickly from GDM to T2DM, compared to non-Indigenous women. If left undetected and untreated, T2DM increases risks in subsequent pregnancies, and can lead to heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, limb amputations and blindness for the woman in the longer term. A GDM diagnosis offers a ‘window of opportunity’ to provide acceptable and effective prevention, treatment, and postpartum care. Low rates of postpartum T2DM screening are reported among non-Aboriginal women in Australia and Indigenous women in other countries, however, data for Aboriginal women in Australia are scarce. A healthy diet, exercise and breastfeeding can delay the onset of T2DM, and together with T2DM screening are recommended elements of postpartum care for women with GDM. This paper describes methods for a study evaluating postpartum care among Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal women with GDM.Methods/DesignThis retrospective cohort includes all women who gave birth at Cairns Hospital in far north Queensland, Australia, from 2004 to 2010, coded as having GDM in the Cairns Hospital Clinical Coding system. Data is being linked with the Midwives Perinatal Data Collection, and the three local laboratories. Hospital medical records are being reviewed to validate accuracy of GDM case ascertainment, and gather information on breastfeeding and provision of dietary advice. Survival analysis is being used to estimate time to screening, and rates of progression from GDM to T2DM. Logistic regression is being used to compare postpartum care between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal women, and assess factors that may be associated with provision of postpartum care.DiscussionThere are challenges to collecting postpartum data for women with GDM, however, this research is urgently needed to ensure adequate postpartum care is provided for women with GDM.