PSYC3082 LEC11: Working With Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

Relational Liberation

• Grounded in the quote by Aunt Lila Wilson: if you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.

The transformational triad

1. Reflect: Critically examine prior education and assumptions from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspective

2. Unlearn: Deconstruct entrenched colonial perspectives imposed by institutional systems created by and for colonizers.

3. Re-Learn: R-educate oneself through decolonized Indigenous frameworks and knowledge systems.

Social and Emotional Wellbeing (SEWB) Model

Unlike narrow western biomedical models of mental health, SEWB represents a holistic, multidimensional concept of health.

• Historical Determinants

• Political Determinants

• Social Determinants

• The Self - connection to country, culture, community, family & kinship, mind & emotions, body, spirit-spirituality & ancestors.

• Systematic Determinants: The central self and its seven relational connections are shaped by surrounding social, political and historical determinants (including the ongoing impacts of colonization)

Cultural Safety and Professional Practice

• Origins: Developed in Aotearoa (New Zealand) by Maori nurse Dr. Irihapeti Ramsden, alongside Maori nurse educators and students.

• Kawa Whakaruruhau: The original Maori framework established to address colonial health disparities experienced by the tangata whenua ( indigenous people of the land)

• Definition of Culturally Safe Practice: An outcome of professional education that enables safe service to be defined by those who receive the service.

• Culturally Unsafe Practice: Any action or omission that disempowers, demeans or diminishes the cultural identity and wellbeing of an individual or patient.

5 Principles of Cultural Safety (Best, 2017)

1. Reflect on your own practice: Actively reduce structural and interpersonal power imbalances between practitioner and client.

2. Seek to minimize power differentials: Actively reduce structural and interpersonal power imbalances between practitioner and client.

3. Engage in discourse with the client: Maintain open, reciprocal dialogue rather top-down clinical dictation.

4. Undertake process of decolonization: Challenge eurocentric clinical frameworks and institutional biases.

5. Prevent disempowerment: Ensure clinical actions do not diminish, demean or disempower individuals or communities.

Culturally Respectful Communication and Terminology

• Defintion: Defined as a willingness to assume vulnerability and rely upon someone or something to perform as expected (Johns,1996).

• Key components of Rapport Building: Demonstrating respect, practicing active listening, showing empathy, maintaining friendliness, identifying common ground and utilizing nonjudgmental, positive communication.

• Clinical rationale: Prevents clinical misunderstandings, mitigates, stereotyping, fosters inclusivity and builds therapeutic rapport.

Deficit Discourse and Systematic Bias

• A mode of discourse that frames indigenous health and social outcomes purely in terms of deficiency, failure or dysfunction, effectively blaming the disadvantages group for systematic inequities.

• Importance of Deconstruction:
  - Reveals hidden biases: exposes how institutional policies shift blame onto individuals rather than structural barriers
  - Promotes systematic solutions: refocuses clinical and policy interventions onto root causes rather than individual deficits
  - Fosters Equity and Respect: Replaces deficit framing with strength-based, culturally safe models

• Policy examples of deficit discourse:
  - Northern Territory Emergency Response (The Intervention)
  - Strengthening Community Safety Act 2023 (QLD): Legislative action overriding the Human Rights Act 2019 specifically regarding youth defendants.