Digital Commons Network^™

Walk To Country, Talk To Country, Anne Poelina, Sandra Wooltorton, Mindy Blaise, Len Collard

Nulungu Journal Articles

“It’s good to talk to Country,” says Anne Poelina, affirming that from a very early age, in the Kimberley region of northern Australia, Indigenous people are ‘taught Country’. They learn that the land is alive, that it has agency, and that it holds memories of our shared experiences, both human and other-than-human. “It’s good for your mental state to talk to Country,” Poelina continues, “to meditate on how your mind and heart, spirit and soul are aligned with the Earth on which you walk, knowing that when you walk on this Earth, the Earth can actually feel your presence, and …

Enablers And Barriers To Non-Dispensing Pharmacist Integration Into The Primary Health Care Teams Of Aboriginal Community-Controlled Health Services, Aaron Drovandi, Deborah Smith, Robyn Preston, Lucy Morris, Priscilla Page, Lindy Swain, Erik Biros, Megan Tremlett, Hannah Loller, Mike Stephens, Alice Nugent, Fran Vaughan, Sophia Couzos

Nulungu Journal Articles

Background: The primary health care management of chronic disease affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples requires healthcare quality and equity demands to be met, and systems that foster better team-based care. Non-dispensing pharmacists (NDPs) integrated within primary healthcare settings can enhance the quality of patient care, although factors that enable or challenge integration within these settings need to be better understood.

Objectives: To investigate enabling factors and barriers influencing integration of NDPs within Aboriginal community-controlled health services delivering primary health care. This was achieved through qualitative evaluation of the Integrating Pharmacists within Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services (IPAC) Trial …

Renewable Energy Development On The Indigenous Estate: Free, Prior And Informed Consent And Best Practice In Agreement-Making In Australia, Lily O'Neill, Kathryn Thorburn, Bradley Riley, Ganur Maynard, Esme Shirlow, Janet Hunt

Nulungu Journal Articles

In Australia, large-scale renewable energy projects are being developed or proposed on lands over which First Nations hold rights and interests. Our review of the literature on renewable energy and First Nations peoples globally indicates that renewable energy projects are likely to present risks in the distribution of socio-economic and environmental impacts, as well as significant opportunities for First Nation benefit. This paper explores the conditions under which First Nations people with communal property rights and interests in their traditional land are likely to derive benefit from large scale renewable energy projects.

We examine ‘free, prior and informed consent’ (FPIC), …

Aboriginal Student Engagement And Success In Kimberley Tertiary Education, John Guenther, Anna Dwyer, Sandra Wooltorton, Judith Wilks

Nulungu Journal Articles

Over recent years, considerable effort has been put into increasing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (First Nations) participation in higher education. While there are signs that enrolments are increasing, the sustained engagement and successful completion of higher education remains challenging, particularly in remote locations. With this in mind, a collaborative research project among researchers from three northern Australian tertiary education institutions was designed to understand student perspectives, particularly from remote contexts, about their engagement and success towards completion in higher education. Based on a qualitative research design situating Indigenist/interpretive research within a critical realism metatheory, we present findings from the …

Hydropoetics: The Rewor(L)Ding Of Rivers, John Ryan

Nulungu Journal Articles

Valued in utilitarian terms as channels for industry, agriculture, and urban development, rivers are among the most biodiverse yet degraded ecosystems globally. In addition to pragmatic conservation measures, the long-term wellbeing of rivers requires new perspectives on human–water relations that call attention to—and nurture—the cultural, social, and spiritual significance of riverscapes. Drawing from current thinking in the interdisciplinary environmental humanities, this article proposes the idea of hydropoetics as an outlook on rivers based on the ancient idea of poiesis. On a planet undergoing rapid environmental change, three features—embodiment, relationality, and multiscalarity—are important to a hydropoetics attuned to the urgencies of …

Learning Cycles: Enriching Ways Of Knowing Place, Sandra Wooltorton, Peta White, Marilyn Palmer, Len Collard

Nulungu Journal Articles

We share a story about a katitjin bidi, a learning journey in a bioregion with a multimillennial Aboriginal history. As part of this katitjin bidi, three environmental educators implemented a place-based pedagogy called ‘becoming family with place’, while a fourth participated in the preplanning and final reflective stages. Our story includes cycles of ways of knowing, resulting in an enriched practice of being-with our place. Our story is underpinned by Aboriginal epistemologies to reimagine regenerative futures linked with those of ‘the long now’ — the past, present and future here now. Ours is a particular story that lives …

Sharing A Place-Based Indigenous Methodology And Learnings, Sandra Wooltorton, Len Collard, Pierre Horwitz, Anne Poelina, David Palmer

Nulungu Journal Articles

Building on a methodology of Cooperative Inquiry, the outcomes of five interconnected place-based learning projects from Australia are synthesised and elaborated in this paper. The methodology can facilitate the everyday living and sharing of an Earth-based consciousness: one that enriches Transformative Sustainability Education (TSE) through recognising meanings and stories in landscape, and celebrates Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing. Indigenous-led environmental education is shown to link with one of the longest continuous environmental education systems in the world and it is contended that because of its ongoing history, environmental education carries a cultural obligation. In Australia, every landscape is …

Living Water: Groundwater And Wetlands In Gnangara, Noongar Boodjar, Sandra Wooltorton, Len Collard, Pierre Horwitz

Nulungu Journal Articles

Different languages, knowledge systems and ways of knowing impact upon shared understandings of place across and within landscapes. In this article we illustrate ways in which Noongar and English language-based understandings of groundwater and wetland interactions can inform a third space. Noongar knowledges recognise deep interdependences across social, linguistic, ecological, physical and spiritual domains, while English ways of knowing highlight separations and abstractions such as those between people and nature, and spirit and matter. The English language assumes a linear sense of time in which the past is always behind the present, where going forward is associated with progress. Noongar …

‘Food As Commons’ Within An Australian Aboriginal Context, Anne Jennings

Nulungu Journal Articles

Abstract not available for this article.

'Growing' Food And Community In The Remote Kimberley Region, Anne Jennings

Nulungu Journal Articles

Brief history of localized food production in Australia

This article commences by contributing historical evidence of localized food production in Australia, starting with Aboriginal people, on country, prior to colonization. It then moves on to food grown by colonists, then addressing the depression and world war years, concluding with activities at the end of the twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries.

Case Studies Of Training Advantage For Remote Aboriginal And Torres Strait Island Learners. Support Document., John Guenther, Melodie Bat, Anne Stephens, Janet Skewes, Bob Boughton, Frances Williamson, Sandra Wooltorton, Melissa Marshall, Anna Dwyer

Nulungu Journal Articles

The case studies that follow are a compilation of learnings derived from the research project, Enhancing training advantage for remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learners. The project, funded by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER), was conducted by a consortium of researchers from five institutions: TAFE SA, Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, University of New England, James Cook University and the University of Notre Dame Australia. The research was conducted during 2016 with participants from five locations: the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands of South Australia, the Northern Territory, western New South Wales, the Kimberley region of …