Guides: Community Services: Indigenous / Cultural Diversity

eBooks

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health (2014) Since 2006, the ‘closing the gap’ campaign has been pursued in collaboration between government and health, welfare and rights agencies to close the health and life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a generation. This book evaluates the uneven progress being made towards closing the gap. How can Indigenous outcomes be improved across a range of key social and economic determinants of health and wellbeing?
Historical Dictionary of Australian Aborigines (2010) The purpose of this book is to support a culturally safe health system for Aboriginal patients, clients and staff. Communicating Positively provides information and guidance on appropriate word usage when working with Aboriginal people and communities, and when developing policy and programs.
Indigenous rights (2014) There is still much to be done to close the gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and the rest of the population in terms of social and economic development, culture, land, education, health, justice and human rights.
Multiculturalism and Australian Identity (2016) Australians are largely embracing of multiculturalism and welcoming of those born overseas, however being 'Australian' can describe a broad range of characteristics, behaviours and attitudes
Racial Prejudice and Discrimination (2014) Cultural diversity is central to Australia's national identity, however many Australians regularly experience racism. Racist attitudes are common in the form of unconscious bias, intolerance and prejudice; at its worst, racial discrimination manifests in violence and abuse.
Stolen Generations and the Way Ahead (2018) After two decades, the majority of the Bringing them home recommendations have not been implemented, adding to ongoing distress. In the meantime, this inaction fails to address the escalating national crisis involving continuing removal of indigenous children from their families.

Websites

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Latest reports, news and projects relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice.
Aboriginal Legal Service of WA (Inc.) The Aboriginal Legal Services of WA (Inc) provide legal advice and representation for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people‚ with 16 country office locations.
ABS: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Statistics relating to the status of Aboriginal Australians in regards to, Community services, crime, justice, education, training, health, housing, labour, language, culture, population, distribution and social issues.
AIHW: First Nations Peoples Includes publications
Australian Aboriginal Studies Social Sciences; Indigenous; Culture & institutions; Social groups; Indigenous peoples
Australian Cultural Atlas The Cultural Atlas is an educational resource providing comprehensive information on the cultural background of Australia’s migrant populations.
Australian Indigenous Health Bulletin Bringing together the latest information about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health by showcasing original articles and provide links to reports, publications, journals, resources and theses.
Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet Updates and information to support the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
Australian Indigenous Timeline This timeline details the history of forcible removal of Indigenous children from their families. It was compiled by the Australian Human Rights Commission.
Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies AIATSIS is an Indigenous-led, national institute that celebrates, educates and inspires people from all walks of life to connect with the knowledge, heritage and cultures of Australia’s First Peoples.
Australian Multicultural Foundation We are an organisation with an aim to cultivate in all Australians a strong commitment to Australia as one people drawn from many cultures and by so doing to advance its social and economic well-being
Centre for Multicultural Youth The Centre for Multicultural Youth is a not-for-profit organisation based in Victoria, providing specialist knowledge and support to young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds.
Cultural Diversity: 2021 Census Information on country of birth, year of arrival, ancestry, language and religion.
Cultural Diversity in WA A range of publications from the Office of Multicultural Interests.
Cultural ways Contains information on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples relating to policies and strategies, programs and projects, organisations, resources, publications and others.
Engage Respectfully With Young People From Refugee Backgrounds Designed to facilitate the development of the competencies required for people working, or intending to work, with young people from refugee backgrounds.
Face the Facts: Cultural Diversity Myths are often propagated about some groups of people who live in Australia. These groups include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, culturally and linguistically diverse peoples, asylum seekers and refugees. In 1997, the Commission decided to address these myths with a concise publication which would set out basic facts and figures, and this is now in its 5th edition.
Face the Facts: Some Questions and Answers about Indigenous Peoples, Migrants and Refugees and Asylum Seekers (2012) by Australian Human Rights Commission
Ishar - Multicultural Women's Health Centre The mission of this group is to provide inclusive, holistic and culturally sensitive services for women and their families promoting healthy communities .
Multicultural Futures Formerly Fremantle Multicultural Centre. Provides services to migrants and refugees from a diverse range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds
Multicultural Health - A Guide for Health Professionals ommunity Profiles for Health Care Providers is a practical tool that assists health care providers to better understand the health beliefs, pre-migration experiences, communication preferences and other aspects of their clients' culture.
Summary of Australian Indigenous health Annual summary publications of Aboriginal Australians, and Torres Strait Islanders health status.
The Uluru Statement Information about the Uluru Statement and the Voice to Parliament
Working with Refugees: A guide for Social Workers Provides essential background information and practical suggestions to assist social workers provide quality care to people from a refugee background.

Articles

Aboriginal History Social Sciences; Indigenous; Culture & institutions; Indigenous peoples
ATSIC News Journals relating to news, policy, politics and Indigenous culture, and the history centered on Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders.
Culturally responsive work with indigenous children and families Indigenous families throughout the world share parallel world views which can clash with the beliefs and methods of professionals trained in Western cultural traditions. This article provides signposts for building cultural safety in work with indigenous groups.
Cultural safety and the duty of care Rural youth, especially those of indigenous and immigrant cultures caught up in rural-urban migration, are vulnerable when the duty of care mandate transfers from families to state child welfare agents. The notion of cultural safety is examined in relation to the duty of care mandate assigned to child welfare workers when the state intervenes in family life
Cultural safety for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults within Australian music therapy practices The health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people is underrepresented within music therapy literature. An essential first step is to ensure that programs are culturally safe so that effective therapy services value the client’s own cultural identity.
Cultural safety in child protection: Application to the workplace environment and casework practice Cultural safety is a term that originated in the nursing profession in New Zealand. Common definitions focus on participants (whether clients or workers) feeling safe; feeling they can express their cultural identity; feel respected and listened to. The present study describes the concept of cultural safety and how it is applied in statutory child protection in Alice Springs.
Keto-style bush food diet could be key to helping Indigenous Australians to manage type 2 diabetes A new study will test whether diets that closely resemble those consumed by First Nations people in pre-colonisation times can help drive type 2 diabetes remission in Indigenous people.
Our ways to planning: Preparing organisations to plan with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilit This paper reports on the development of the Our Ways to Planning framework. The framework is intended as a guide for Australian organisations to work in safe and culturally appropriate ways to assist and enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability to make plans about their physical and mental health, wellbeing and future.
Recommendations for improving cultural competency when working with ethnic minority families in child protection systems in Australia Australia's research and knowledge base on cultural competency has been slow to develop. To help address this gap, the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Family and Community Services (FaCS) funded a large scale study in this area, which included a detailed literature review.
Royal wedding: Meghan Markle's race is not a question worth debating Race is a strange subject. It is an utterly discredited notion; scientists know it is nonsense to even speak of race.
A statistical Overview of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in Australia 1. Introduction 2. Population figures 3. Indigenous households and families 4. Language and culture 5. Health 6. Income 7. Employment 8. Education 9. Housing and homelessness 10. Indigenous peoples and criminal justice systems 11. Child protection
Sentencing young offenders in Australia: a review Address the issues in the justice system, in particular the ongoing over representation of young Aboriginal Australians in the justice system.

Streaming Videos

Australian Dream Walkley award-winning writer Stan Grant tells the remarkable story of indigenous AFL legend Adam Goodes. Through the backdrop of Goodes' journey, the film explores race, identity, and belonging in Australia today.
Black Chicks Talking Leah Purcell takes us into contemporary Aboriginal Australia for a chic and sophisticated examination of what it means to be black in Australia today. D
The Coolbaroo Club The Coolbaroo Club was the only Aboriginal-run dance club in a city which practiced unofficial apartheid, submitting its Aboriginal population to police harassment, identity cards and curfews.
Cronulla Riots: The Day That Shocked The Nation The untold story of how a Sydney beach became the scene of the Cronulla riots. Told through the perspective of those who were there, Cronulla Riots: The Day That Shocked the Nation investigates simmering tensions between groups of Australians that led to racially motivated violence at Sydney's Cronulla beach one hot day in December 2005.
Deadly Yarns 5 Indigenous short films Two worlds: "A child learns to adjust to a new world with his culture."
First Australians: Ep 1 of 7 Beautifully filmed, the series blends landscape, art, interviews and first-hand accounts with a vast archival collection to present the birth of contemporary Australia as never seen before, from the perspective of its first people - the first Australians.
Flour, Sugar And Tea Flour, Sugar And Tea goes behind the statistics to tell the personal story of John De Satge (Johno), an inspiring Aboriginal man who died early of non-alcohol related cirrhosis of the liver as the result of an unhealthy diet.
Immigration Nation: The secret history of us - Ep 1 of 3 Based on interviews with eminent historians and testimony from eyewitnesses to the key events that built a nation, the series reveals the dark paradox behind the Utopian vision at Federation. It tracks the implementation of the White Australia Policy and the impact on the migrant communities that it fractured.
Insight : Looking after the kids What's in the best interest for Aboriginal kids at risk?National figures suggest Indigenous children are being removed from their parents at a rate greater than any other time in recorded Australian history. This week, we put them front and centre to have their say.
Introducing Sociology : core concepts This engaging video resource explores the core sociological concepts such of sociological problems, the sociological imagination, social construction, culture, socialisation and identity. Not only will it help students get into sociology, but it will also teach them transferable skills that once understood can be brought into many other aspects of the syllabus
Our Generation The film has developed into a powerful journey into Australia's indigenous relations, from colonisation until the present day. It looks at Australia's ongoing policies of paternalism and assimilation, explains the real issues underlying Indigenous disadvantage in this “lucky” country, and upholds the right of First Australians to dignity, culture and empowerment in their own country.
Therapeutic journeys: Counselling Aboriginal clients and their families This video demonstrates a brief five-step intervention program. The intervention is based on stress-coping-health model that has been used and tested with relatives of drug users in primary care settings.
What is Culture? Part 1 of a series of videos by Sebastian Ioppolo about developing cultural competence and intercultural communication skills. In this video Sebastian explains and clarifies what is meant by the term 'culture'.
You are here: Occupation Native In this country, the Aboriginal story is often buried deep beneath the accepted 228-year Australian historical narrative.
You Can't Ask That: Indigenous - Series 1 - Episode 8 Insightful, irreverent, moving and unpredictable, this episode sets the record straight about what it's really like to be an Indigenous Australian.

Books in the Library

Binan Goonj (2010) Explores the practices and processes to provide strategies to address the state of health in Aboriginal Australians.
Communication Across Cultures (2007) Examines the ways in which spoken and written language may be interpreted depending on the context and expectations of the participants
Cross-cultural Social Work : Local and Global (2013) Chapter 10. Cultural safety in new and emerging communities : older refugees experiences of health and welfare services
Cultural Diversity (2019) This practical text offers you a balance of clinical and theoretical information, focusing on effective methods of providing cross-cultural services.
Dark emu (2018) Dark Emu argues for a reconsideration of the 'hunter-gatherer' tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians and attempts to rebut the colonial myths that have worked to justify dispossession
Justice (2011) From its beginnings in the early 1970s, the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia has been influential in national campaigns to address the legacies of dispossession and human rights abuses.
Legacies of White Australia (2003) The so-called White Australia policy continues to haunt the Australian political landscape. This work provides a foundational contribution to an informed debate on the issues of race, identity and nation that will determine the attitudes to immigration and multiculturalism.
A Theory for Indigenous Australian Health and Human Service Work (2014) Explores the principles of traditional Aboriginal Australian knowledge in Australia. Includes Country, circular learning, relatedness, stories, spirituality.