Martin Nakata

The Cultural Interface

For a while now I have been researching and writing about Australian Indigenous education issues. Like you all, I have seen much good work and learnt much from what is going on across the country and internationally to improve outcomes for Indigenous learners in formal education processes. And still we go on with the struggle and with the limitations that Western sciences and practices place on us in the process. This paper draws together theoretical propositions from the work we have been progressing for the higher education sector over the past decade and to point to some foundational principles that can help establish some early beginnings with Indigenous education as a discipline in the higher education sector.

Australian Indigenous Knowledge and Libraries

In response to significant changes in the Indigenous information landscape, the State Library of New South Wales and Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology, Sydney, hosted a colloquium, Libraries and Indigenous Knowledge, in December 2004. The two-day colloquium brought together professionals, practitioners and academics to discuss future directions in relation to Indigenous knowledge and library services. An expert and inspiring group of speakers and more than 90 active participants ensured that lively discussions did, indeed, take place.

The Cultural Interface of Islander and Scientific Knowledge

The interface between Indigenous knowledge systems and Western scientific knowledge systems is a contested space where the difficult dialogue between us and them is often reduced to a position of taking sides. Storytelling is however a very familiar tradition in Indigenous families where we can and do translate expertly difficult concepts from one generation to the next. This article is based on my attempt to story our way through the difficult dialogue and to posit opportunities for more productive engagements about the place of Indigenous knowledge in our future deliberations at the Indigenous Studies and Indigenous Knowledge Conference series.

Symptoms of Trauma, Perceptions of Discrimination, and Anger: A Comparison Between Australian Indigenous and Nonindigenous Prisoners

Although the need for the development and provision of culturally appropriate rehabilitation programs for offenders is widely acknowledged, there is a lack of empirical data that can be used as a basis for the development of new programs. This article reports the findings of a comparison of indigenous and nonindigenous male prisoners on a range of measures relevant to the experience of anger by indigenous prisoners in Australia. The results suggest that indigenous participants are more likely to experience symptoms of early trauma, have greater difficulties identifying and describing feelings, and perceive higher levels of discrimination than nonindigenous prisoners. The implications of this work for the development of culturally appropriate and effective anger management programs for indigenous male prisoners are discussed.

Indigenous Digital Collections: An Early Look at the Organisation and Culture Interface.

This article identifies and provides some commentary on the key issues emerging from research into the digitisation of Indigenous materials in collections conducted in collaboration with three state libraries. It situates the research project within the broader context of related activity aimed at addressing the ongoing challenges of access, preservation and protection pertaining to Indigenous materials in libraries. It examines some of the practical issues that institutions have to engage with to respond to Indigenous needs and interests in the digitisation process. Some suggestions for future progress in the area are made.

The Rights and Blights of the Politics in Indigenous Higher Education

The Seventh Berndt Foundation Biennial LectureIt is clear from their voluminous scholarly output over five decades that Ronald and Catherine Berndt were keen observers of ‘the winds of change’ that were blowing strongly across most of Aboriginal Australia in that period. We contemporary scholars are closely watching both changes emanating from outside our communities and those that we as Indigenous Australians have instigated and moulded from within. A particular focus of this paper is how Indigenous Higher Education policies, programs and practices have been shaped by the politics of Indigenous self-determination and supported by social justice and human rights agendas. These frameworks have also guided argument, advocacy, and activism in the wider arena of Indigenous affairs, providing much of its language and forms of analysis. Today, however, there is evidence of a growing frustration that such frameworks have prevented alternative arguments, priorities, and possibilities from entering public discourse. In this paper, I discuss how these frameworks mutually constitute and uphold forms of analysis in Indigenous academia and Indigenous affairs in ways that fail to engage with the complexity of the contemporary space in which we as Indigenous people find ourselves today.

Indigenous students' persistence in higher education in Australia: contextualising models of change from psychology to understand and aid students' practices at a cultural interface

The need to address the substantial inequities that exist between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in higher education is widely recognised. Those factors that affect the performance of Indigenous students in tertiary education have been reasonably well documented across different institutions, disciplines, and programme levels but there has, to date, been less consideration of the processes by which Indigenous students either persist or desist in higher education. This paper aims to present a conceptual understanding of academic persistence that can inform the delivery of tailored academic support interventions to Indigenous students who are at high risk of leaving higher education.

The Meaning of Anger for Australian Indigenous Offenders The Significance of Context

The problem of overrepresentation of Indigenous offenders in Australian prisons highlights the need for effective tertiary intervention programs within correctional settings as a way of reducing Indigenous reincarceration. This study seeks to explore meanings of anger within an Indigenous context that might inform the development of more acceptable and potentially more effective rehabilitation programs. A methodology that acknowledges the importance of narrative, context, and culture was devised to explore how anger as an emotion is understood and experienced by a group of Indigenous men in a South Australian prison. Although some of the major themes reflected experiences of anger common to many offenders, it was evident that for these Indigenous men, anger was experienced within a broad social and political context that imbued the experience of anger with layers of culturally specific meaning. It is suggested that these layers of meaning constitute sufficient difference to warrant further exploration.

Indigenous Family Violence: An Attempt to Understand the Problems and Inform Appropriate and Effective Responses to Criminal Justice System Intervention

Whilst high levels of concern about the prevalence of family violence within Indigenous communities have long been expressed, progress in the development of evidence-based intervention programs for known perpetrators has been slow. This review of the literature aims to provide a resource for practitioners who work in this area, and a framework from within which culturally specific violence prevention programs can be developed and delivered. It is suggested that effective responses to Indigenous family violence need to be informed by culturally informed models of violence, and that significant work is needed to develop interventions that successfully manage the risk of perpetrators of family violence committing further offences.

Promoting the persistence of Indigenous students through teaching at the Cultural Interface

The promise of higher education remains elusive for many Indigenous students in Australia. To date, institutional efforts to improve the persistence and retention of Indigenous students have been largely piecemeal, poorly integrated and designed to remediate skill deficits. Yet, market-led expansion of Australian higher education is driving curricular reform and demands for accountability and quality. Despite this, very little is known about how teaching and pedagogy can be used to support the learning and persistence of Indigenous students. In this context, the paper provides a reconceptualization of current debates and positions that are currently bound up within the limitations of questionable binary divides and oppositions, for example, educational psychology/sociology, transmission/critical or decolonial pedagogies and Indigenous/Western Knowledge. Nakatas concept of the Cultural Interface is mobilized to acknowledge some of the nuances and complexities that emerge when Indigenous and Western knowledge systems come into convergence within the higher education classroom.