The Socio-Economic Problems of Aborigines - Research Paper Example

Running Head: RESEARCH PROJECT PRESENTATION Name Institution Date Research Project Presentation Action Research: The socio-Economic Problems of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islander Australians and ways of solving them Background The topic of the affairs of the indigenous people in Australia and the tension between the maintenance of Indigenous culture and the achievement of equity in matters socio-economic has been a recurring theme for many years: predominantly, self determination versus assimilation. In this tension, there seems to be an existing view that the attachment to the traditional culture and lifestyle is an impediment to the achievement of mainstream socio-economic goals among the member Aborigines and the Torres Strait Islanders of Australia (Dockery, 2009) This paper, which is a representation of the results of an initial action research project on Aboriginal Education argues that there is a need for new focus on the interests of Indigenous Australians and for a practical outlook of the relation between culture and Socio-economic issues and unlike the preceding one that only dwelt on issues pertaining to education, this is an in depth research into the underlying issues that surround the issue of loss of self determination which is the root cause of the issues on the surface such as inadequate education, lack of access to medical care, environment issues affecting them and what actions can be taken to help in the empowerment of these people who have often been referred to as “disadvantaged” (National Board of Employment, Education and Training Australian Research Council, 1999) This is a research related to the modern scope and application of the right to self-determination of the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders of Australia. We conducted over 10 in-depth interviews with a range of aboriginal respondents in order to get their views on the meaning of self-determination and what it means for the general Indigenous population in Australia, to what level they feel that the right is not properly protected by the law and also to know how they feel that this law can promote its realization. Australian Aborigines were a tribal people who maintained a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Over an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 years prior to the settlement of the Europeans, their customs and practices relationship had evolved into a complicated one of sustainability with the Australian environment. In all Nations with Indigenous minorities, the economic and social deprivation of these groups becomes a matter of serious concern when it comes to matters of policy. Colonization and post colonization is a factor that deprived these people of their social and economic rights such as land and human rights. According to Frederick and Foley, the loss of self-determination deprived them of the right to their own dependability as far as running their own affairs is concerned and this has proved to be socially and economically destructive overtime (Frederick & Foley, 2006). This paper will seek to analyze the growing concern worldwide as to the policies that should be directed towards reigniting and / or developing the socioeconomic welfare of these groups which have often been referred to as “disadvantaged”. All the methods of research have been utilized in the process of establishing the case in question, namely; “the socio-Economic Problems of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islander Australians and ways of solving them”. Identification of the Problem Whenever you hear members of non Aboriginal society describe Aboriginal people as sick and uneducated, it is a saying that often reflects on the society as a whole and could be interpreted to mean that the non Aboriginal society has certain circumstances that Aboriginal people do not meet. By disabling the Aboriginal community, there is also a perception that the non-indigenous communities, mostly white are the ones who are educated and healthy and are by all means enabled to label the non-indigenous groups. But there is a need to understand that for non-Aboriginals, education and health did not fall from the sky. The main point is that there is a history of events that led to non Aboriginals becoming more educated and healthier, the same history that turned Aboriginals into “uneducated” and “unwell”. In other words, the medical and public health knowledge on which the health industry stakes its claims to authority was built up in part in the course of the active cruelty against the same people whose health it now and has always labeled unhealthy and even claims and has always claimed that it wants to improve (Boughton, 2001). Controlling the very poor has been and still is key to the welfare policies for the poor non-Indigenous Australians, but its display amongst Indigenous Australians has been extremely invasive and all inclusive (Green, 2002). This research grew initially through our own insights and interactions with indigenous groups in Central Australia before moving to Alice Springs. “(We and our here refer to the research team)”. We then began to reflect on the research relevance of our work which showed that rising education levels; the number of schooling years had serious effects on child mortality and morbidity. We then relied on this to raise some serious questions on the impact of how the education of Aboriginal groups could be raised and how it would develop the health of these groups after which we came up with some insights into education and matters of social change that we used to build this project namely: one, social learning as a determinant factor in health transition and two, such learning can take place within other spheres other than the formal one and most importantly within social movements. The benefits of this discovery are numerous because self-knowledge acts as a medium of change both for the human beings involved and their societies and as a result of using this medium also as a tool for our research and for our interaction with the indigenous groups, we were able to gain the trust of the people as they began to gauge their behavior on new assumptions. What we suggest was that better knowledge of themselves would contribute to a health transition which would in turn instigate social change and produce better health and once the people knew this, they would most likely adopt them (Ross, et al 2010). With time, as we interacted with some of the respondents we became convinced of its relevance having had our doubts initially due to the numerous researches that had been conducted in the indigenous communities that yielded no results before us. Our respondents were mainly concerned about the lack of education of their children and the impact of this lack of education on their health both physical and psychological (Altman, 2005). We also noticed at the time of this research that there was a growing Aboriginal political mobilization locally surrounding the issues at of health and education. The development of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in as far as education and healthcare are concerned has always been a political one and any efforts that have been made before in these two sectors with regard to improving their efficiency occurs in an environment that is often critiqued even cynical (Dwyer, Shannon, & Godwin, 2007) Armed with information, we were able to convince funders to adopt our research and education as one of our key priority areas for the research. Collection and Organization of Data Our original plan was that this research should follow the traditional systematic research process and that the literature review should follow a well laid down qualitative and quantitative study that would replicate other works done around the world on the subject. However there was a problem with this from the point of view of establishing a research that is Aboriginal controlled. There was also the issue of hostility towards researchers that existed in Central Australia for research sake and most of the respondents that we came into contact with were already convinced about the connection we had established between education and health and had already indicated a need to build up their own ability to carry out research as well as acting in order to ensure that a much needed change occurred in the education system; they sought to gain any form of assistance that our research could render. We therefore sought to undertake a review that would not only collect what already existed in published or unpublished literature, but also to involve the community in conjunction with a reference group that included aboriginal educationists in order to discover how to respond to and act on this information, and especially in as far as education is concerned not just for young children but for adults as well and issues such as childhood education, use of information to drive performance, advanced education, building student parent and Aboriginal population demand for quality education and productive school community partnerships, and language and culture (Department of Education, Science and Training, Australia, 2007) We therefore assumed an activist educator role as we engaged individuals and communities on issues of education and health, paying special attention especially on the connection between the two. We told them what we already knew rather than asking them what they thought. We also sought not to present what we knew as static information but rather treated it as information that can change overtime as we engaged with published and unpublished literature and our gatherings and discussions with these became perceptive and with time we were able to come up with ways of presenting the information back to the people in a way that could be understood with an aim to devise strategies for the research agenda for action. What we were doing was similar to action research but it drew so much on theories of popular education and particularly its link to knowledge and social action groups mentioned above. A comprehensive review of existing health legislation in Australia found very little specific recognition of the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in any of Australia’s nine jurisdiction (the Lowitja Institute: Australia's National Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research, 2012). The major issues that came up with regard to human rights and specifically the right to self determination as a way of ensuring that Aboriginal groups got access to education and healthcare were that this right is currently not well-organized for it to protect them and promote them in Australia and this is noticeable in most lawful and societal examples such as; non existence of the acceptance of fortification for indigenous self determination in any of Australian laws, this in spite of the fact that Australia is a member of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the lack of representation or under representation of indigenous people in most sectors in government, obstacles in the path of those who seek to exercise their native title rights, poverty that permeates all areas of the indigenous groups’ social life such as health, life expectancy, unemployment and education, racism and discrimination, lack of support from the government for empowerment of Indigenous groups in the form of giving them freedom and incentives to choose what they want with their lives and the blatant refusal to recognize and respect laws governing indigenes and their independence (Maguire, 2009). Respondents expressed their frustration with the lack of development obvious in the endeavor for aboriginal self fortitude all through Australia’s History. We put together a fairly representative set of data on the state of aboriginal education as mentioned in the previous paper which included data on population, enrollments and participation, school retention literacy levels, post-school education, participation and outcomes and even funding levels which we have been using in other activities such as consultations and discussions concerning this research. As part of the brief to this research, we collected information not just from published and unpublished research but also from people and organizations which has helped in the direction of this research. In order to be able to do this, we have adopted a methodology that involves holding discussions with various groups where we explained our findings and reasons for education research programs and also to inform people about the findings of the health a change in connection to our research on education. We hereby present some of the actual research findings and the data we were able to collect: Representatives of the Aboriginal organization’s meetings Seminars such as professional development seminars forum based on cross-sectional worker of Aboriginal background in the education sector -Basic education and literacy in remote communities -Training programs for students of Aboriginal origin. -other stakeholder’s meetings in the education sector From the discussions and consultations an organized group of local Aboriginal leaders shaped and became directly involved in the process as teachers, adult educators, teaching assistants, tertiary lecturers, education and health service managers and administrators, students, parents and members of various advisory groups and local led organizations. At the same time, we engaged non-Aboriginal people across the same sphere of professional groupings in different organizations and agencies and were able to identify people who were ready to assist and take part in the process. The findings that came out of these presentations were lively and brought to the surface many perceptions and analysis of the situation about matters concerning Aboriginal education and its relation to health and some of the things that came out include; concerns about the low levels of educational achievement and there is a lot of support on the idea that this is a major impediment to better health. Key Findings What we discovered along the way is that there is need for more capacity development integration into the development of research project as a subject on its own in order to encourage the participation of the local indigenous groups to deal with any problems that it identifies. The process itself was a slow one and most importantly it depends on the local circumstances and relationships. The process of the reviewing of the project has been slow and uneven but we feel that the empowerment of the communities to take control of the research process and use it to their own advantage can be a reality. However, people make their own world in the process of changing it. However, it is a challenge to the status quo and to those that feel comfortable with current practices, especially non-Aboriginal professionals working in different service organizations and research institutions. There is also a resistance cropping up within the Aboriginal communities from several sources and young people are trying to instigate change (Boughton, 2001). There are cases however where people have been reluctant to take control due to over bearing of responsibilities and are afraid to take on new ones and there are issues of organizations that have their own agendas to deal with which are holding them back from collaborating and doing things differently. But all in all, the research has produced a growing understanding of the an important social fields of education and health which includes; Indigenous individuals and families interconnected in complicated ways living and working in an ecological environment that covers from Darwin in Adelaide, non-Aboriginal individuals and families that are spread across a wide ecological area but which are unified with the indigenous groups through by uniformly intricate family, association, expert communal and political relationships, institutions, Important documentation of materials related to the matters of education and health of the Aboriginal groups, social, cultural and language related protocols which encompass the wisdom of former generations in relation to the field of study. One of the main assumptions of this research was that the leaders of the Aboriginal community needed to understand it thoroughly in order to be able to control this in specific interest to areas where community leaders have little power to influence things but are sites of social and political practice that have a major influence on the lives of the members of the community, who include such people as senior executives in government agencies. However, it is only the people who can map out such fields for themselves otherwise the fields cannot be mapped out in ways that truly serve interests. From the time the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire first introduced the term empowerment into the academic English language discourse, it has undergone certain alterations (Mackie, 1994). Capacity building is however a newer term for the practice of empowerment. We do not claim to have the power to change the lives of the indigenous groups in Australia but we believe that research is a tool that empowers people. One way that this research has tried to help the communities that we were working with is by trying to answer the question of how our own research can build the people’s capacity to alter the social conditions that leads to ill health. Our greatest assumption was that empowerment alters social reality and for the Aboriginal communities this reality has been that of lack of education and poor healthcare conditions. Therefore, society needs to change for empowerment to take place, because empowerment and disempowerment are terms that describe human relations and it involves the balance of power and collective action. It requires that individuals who are organized and education and/or research have to involve the means to collectively organize. Jerry Schwab invoked the theory of cultural capital to induce the theory of cultural capital by Bordieu into the dynamics of Aboriginal education (Schwab, 1996). Education empowers because it gives groups the access to valued cultural capital. Empirical research traditions that are designed around physical sciences have a difficult with this line of reasoning but since social sciences are not physical, there is no way that the methodologies of one problem should translate to the other (Agger, 1998). This means that research that seeks to instigate social change cannot do so without participating in the change. As Myles Horton puts it, “you only learn from the experiences you learn from” (Horton & Freire, 1990) Conclusion The inequalities that existed before we began this research still exist among the indigenous groups of Australia. Aboriginal people can no longer wait to get education and the benefits that come with self determination because the education that is required to take over power is not the one that those in power provide and the achievement of real health requires the allocation of more resources to develop capacity including power that pertains to the education system. One way of doing this is by building communities around the issues that this research has outlined-education and health. there is a need to intersect Aboriginal education with wider issues such as empowerment and self determination and to differentiate what education is for which Indigenous people with disregard of the notion that education for Aborigines means what non-Aboriginal education systems offers them. This is in its worst form Assimilation, and educationally driven form of genocide. In its modern form, non-Aboriginal education only offers limited opportunities for building human capital in a mistaken belief that this will offer a relief and reversal of the long-term population and economic drift that has left a majority of the Aboriginal people highly marginalized in the newly globalized Australian labor market (Boughton, 2001). The kind of education that the Aboriginal people need is an education that the communities themselves can control aimed at aiding them to organize themselves to meet their own regionally determined social, cultural and economic aspirations geared towards their development. According to Komla Tsey, the best chance successfully rebuilding community norms lies in multi level approaches where macro social policy reforms are complimented by effective community interventions that engage and empower the intended beneficiaries to take greater control of their situation (Komla, 2008). Indigenous cultures and knowledge still do not have a proper shape in most Australian learning institutions. Enhancement of the eminence and status of Indigenous cultures, knowledge and studies in schools is important to boost Indigenous student outcomes in formal education. At the core of the reform should be; Making Indigenous knowledge and cultures more visible, Enhancing the position of Indigenous support centers, Strengthening communication and collaboration between Indigenous support centers, faculties and other stakeholders in schools and externally and Streamlining transitions between schools, VET colleges and universities (Pechenkina & Anderson, 2011) References Agger, B. (1998). Critical Social Theories: An Introduction. Westview Press: Colorado. Altman, J. (2005). Sustainable Indigenous Economic futures. Sydney: Australian National University. Boughton, B. (2001). Popular Education, Capacity -Building and Action-Research: Increasing AboriginalCommunity Control of Educaion and Health Research. Carlton: Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal & Tropical Health. Boughton, B. (1999). The ‘de-politicisation’ of the struggle for Indigenous education rights in Australia: An historical review of developments in Aboriginal education theory, policy and practice 1945–1998. Alice Springs: CRCATH. Department of Education, Science and Training, Australia. (2007). Indigenous Education: International perspectives. What Works. The work Program: Core Issues 7 , 1-20. Dockery, A. (2009). The case of Indigenous Australians. Perth: The Centre for Labour Market Research. Dwyer, J., Shannon, C., & Godwin, S. (2007). Learning from Action: Management of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Services. Casuarina: Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health, La Trobe University, Flinders University and Queensland Aboriginal and Islander Health Council. Frederick, H., & Foley, D. (2006). Indigenous Populations as Disadvantaged Entrepreneurs in Australia and New Zealand. International Indigenous Journal of Entrepreneurship, Advancement, Strategy and Education . Green, S. B. (2002). Indigenous Welfare in Australia. Journal of Societal & Social Policy, Vol. 1/1: 1-17 , 1-3. Horton, M., & Freire, P. (1990). We make the Road by Walking. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Komla, T. (2008). Tackling endemic substance abuse among Indigenous Australians: the contribution of values- based family empowerment education. Cairns: The Forum on Public Policy. Mackie, R. (1994). Postmodernism. In P. Freire, studies in cuturalpolitics of education (pp. 110-120). Maguire, A. (2009). The Right of Self Determinationfor Indigenous Peoples in Australia. Sydney: National Human Right Consultation. (Fisher, S. ; Mallard, D. ; Ross, C.). Model of Practice for Mediation with Aboriginal Families in Central Australia. Sydney: Family Relationships Center. National Board of Employment, Education and Training Australian Research Council. (1999). Research of Interest to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. Pechenkina, E., & Anderson, I. (2011). Background paper on Indigenous Australian Higher Education: Trends, Initiatives and Policy Implications. Canberra: The Review of Higher Education Access and Outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People. Ross, C., Mallard, D., & Fisher, S. (2010). Model of Practice for Mediation with Aboriginal Families in Central Australia. Sydney: Family Relationships Center. Schwab, G. (1996). Indigenous Participation in Higher Education: Culture Choice and Human Capital Theory. Canberra: Centre for Aboriginal Economic policy Research. the Lowitja Institute: Australia's National Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research. (2012). Building Legal Framework for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health. 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