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An outline is given of a pilot project to introduce medical students to the broad concept of community medical practice with the emphasis on a rural Aboriginal community. The subjective experiences of the students are recorded and discussed. It is suggested that similar projects are essential to give balance to the bias of hospital training of medical students and to attract doctors to this discipline. The main advantages of such a scheme are that it broadens the perspective of the medical student, widens his potential choice of career, and gives him insight into the medical needs of a socioeconomically deprived group and into the wider role that a doctor can play in the health of the community.

To go into an isolated Aboriginal community as the only teacher requires very careful preparation and demands a unique type of individual. However, out of the challenge of the situation can develop warm and lasting friendships and the arrival at the position where the school is a key point in the community, playing a vital role in the growth of the locality and the individuals in it. The teacher must initiate the effort to develop sound relations and the best place to start is in the classroom.

A three day seminar for Aboriginal secondary students was held in early April. This was the first time that such a program has been attempted by the Education Department. Valuable assistance was given by a number of other government departments.All Aboriginal students in years 9 to 12 who attend Adelaide metropolitan high schools were invited to attend. A few representatives from selected country schools were also invited. Between 180 and 200 students attended each day. They were supervised in groups of eight to ten by Aboriginal teacher aides and other volunteers from the Aboriginal community.

The influence that television exerts on audiences, especially children, is a matter for much debate. Films have been given less consideration as a matter for concern, no doubt because they are less ubiquitous and less accessible than television. However, in an isolated traditionally oriented Aboriginal community, films, in both the large screen and the newer video format, provide the single major source of entertainment and information on the larger European society. It is possible, in the absence of other forms of sustained contact with European society, that its influence can provide children with inappropriate and culturally dysfunctional models for behaviour.From observations at a particular isolated community, films appear to influence people’s ideas about the outside world and their attitudes and behaviours in certain situations. This influence is particularly noticeable in the attitudes, language and behaviours evidenced by children. It is often possible to tell what film has lately been shown in camp simply by observing the children at play. The greater the impact a film has made in terms of ‘action’ and excitement, the greater the length of time will aspects of that film be incorporated into play situations. Children are excellent imitators and it is common for specific phrases from films to be used in children’s games long after the film has been shown.The imitation of language, situations and attitudes portrayed in films is, however, not confined to play situations. For example, in the isolated community with which I am most familiar, a month ago two young men ‘bailed up’ a visiting European contractor and stole his motor vehicle. The circumstances of the theft, bag over the head to disguise identity, flashlight directed into the eyes to dazzle – as well as the language and attitude of the two men, paralleled an episode witnessed in a film three nights previously. The relation between film and incident was so well recognised at camp that the incident itself became a popular piay-scene for children : “Give me the keys or I’ll blow your head off.”

(1980). The organization of talk in aboriginal community decision‐making. Anthropological Forum: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 38-53.

The anthropologist is frequently confronted with the problem of applying independent checks of reliability to observations taken in the traditional manner of field note recording.

History came late to Lethbridge Pocket, on Mt. Moffatt's northern boundary, just over the crest of the Great Dividing Range, source of the extensive Maranoa, Warrego and Fitzroy river systems. Explorer Major Thomas Mitchell skirted the area to the westward in 1846, observing (Mitchell, 1848, 208) that the prospect towards the dominating, massive table-lands ‘was very grand’; the name of Dean Buckland, geologist and antiquarian, was bestowed upon the loftiest table-land, at the foot of which Lethbridge Pocket lay concealed. Ludwig Leichhardt had passed to the north-east, a year previously, but he too preferred to avoid the rugged mountains, now termed the Carnarvon and Chesterton Ranges. Both the journals of Mitchell and Leichhardt testify, on many pages, to the abundant material traces of a populous aboriginal community in the region. Leichhardt commented (1847, 45) that ‘appearances indicated that the commencement of the (Carnarvon) ranges was a favourite resort of the “blackfellows”. The remains of recent repasts of mussels were strewed about the larger water-holes’.The mountainous region, which became Mt. Moffatt cattle station, was traversed first in the late 1870's, when the route across the ridge was located (Cameron, 1964, 372). The rugged Pocket was probably entered at the same time, perhaps by a member of the Lethbridge family, pioneers on Forest Vale station, 80 miles to the south.

THERE are approximately 300 people with some admixture of aboriginal blood living within a 30ile radius of Walgett, N.S.W. Of these, about 130 live on the station controlled by the Aborigines' Welfare Board six miles from the town. Other families of aborigines live in various degrees of permanence on pastoral properties where they are employed. Of those living close to or within the town, about 90 live on the Namoi Riverbank on a reserve controlled by the Pastures Protection Board about half a mile from the centre of the town and a few live on

An assessment was made of the development of logical thinking of four samples of Australian children. Two of these were samples of full-blood Australian Aboriginal children, one sample living in an isolated, rural, mainly Aboriginal community, and the other sample living in much closer contact with Europeans and their technology. The two samples of European children were identified as high-and low-socioeconomic. The measure of logical thinking was a battery of classificatory tests based on tests developed by Inhelder and Piaget. Marked differences in performance were found between the two European and the two Aboriginal groups, especially on a test of multiple classification. A small sub-sample of very high-contact Aboriginals performed at least as well as white Australian children living in a similar environment. Environmental differences between the four populations sampled were considered to have been a major influence in the performance differences found.

The Aboriginal community is often labelled as the poor communities. A high level of poverty among this community is more closely related to the type of employment, the problems of land ownership status and low level of education achievement. Too much dependency on subsistence agriculture or traditional natural resources is the main cause of the community to fall below the poverty level. However, there is also a community who is able to improve the level of their living status through the tourism sector, namely the Mah Meri community. Hence, this study aims to find out the factors that influence the success of the Mah Meri community in the tourism sector. Research methods used is a case study through semi structured interviews with 11 participants who are directly involved in tourist activities such as weaving, carving and dancing. The data was analyzed using Atlas. ti version 7 to find out the factors that influenced the success of this community. The study sugessted that there are 7 internal factors and 10 external factors that contributed to their success. It is hoped that the findings of the study will help others Aboriginal community to improve their living status and as success as the Mah Meri tribe.

A partir del análisis de la dinámica escolar de una "Colonia Aborigen" toba en el este de la provincia de Formosa, el trabajo se centra en el estudio de las causas de la deserción escolar sobre todo en el Nivel Polimodal³ y en las respuestas, estrategias y medidas que la comunidad educativa local toma, atendiendo a las relaciones de fuerza entre sus miembros de distintas posiciones sociales. Se seguirá la propuesta de Bourdieu sobre la necesidad de una "perspectiva relacional" para evitar comprender el mundo social desde una mirada "sustancialista"With the analyses of a Toba "aboriginal community" school dynamics (East of Formosa Province) as a starting point, this research is focused on the study of the causes of school dropout, especially at the Polimodal level, and on the answers, strategies and measures that were taken by the local educational community in accordance with the power relationships resulting from their members' social positions. Bourdieu's proposal on the need of a "relational perspective" will be followed, in order to avoid understanding the social world from a "substantialist" point of view

We describe here the first case of classical homozygous beta-thalassaemia in a part-Aboriginal child. The child came from Bourke, New South Wales, and is the product of a consanguineous mating. His great-great-grandfather was a camel driver from Sri Lanka who settled in western New South Wales. From the family studies, we have found that there are now 17 carriers of beta-thalassaemia in the Aboriginal community in northwestern New South Wales, and it is anticipated that more part-Aboriginal children with thalassaemia major will be identified. The presence of numerous carriers of beta-thalassaemia in the Aboriginal population would suggest that care should be taken in the administration of iron for the treatment of anaemias found in Aboriginal children.

It is a significant fact that in 150 years of European settlement there is still only a handful of Aborigines working in the field of education in this state. This means that Aboriginal parents have very little say in the educational policies and programs affecting their children and they are concerned about this. Because of the fact that many Aboriginal people have had little contact with the school situation, (in fact up till comparatively recently, many, as children, were actually excluded from attendance at school) they regard it as an alien institution, representing an academic world to which they do not belong. Consequently many Aboriginal people are hesitant to approach the school under any pretext, even for the purpose of enrolling their children. They need a corporate voice, an avenue of approach by which they can make contact with educational authorities, to make known their needs and aspirations, at whatever level necessary, and to feel assured that action will be taken in response to these needs.With the object of providing a corporate voice for Aborigines in the educational scene in 1977 State Consultative Groups were set up in all states except Western Australia. Here in Western Australia, the need was seen by the Education Department to provide for organization at the grass roots level, and to plan for regional committees throughout the State. In September 1978, I was transferred from a classroom to the Aboriginal Education Branch as a community liaison officer, to instigate and facilitate the setting up of these committees, and to this date initial meetings have been held for this purpose in the following towns each serving a particular region: Bunbury, Kalgoorlie, Kellerberrin, Narrogin and Moora. At each meeting the keen response from the local Aboriginal community has indicated that this move to establish regional committees has their full approval and support. It is expected that by the end of 1980 a committee will have been established in each of the Education Department’s regions.

Most Aboriginal communities in Australia have been provided with government schools, built, staffed and organized by government departments. As with mission schools, the motivation for schooling has largely come from outside the community itself, though often with tacit community support. Although formal ‘Western’ schooling fits uncomfortably with the values of a hunter-gatherer society, in most cases schools have adapted very little to the special environment of an Aboriginal community. Not surprisingly, both achievement and attendance are often poor. Attempts to vary programs, as in bilingual education, and to augment the staff of these schools with Aboriginal teacher aides (teaching assistants), have not altered this situation greatly, though this does not negate the worth of these initiatives.One of the many possible reasons for this predicament is the lack of community control over what happens in its school. In many cases this is almost absolute, duplicating the lack of control over land, law, health services and many other aspects of life. For this reason, schools have been seen by some authors as one of the more direct agents of cultural change, acting to assimilate Aboriginal people into white society with a community that functions as a ‘total’ institution. The natural resistance of Aboriginal people to this process is likely to have profound implications for Aboriginal community schools.

The Northern Territory Aboriginal community of Yuendumu in the Central Australia has frequently been affected by several epidemics of measles causing deaths since its first occurrence in 1948. The Bagot community's Aboriginal health workers have taken action to prevent the spread of measles by way of immunisation, which has helped curtail the disease in the region.

The concerns and fears of the people of an Aboriginal community which follow the premature death of any of its members are discussed. These concerns centre on the competing possibilities that the death has been caused either by sorcery or by chronic and heavy consumption of alcohol. The expressed needs of the people with respect to communication with medical staff both during illness and after a death are presented and are explored in the light of the quest of one of us (D.M., a senior community member) for information about the causes of the deaths of several men of the community.

The prospect of surgery occasions great anxiety among the people of Aboriginal communities in northern Australia. Several of the fears are similar to those of patients of other cultures. Others are intimately linked to traditional beliefs about healing, and attitudes towards the body, the shedding of blood and the activities of malevolent human beings or sorcerers. Successful rapprochement between medical staff members, the patient in need of surgery, and the members of his family depends on sensitivity to these fears, detailed consultation with all concerned, and the involvement of Aboriginal community members, particularly local Aboriginal health workers.

Despite increased primary care services, diarrhoeal disease is a major contributor to morbidity experienced in Australia Aboriginal communities. Most available data is based on hospital admissions, and little is known about community incidence and attitudes. A review of clinic records provides evidence for a minimum of 1.24 episodes/year in children below five years. A survey of children in the community school identified 51% who had experienced diarrhoea in the previous two weeks, none of whom presented to the clinic. Diarrhoea without abdominal pain is not considered serious enough to seek treatment. A questionnaire confirmed that the community perceived diarrhoea as a major problem. Conventional preventive of treatment measures will not, by themselves, improve the situation and a substantial commitment by the community is required if the incidence of diarrhoea is to be reduced. Therefore it is proposed that the community should be actively involved in designing, implementing and evaluating future interventions.

In an Aboriginal community living in a country town in south-west Australia, dietary patterns were worst on the Aboriginal Reserve, somewhat better amongst those living in "transitional" houses and best in those living in standard government houses. The social background in these three groups is quite different in terms of their ages, educational backgrounds and sources of income. These factors help determine nutritional standards and should not be ignored in preventive health programmes.

As part of a wider social and environmental impact study, we have investigated the current state of health and nutrition in children who were living in a remote Aboriginal community in far north-west Australia. There was evidence of widespread mild-to-moderate malnutrition and a high prevalence of infections, particularly of the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts, and trachoma. Low birth weight was significantly associated with the presence of undernutrition at five years of age. Our results suggest that malnutrition in utero during infancy and in early childhood and the factors which cause it may impair the growth of young Australian Aborigines permanently.

The incidence of diarrhoeal disease was determined during a two year period 1985–1986 in under five year old children in an Aboriginal community in South Australia. The incidence was 1.02 episodes/child/year in 1985 and 0.90 episodes/child/year in 1986. In both years the highest incidence was in the 12–23 month age group. A total of 42 episodes of dehydration were recorded and 39 evacuations to hospital were effected. Children who lived in houses were more prone to develop diarrhoea than those who lived in camps or who alternated between living in camps and houses. The high incidence of diarrhoea may be due to lack of adequate facilities for personal and domestic hygiene, unsuitable housing and an unhygienic environment.

THIS article attempts to provide answers from a psychiatric viewpoint to the question posed by Tindale (1974) in the opening paragraph of his Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: "What happens when a few small groups of people of family size are wresting a living from a given area of land by searching for food, over whose presence or growth they have no direct control?" Such very small-scale societies were a necessity in the Australian environment, where the Aboriginals were obliged to live by hunting and gathering. Indeed, the life-style of all manking was similar to this through most of the time span of human existence. The survey on which this article is based examined a community not long removed from that life-style, and found the defense mechanisms of projection and identification, which apparently persist because of their ancient function in assisting the adjustment of the individual and the group in these very small-scale societies. Some clans in this area have been in continuous contact with whites for only 25 years, and the others for about 60 years, so it is unlikely that the modal defenses of the people have changed. The child-rearing patterns that contributed to the defenses, appropriate to a society organized into clans, probably also have not changed significantly. Intensified by stresses of modern origin, these defenses shape the psychiatric illnesses of today.

Yirrkala is an Aboriginal community in north-east Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. Residents aged five years and over participated in a survey to establish the prevalence and causes of anaemia. Eleven per cent were anaemic (haemoglobin level less than 110 g/L). Most of these were iron deficient, and this deficiency was attributed, at least in part, to hookworm infestation; 15% were folate deficient; none was vitamin B12 deficient. There was no haemoglobinopathy, thalassaemia trait or glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency detected.

This article is a reflection on the author’s personal experience undertaking a corporate secondment to the remote Aboriginal community of Aurukun in 2001–02, working on the Family Income Management Scheme. She analyses the history, context and possible motivations of such programs, and considers how likely they are to halt the severe social dysfunction currently manifest. Her discussion focuses on the role of individual ‘blow-ins’ in light of her own experience and explores some of the ways in which change might be achieved—within employees such as herself, at least.

This article draws on previous research by the authors and others as well as lifelong learning theory to argue the case for providing pre-service teachers with deep and meaningful experiences over time that help them to build their personal capacity for developing knowledge and dispositions to work with Australian Aboriginal students, their families and communities. These experiences, provided in partnership with the Aboriginal community, demonstrate how opportunities for deepening cultural understanding could help pre-service teachers to become key stakeholders in the partnership and to embrace the joint responsibility for working towards improving educational outcomes for Aboriginal students. The Healthy Culture Healthy Country Programme was developed by Dr. Shayne Williams of the New South Wales Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (AECG) for practicing teachers and modified for pre-service teachers by its author. It was found from an exploration of the experiences of first year pre-service ...

Storytelling is a way of dealing with trauma. For many of those who have experienced trauma, sharing one’s own experiences, in the form of a personal narrative, can help to develop new meaning on past events. Now I See It was a storytelling project that resulted in a collection of photographs taken by members of the urban Aboriginal community of Montreal. The project was run through the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal in 2014 and exhibited in the educational department of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.Now I See It was a way of creating an “‘internal map”’ because trauma is so painfully hard to see and the experience is so different for each individual., Le récit numérique est un moyen de surmonter les traumatismes. Partager ses expériences traumatisantes en en faisant le récit constitue pour plusieurs personnes ayant vécu un traumatisme une façon de donner un nouveau sens aux événements passés. Now I See It est un projet de récits numériques avec comme résultante une collection de photographies prises par les membres de la communauté urbaine et autochtone montréalaise. Ce projet a été piloté par le Foyer pour femmes autochtones de Montréal en 2014 et présenté au département de l’éducation du Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal. Now I See It est une manière d’élaborer la « carte interne » de traumatismes très douloureux à comprendre et dont l’expérience est différente pour chaque individu.

Much of the ill health of Australian indigenous populations can be attributed to diet-related diseases. This community nutrition project is part of a wider renal screening and prevention program based in the Umoona aboriginal community in Coober Pedy in South Australia's far north. The nutrition project facilitates the capacity of the Umoona aboriginal community to identify and redress nutrition-related issues considered important in improving their overall health status. Project nutritionists developed and implemented a specialized nutrition training program with the Umoona aboriginal health workers. The nutritionists were responsive to requests from community groups to provide nutrition expertise and support in program development. Individual nutrition counseling for adults and children taking part in renal health screening was also provided. The aboriginal health workers reported increased nutritional knowledge and confidence in addressing nutrition-related issues within the community after nutrition training. Individual consultations and partnerships formed with community groups have increased awareness and prompted action to address the importance of nutrition in renal disease and overall health in the Umoona community. © 2002 by the National Kidney Foundation, Inc.

This course design is such that it will enable twelve Aboriginal school leavers to compete, within nine months, on an equitable basis with other generally more qualified students who seek apprenticeships in the automotive and building trades.

This paper reports a remarkable case of venereal disease. It discusses the serious implications and enormous difficulties of control in an Aboriginal community in which striking cultural practices play a unique and major role in disease transmission. Despite known aetiology and the ready availability of inexpensive treatment, patients continue to suffer whilst health education remains extremely difficult.

Cet article traite de la chasse chez des groupes centres sur la tradition. Apres avoir revu differentes manieres dont des cas semblables ont ete traites, l'auteur presente une description detaillee d'une expedition de chasse et de sa situation ethnographique. On soutient que pour bien apprecier l'importance de la poursuite et de la consommation du gibier, ces activites doivent etre placees dans leur contexte socio-culturel. Leurs associations avec le systeme de croyan ce et de rites d'une part et leur utilisation par des gens qui veulent acquerir de l'influence dans la communaute d'autre part, ont une signification particuliere dans ce contexte.

Milingimbi is an isolated, traditionally oriented Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory of Australia. A bilingual program in English and Gupapuyngu was started at Milingimbi School in 1973. For four years, children from both English-only and bilingual classes were tested for achievement in academic subjects. By Year 7, the children from bilingual classes were performing better in seven out of ten tests than the English-only children.