Paper
Proving culture as resilience works: creating the evidence base
- issue: Issue 1 / 2009
- authors: Muriel Bamblett, Peter Lewis
- keywords: Australia, indigenous, culture, resilience, evidence-based, research
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abstract
Background. In the context of Australia as a colonised land, Indigenous communities struggle against neo-colonial polices of mainstreaming and continuing denigration of their cultures. It is therefore critical that Indigenous child and family agencies are able to demonstrate the positive impact culture has on meeting the needs of Indigenous children and re-creating networks of nurture and care. This paper will look at how the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency (Vacca) in Australia is engaging both Indigenous and mainstream research techniques at the grass roots level to improve its service delivery to Indigenous vulnerable children and their families.
Purpose. The paper seeks to establish pathways to create the evidence base in the Australian context to demonstrate that culture is critical to the resilience of Indigenous children. The key aim is to pay appropriate respect to Indigenous knowledge systems as well as mainstream knowledge system in order to create a research methodology that assists in identifying the resilience factors necessary to assist vulnerable Indigenous children.
By combining the findings from academic research with culturally appropriate community 'yarning' (talking) circles, Vacca is in the process of developing culturally based assessment tools and community development techniques to enhance its ability to evaluate, improve and develop program delivery and address the critical nexus between Western evidence based research and culturally appropriate research methodology and service delivery. In particular, the paper presents our learnings from Vacca's culturally embedded programs, focusing on three specific programs in which Vacca is a partner: the Koorie Families and young fellas Connecting & Sharing (Koorie Faces) program (with Vaccho), developing Indigenous specific cultural assessment tools for children in out-of-home care and Aboriginal Research Circles (both with Berry Street Take Two and La Trobe University).
Key findings. Creating the research tools. Indigenous ways of finding out information is based on cultural understanding, cultural respect, community engagement and community empowerment. While non-indigenous research may have various strengths that relate to statistical analysis and various disciplines of interpretation, we know that, as systems of knowledge, they are susceptible to cultural bias. Good cross-cultural research methodology requires overcoming both cultural bias and paying due regard to the power dynamics which colonisation creates for minority Indigenous communities. Appropriate research needs to blend Indigenous and non-indigenous methodologies which means that there is clear:
- cultural input and translation,
- community engagement,
- community empowerment.
With these issues of research control and cultural awareness dealt with we can then engage mainstream academic methods.
Culture as resilience. To be resilient, a traumatised people tell their history their way - facing the truth but with hope. To do that is the challenge Indigenous people face everyday. Turning tragedy and oppression into song-lines of identity and self-belief are critical to resilience. Kirby and Fraser (1997) suggest that there are three types of resiliency - overcoming the odds, sustained competence under stress and recovery from trauma. Indigenous people have demonstrated their resiliency in all these ways.
Through our partnerships we have developed a community development model of yarning with families about issues around bringing up their children. Central to our 'yarnin' sessions for these programs are:
- providing a safe environment,
- ensuring cultural respect,
- ensuring trust,
- providing voice.
Importantly, the learnings we glean are with and for the community, not about and to the community.
The Koorie Faces program is a family strengthening program and aims to build confidence in parents and families of Aboriginal children, with an emphasis on an increased understanding and knowledge of self, Aboriginal culture and parenting practices and styles to build resilience against drug and alcohol misuse in children.
By focusing on culture and the strengths of Indigenous families, particularly in the context of the impact and ongoing nature of colonisation, Koorie Faces both communicates messages about parenting and how culture is a strengthening tool for bringing up kids to be resilient.
When working with children to provide them with positive and caring environments, including within their family and kinship networks; and therapy to assist in their recovery, it is important to be able to accurately assess their current emotional and behavioural presentation. Hence the need to develop culturally appropriate assessment tools which measure the cultural dimension to wellbeing.
Key references
Fraser, M. (Ed.). (1997). Risk and Resiliency in Childhood: An Ecological Perspective, Washington, DC: NASW Press.
Libesman, T. (2004). Child Welfare approaches for Indigenous communities: International Perspectives. Child Abuse Prevention, 20. Canberra: Australian Institute of Family Studies.
Zubrick, S. K., Silburn, S. R., Lawrence, D. M., Mitrou, F. G., Dalby, R. B., Blair, E. M., Griffin, J., Milroy, H., De Maio, J. A., Cox, A., & Li, J. (2005). The Western Australian Aboriginal Child Health Survey (Vol. 2). Perth: Curtin University of Technology and Telethon Institute for Child Health Research.
Contacts: Muriel Bamblett, The Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency, Po Box 494, Northcote Plaza, Northcote, Victoria 3070, Australia, E-mail: peterl@vacca.org, Phone + 61 3 8388 1855.