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As the first adaptation of a complete Shakespearean work presented entirely in one Aboriginal language of Australia, Hecate is a landmark production in Australian theatre. The Noongar language of t...

In Australia, language and song are integral to maintaining Aboriginal knowledge systems. British colonisation and ensuing Australian government policies of assimilation have adversely impacted the...

This article explores connections between history, emotion and Aboriginal song in the south of Western Australia. Songs performed in the Noongar language in the 19th and early 20th centuries provid...

The Noongar people of the federal state of Western Australia have recently entered into what can be described as the most comprehensive settlement of a native title claim that spans an area of 200 000 square kilometres. The Settlement lays the foundation of a sui generis model for indigenous and minority self-determination in Australia and beyond. The Settlement sits between the spheres of public law and private law and provides for a form of non-territorial autonomy that is unique not only to Australia. The Noongar people are acknowledged as the traditional owners of the entire area, albeit that major other towns and cities are located in the area and the Noongar people only constitute very small minority. Whereas the topic of non-territorial self-government has been mainly explored in theory and in practice in the European domain, the Noongar Settlement shows how the principles that embody non-territorial autonomy may find root in other parts of the world. The potential relevance of the Noongar Settlement for non-territorial self-government of Aboriginal people or other minorities lies in four essential elements: firstly, creating for the Noongar people legal Corporations by statute for purposes of their self-government; secondly, decentralising powers and functions to the Corporations to enable them to perform the functions of a community government to its members; thirdly, to enable the elected Corporations to develop policies, make decisions and deliver pubic services on a personal rather than a geographical basis to the members of the community; and fourthly, to allow the Corporations to cooperate with and engage other levels of government within the system of intergovernmental relations in Australia. The Noongar Corporations, in effect, have the hallmarks of a fourth level government and represent a potential sui generis model for indigenous and minority non-territorial self-government.

Highlights Community psychology can contribute to healing and cultural renewal for indigenous communities.Storytelling through community arts practice is used to witness Elder stories.Narrative inquiry shows the ongoing effects of colonisation and coloniality.Narrative inquiry shows the various ways people resist and survive oppression.Decolonial approaches are vital to the goals of critical community psychology., Researchers and practitioners in community psychology have an important role to play in supporting decolonial work including promoting opportunities for reclamation, healing, and acknowledgment of history. In this article, we discuss research undertaken alongside a community arts and cultural development project that sought to support Aboriginal people in Western Australian to create an archive of their stories for current and future generations; stories that could serve as resources for healing, reclamation, and for examining a painful and unjust past. Narrative approaches have been promoted in community psychology to advance empowerment research and practice alongside marginalized, excluded, and minoritized groups. We report on findings from a critical narrative inquiry of the stories shared through the project and in conversational interviews with four Noongar Elders to explicate the history and ongoing legacy of racialized oppression in their lives as well as cultural continuity and survival evident in the stories. Community researchers and practitioners can play a role in amplifying those stories as part of the co‐intentional work of decolonization.

The Birthing on Noongar Boodjar project investigated the cultural birthing practices of Aboriginal women living on country (Noongar Boodjar) in an urbanised environment; and their experiences of interactions with maternal health care providers (especially midwives). The evidence from the five year study identified changes required in health systems to adequately support Aboriginal women and their families during the significant cultural and life event of childbearing. This paper sets out the methodological and theoretical considerations which framed how the Birthing on Noongar Boodjar project was conducted by the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal investigators. We provide a brief project background before describing the Indigenous research methodologies and practices crucial to exploring the research questions, collecting data in culturally secure ways and using cultural lenses to analyze and interpret the data. The study design and results are reported in other publications.

The Island of Rottnest is commonly known to Noongar people as Wadjemup, “place across the river” or from its colonial connections the “Isle of Spirits”. Rottnest is located approximately 18 km off the coast of Western Australia, near Fremantle, and is world-renowned as a tourism precinct. The island’s hidden history of Aboriginal incarceration, dispossession and death within the Panopticon-inspired Quod prison is less well known. Foucault is eminently known for his theories around panopticism, at least by any student of cultural and critical theory in the last few decades. Foucault’s based on the 18th-century social reformer (philosopher) Jeremy Bentham’s idea that prisoners could be controlled and reformed by creating the illusion that they were at all times under surveillance. This paper investigates the Panopticon’s influence on one of the oldest cultures in the world – Australian Aboriginals in the western state of the continent – who were, from 1864, incarcerated in a Panopticon-influenced building referred to as the Quod. The incarceration dehumanized, dispossessed and colonized proud people. L'île de Rottnest est connue des Noongar sous le nom de Wadjemup, «endroit de l'autre côté de la rivière» ou sous le nom de «l'île des esprits», en raison de son passé colonial. L’île de Rottnest est située à environ 18 km au large des côtes du Western Australia, près de Fremantle, et est une destination touristique prisée. L’histoire cachée de l’incarcération, de la dépossession et de la mort des populations indigènes dans cette prison, inspirée du Panoptique, est moins connue. Pour forger le concept de panoptisme, Foucault s’est basé sur l'idée du réformateur social et philosophe Jeremy Bentham, qui au XVIIIe siècle a expliqué que les prisonniers pouvaient être contrôlés et réformés en créant l'illusion qu'ils étaient à tout moment sous surveillance. Cet article examine l’influence du Panoptique sur l’une des plus anciennes cultures du monde - les Aborigènes du Western Australia - qui ont été, à partir de 1864, incarcérés dans un bâtiment appelé Quod. L’expérience de l’incarcération a déshumanisé, dépossédé et colonisé les populations fières et indépendantes.

Fiction has the power to show the reality of people’s experiences and spark emotion in those who read it. Speculative fiction especially has been used to observe our political and cultural climate and project an image of what is possible, even probable, through speculating about worlds that are unlike our own reality. My shelf is filled with speculative dystopian novels; George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, exploring surveillance and censorship in an authoritarian State, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, studying conservative approaches that tyrannize women. Terra Nullius, written by Wirlomin Noongar woman, Claire Coleman, sits beside these classics in its own right, detailing the dystopia generated by colonialism in Australia.

In That Deadman Dance, Kim Scott draws on Noongar vocabulary and ontology to immerse readers in a world where rain cries and chuckles as it structures the land according to its own designs. This essay positions Scott’s novel as one manifestation of his ongoing commitment to the recovery of repressed Noongar knowledge, and it formulates a framework of ecospectrality to focus attention on the recovery of repressed knowledge of the nonhuman. It contends that Scott adapts the form of the novel to circulate this knowledge to local and global readers, offering it as a resource to shape the future rather than resolve the past.

Kim Scott was the first Aboriginal author to win the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2000 for Benang, an award he won again in 2011 for That Deadman Dance. Yet despite these national accolades, Scott interrogates the very categories of Australian and Indigenous literatures to which his work is subjected. His writing reimagines, incorporates and challenges colonial ways of thinking about people and place. This thesis reveals the provocative proposal running through Scott’s collected works and projects that contemporary Australian society (and literature) should be grafted onto regional Aboriginal languages and stories as a way to express a national sense of “who we are and what we might be”. Scott’s vision of a truly postcolonial Australia and literature is articulated through his collected writings which form a network of social, historical, political and personal narratives. This thesis traces how Scott’s writing and the Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories Project (Wirlomin Project) reconfigure colonial power relationships in the disputed territories of place, language, history, identity and the globalised world of literature. Ultimately, Scott intends to create an empowered Noongar position in cross-cultural exchange and does so by disrupting the fixed categories inherent in these territories; territories constructed during the colonising and nationalising of Australia. Due to the range of the disputed territories identified in this thesis, there is an engagement with a variety of theoretical frameworks including Val Plumwood’s ecopoetics, Bakhtinian dialogic, Linda Hutcheon’s historiographic metafiction, David Damrosch’s world literature, Martin Nakata’s cultural interface and, importantly, Scott’s own writing on regional Noongar literature. Each of these approaches to Scott’s writing and the Wirlomin Project analyses how Scott begins a process of decolonisation, finding sites of Noongar empowerment, truth-telling and reciprocity in areas of cross-cultural dispute. Scott’s writing problematises the concept of a bound and unified nation in a constructive way. This thesis is broken into seven chapters that chronologically examine each of Scott’s texts within a particular disputed territory and critical framework. The first chapter performs an ecocritical reading of Scott’s short fiction and poetry (these works span the period from 1985 to 2015) and is followed by analyses of language and True Country, history and Benang, Noongar identity in Kayang and Me, the globalised world of literature and That Deadman Dance, Noongar empowerment through the Wirlomin Project, and a revisiting of these key areas in relation to Taboo. Increasingly, the Wirlomin Project becomes the nexus of Scott’s creative, personal and political trajectories and this thesis argues that, through the community-run project, Scott seeks to position an empowered Noongar heritage at the heart of a conflicted country and its stories.

The reviving of the presence, existence, and eugenics of the Aborigines become pivotal issue to be brought up in the literature. Since the coming of the settlers, the Aborigines have seemed to experience shifting identity; living as a nominal population over the settlers; and later on becoming the ones who are attached with the ‘exotic’ due to their uniqueness and scarcity in number compared to the majority. This condition, from being the natives who own the land into those who become the ‘rare’ in their own land, provokes crucial issues related to the Aboriginal identity, which is challenging to be further discussed. Through That Deadman Dance, Scott tries to resurrect the Aborigine’s identity, especially Noongar, in the midst of disappearing Aboriginal communities. This article is aimed at revealing the identity of Noongar people by selecting and grouping the textual data in the novel which portray the Aborigines cultural experience and their indigenity. Later on, the data were investigated based on Muecke’s concept of connectedness to approach the problem. Accordingly, the narrative presented by Scott indicates that he has offered an alternative to view Aborigine’s identity which is potentially unsettling; thus, this finding seems to challenge the prescribed identity of Noongar corresponded by the major society.

Dyche, deals with analysing the psyche of the Dalit – “Dyche” - to redefine Dalit community and empower the victimised psyche of Dalit. The exploration of Dalit historiography and psychology through Dyche substantiates that there is cultural, spiritual and psychological uniformity among Dalits and other Indigenous people of the globe. Hence exploration through “Dyche” towards one’s culture, tradition and identity could edify the cause of psychical wounds and thus could facilitate deliverance to indigenous communities from their marginal predicament and bring back harmony. This paper attempts to apply some features of Dyche, the practical Dalit psyche theory, for studying Dalits, Sami people of Norway and Noongar people of Australian Aborigines and to explore their common life experiences, ethos and common self-assertion for liberation with reference to Indian Dalit writer M.C. Raj’s novel, Yoikana and Australian Aboriginal writer Kim Scott’s novel, That Deadman Dance. The paper also endeavours to differentiate between migrant psyche and indigenous psyche and discuss the compensatory mechanisms “Moralising” and “Open Rebellion” adopted by the Oppressor and the Oppressed respectively in their negotiation with the “other.” Keywords: Dyche; compensatory mechanism; migrant psyche; moralising; open rebellion DOI: http://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2016-2203-13

When the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (‘UNDRIP’) in 2007, many extolled it for recognising Indigenous peoples’ right of self-determination. Although there is some consensus that all peoples have self-determination, as a legal claim it has routinely inspired criticism that it will lead to contradictory claims, interpretations, and further political contestation. Ten years after UNDRIP’s endorsement, some Indigenous claims of self-determination in Australia are contradictory. While contradictory claims may not be inherently problematic, in the context explored in this article, there are problematic effects. This article examines how contradictory self-determination claims arose in response to Australia’s recent Native Title Amendment (Indigenous Land Use Agreements) Act 2017 (Cth) (‘2017 Amendments’), which amended and weakened the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) (‘NTA’). It also evaluates the consequences of those contradictory claims and argues for renewed critical assessment of who legitimately determines the self who claims self-determination.

To design a questionnaire that would determine an Indigenous individual’s perceptions of the barriers and motivators to aerobic and anabolic exercise with a series of questions designed to elicit the factors that impact uptake and retention of regular physical activity. For this purpose, a questionnaire was designed to capture information relating to motivators and barriers, traditional physical activities, preferred exercise environments, exercise goals and levels of commitment to physical activity. This article does not report the results of the questionnaire itself but the preparation that was required in order to develop it. Indigenous standpoint theory. Participatory Action Research. A series of consultation meetings were arranged between the first author, a Noongar Aboriginal researcher, with a range of people from the same Noongar community as the author to discuss priorities and develop questions. The drafted questionnaire was shaped with continuous Noongar community feedback to ensure the language, length and appropriateness of questions. Questionnaire reliability was assessed using interclass correlation. Most questions had excellent internal consistency. A consensus was reached on the utility of the questionnaire. The personal contacts of the first author and nature of community involvement in the development of this questionnaire were helpful in assuring that it would be an acceptable tool for the Noongar community. The piloting of the questionnaire was also important in confirming its community acceptability. This article provides a model and suggestions for researching physical activity and exercise in a culturally safe manner.

In 2006 Justice Murray Wilcox of the Federal Court of Australia found that native title continued to exist in Noongar3 boodjar (country). The decision demonstrated one of the world’s most remarkable examples of cultural and physical resilience on the part of an Indigenous group. This is particularly so when one understands the onerous demands placed on claimant groups, to provide (i) detailed evidence of a distinct culture and set of practices at the time of ‘sovereignty’, (ii) the claim-group’s continuity of language and knowledge, and (iii) demonstrated knowledge of and connection to ancestors at the time of ‘sovereignty’. Kingsley Palmer, author of the Single Noongar Claim’s Expert Anthropologist Report, concluded that the maintenance of Noongar knowledge, language and culture is monumental ‘testimony to an enduring Indigenous tradition that continues to survive despite the odds’. The following Report includes stories of present-day efforts to maintain this tradition of cultural resilience through novel, contemporary and globally networked means. It includes stories about a project that took as its dual aims (i) to carry out research concerned with bringing together old Noongar knowledge and new social media, and (ii) to make the social effort to build a digital platform that helps to make information about Noongar culture and ancient traditions available to the public, as well as to Noongar ‘users’ of that language and culture. In this way it is a story about research being used to support attempts at social and cultural development: research as social enterprise, and as ‘creative citizenship’.

Located just off the North Walpole Road, the Swarbrick Wilderness Discovery Site can be seen as a node of several different historical trajectories which are – to different extents – documented in the artworks which frame, or decorate, the site. My account draws on my own biography and probes the investments I have in my various post-settler entanglements with the area. I critique, in particular, the idea of ‘wilderness’ as one formative to post-settler narrations and myths at the same time that it places indigenous practices of belonging under erasure. For, most recently, Swarbrick stood metonymically for the campaign to preserve ‘old growth forests’, culminating at the end of the 1990s, and yet it is and has been also a site of logging, agriculture, Noongar belonging, that is, of pre-colonial and settler colonial spatial practices. In this article, I explore the different ways the Swarbrick Wilderness Discovery site positions itself, and, critically, its visitor within frameworks provided by ecocritical and environmental discourse and post-settler theories.

We examine the role that habitus, an individual’s or group’s dispositions, has played in the retention of traditional ecological knowledge among the Noongar people of south-western Australia. We sought to determine if current plant knowledge reflects Noongar habitus or, alternatively, the use of fall-back species that were important due to the intermittency of agricultural employment and the social exclusion of Aboriginal people up until at least the 1960s in Western Australia. We compared the seasonal availability of Noongar food plant resources currently known by Noongar Elders to those described at the time of European settlement. We used non-metric Multidimensional Scaling (nMDS) and multivariate statistics to compare the seasonal availability of plant resources with the seasonal availability of work prior to the introduction of civil rights for Aboriginal Australians in the 1960s. We show that the seasonal pattern of plant knowledge has changed little since settlement and that there was no significant relationship between the seasonal availability of work and plant knowledge. This result suggests that prior to 1960 Noongars maintained a reasonably traditional round of seasonal activities involving traditional plant use. We suggest that Noongar habitus guided their response to the colonising culture and helped preserve traditional ecological knowledge.

The Noongar Aboriginal people are the traditional owners of the southwest of Western Australia, including the land on which the city of Perth is located. Their recent history has been dominated by brutal and racist government policies that have created a diverse and complex community working to rediscover and preserve Noongar culture. Community media can be an effective and empowering tool for preserving culture, shaping a contemporary Noongar identity and creating a dialogue between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous urban community of Perth. This article discusses issues of Noongar identity in Perth, and looks at how lessons from the past are shaping new Noongar media initiatives and the establishment of Noongar radio.

88.3% of mothers initiated breast-feeding, but only 43.8% of infants were exclusively breast-fed at 6–12 weeks. By 12 months of age69.8%ofbabieshadreceivedfruitjuiceintheirbottles,59.8%receivedcordial.64.5%ofinfantsweregivenwaterintheirbottles.Themajorityofinfants had received ‘fast foods’ by 12 months of age with 56.2% had been given coca cola, 68% lemonade and 78% fried chips.

International audience; Displaced on their own “country” by colonisation, the Noongar Aborigines of the south-west of Western Australia have lodged the Single Noongar Claim, an application for determination of native title, to seek the recognition of their customary land rights. Through that process, they were confronted to a second displacement by the respondents to their claim who tried to deny them this recognition. But the Noongars found ways to relocate themselves territorially, historically, socially, economically and politically on their “country”.

This books ends with Len Collard and Dave Palmer discussing indigenous terms for ideal approaches to history-making. The Noongar’s sense of kanya and the Kimberley people’s notion of good liyarn pr...

Much Indigenous affairs journalism in the Western Australian state capital of Perth reproduces colonial discourse and perpetuates racist stereotypes of Aboriginalpeople. Against this background the traditional custodians of Perth, the Noongar people,have struggled to find a media voice. Meanwhile, observers in several countries have critiqued a shift from journalism about specific places toward journalism concerned with no place in particular. Spurred by globalisation, this shift has de-emphasisedthe ‘where?’ question in the ‘what, where, who, why, how and when?’ template of journalistic investigation. Reporting from a project in which journalism students collaborated with No ongar community organisations, we argue that an understanding ofIndigenous Australians’ profound connection to place can inform journalists about the underlying character of places about which they report. We suggest that working with Indigenous people can transform the way journalists conceptualise their careers, andhelp secure a sense of place for Indigenous people in the media. Finally, collaborating with Indigenous people can teach journalists to view their professional practices through a sense of place lens, re-emphasising the ‘where?’ question in its applicationto both geographic place and the realm of a journalist’s imagination. usc Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Background This study aimed to describe sexual health behaviour, alcohol and other drug use, and health service use among young Noongar people in the south-west of Western Australia. Method: A cross-sectional survey was undertaken among a sample of 244 Noongar people aged 16−30 years. Results: The sample was more disadvantaged than the wider Noongar population. Sexual activity was initiated at a young age, 18% had two or more casual sex partners in the previous 12 months, with men more likely to have done so than women (23% vs 14%). Condoms were always or often carried by 57% of men and 37% of women, and 36% of men and 23% of women reported condom use at last sex with a casual partner. Lifetime sexually transmissible infection diagnosis was 14%. Forty percent currently smoked tobacco and 25% reported risky alcohol consumption on a weekly and 7% on an almost daily basis. Cannabis was used by 37%, 12% used drugs in addition to cannabis and 11% reported recently injecting drugs. In the previous 12 months, 66% had a health check and 31% were tested for HIV or sexually transmissible infections. Additionally, 25% sought advice or assistance for mental health or alcohol and other drug issues. Discussion: Although some respondents engaged in risky sexual behaviour, alcohol and other drug use or both, most did not. Particularly encouraging was the engagement of respondents with the health care system, especially among those engaging in risky behaviours. The results confound negative stereotypes of Aboriginal people and demonstrate a level of resilience among respondents.

In 2003, 80 Aboriginal Noongar, represented by the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council (SWALSC), lodged the ‘Single Noongar Claim’ (WAG 6006 of 2003), an application for native title, on behalf of all Noongar people, over the South West of Western Australia, including the Perth metropolitan area.At the request of the State of Western Australia and the Commonwealth, the hearing over the Perth area commenced first in 2005 before Justice Wilcox, who handed down his judgement in 2006. He recognised the existence of a single Noongar community, governed by a normative system of laws and customs at the date of settlement in 1829, and confirmed the continuity of that community and normative system to the present day. He identified eight surviving native title rights that should be recognised, subject to extinguishment.The State and Commonwealth governments appealed this decision. In 2008, the full Federal Court confirmed the existence of a single Noongar society at sovereignty. However, the full Court overturned the positive determination and sent the case back to another court for reconsideration. In consultation with the Noongar, SWALSC decided to pursue the Single Noongar Claim through negotiations with the State government. These negotiations should soon be concluded.The concept of history and its interpretations, rather than culture, tradition or practice, played a central role in the prosecution of the separate proceeding and its subsequent appeal, and is still central t [...]

BARBARA: Because I didn’t introduce the session today, before I give the microphone to Bob Tonkinson, I would just like to make a few comments. I think it’s very important the way everybody has insisted on the importance of history, and also on the issue of cognitive kinship in Native Title because it’s not just an issue for Noongar people, for people who live where there are cities, but also everywhere in Australia where people in one way or another have been displaced, or were moving before the settlements were organised. The issue of Noongar land that was presented by Virginie Bernard, was already discussed in the 1990’s in Broome, for instance, when the Rubibi Corporation was created, with Yawuru around Broome, the importance of history then. I would just like to tell a personal story because the reason why I was involved there at the time, in an oral history project that I was asked to work with my ex-mother-in-law who was a Yawuru woman. She had been recording since the early 1980’s the history of displacement in the Broome region. There were about 12 big families involved who were later in the Rubibi Corporation. This project led to a book that was going to be published by Magabala Books but the day before going to print, it was already announced to come out, it was seized by the State. And what was in this book? There were many, many testimonies, I mean transcribed, that was my job, and criss-crossed with any literature I could find in French, in English or in German [...]

Tidigare forskning har visat att tillgången till sociala välfärdstjänster hos Australiens ursprungsbefolkning anses begränsad. Vissa klienter har erfarenhet av dåligt bemötande av personal inom välfärdstjänster med blandad klientgrupp (ursprungsbefolkning och majoritetsbefolkning). Detta innebär att klienter tillhörande ursprungsbefolkningen inte delges samma rättigheter som övriga klienter ur majoritetsbefolkningen. Syftet med uppsatsen är att analysera och beskriva hur professionella i västra Australien, främst inom det sociala arbetet men även relaterade professioner inom psykologi, uppfattar ursprungsbefolkningens tillgång till sociala välfärdstjänster samt hur professionella arbetar för att bevara ursprungsbefolkningens rättigheter. En kvalitativ undersökning genomfördes med sju professionella i den del av västra Australien där främst Noongar-folket lever. Semi-strukturerade intervjuer användes som materialinsamlingsmetod. Metodvalet gjordes för att få en inblick i professionellas upplevelser av möten med ursprungsbefolkningen och därmed uppnå syfte och frågeställningar. Materialet har analyserats med ett intersektionellt perspektiv och Maslows behovshierarki. Resultatet belyser att informanterna beskriver att det existerar en problematik kring ursprungsbefolkningens tillgång till välfärdstjänster. Dessutom framkommer att informanterna anser att det råder en rasism riktad mot ursprungsbefolkningen, både på en institutionell nivå och en samhällelig nivå. Det framkommer även att informanterna bedömer att fler institutioner behöver anpassa sina insatser till olika kulturer för att tillgodose rättigheter. Detta sker samtidigt som resultatet visar att samtliga informanter i studien strävar efter att arbeta kulturanpassat i syfte att tillgodose ursprungsbefolkningens rättigheter.

Through a lens of Human Niche Construction theory, we examine Noongar (an indigenous people of south western Australia) relationships with southwestern Australian flora and suggest influences of these relationships on contemporary botanical patterns in this global biodiversity hotspot. By conducting a review of historical and contemporary literature and drawing upon the contemporary knowledge of Noongar Elders, we examine the merits of five key hypotheses of human niche construction theory in relation to this large cultural group. We find compelling evidence that supports Noongar niche construction, but caution that further research is required to test its likely ecological and evolutionary outcomes. We suggest that further collaborative, multi-disciplinary research that applies Noongar and Western science will lead to a greater understanding of the biological assets of southwestern Australia.

International audience; In 2003, 80 Aboriginal Noongar, represented by the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council (SWALSC), lodged the 'Single Noongar Claim', an application for native title, on behalf of all Noongar people, over the South West of Western Australia, including the Perth metropolitan area. At the request of the State of Western Australia and the Commonwealth, the hearing over the Perth area commenced first in 2005 before Justice Wilcox, who handed down his judgement in 2006. He recognised the existence of a single Noongar community, governed by a normative system of laws and customs at the date of settlement in 1829, and confirmed the continuity of that community and normative system to the present day. He identified eight surviving native title rights that should be recognised, subject to extinguishment. The State and Commonwealth governments appealed this decision. In 2008, the full Federal Court confirmed the existence of a single Noongar society at sovereignty. However, the full Court overturned the positive determination and sent the case back to another court for reconsideration. In consultation with the Noongar, SWALSC decided to pursue the Single Noongar Claim through negotiations with the State government. These negotiations should soon be concluded. The concept of history and its interpretations, rather than culture, tradition or practice, played a central role in the prosecution of the separate proceeding and its subsequent appeal, and is still central to the negotiations with the State government. I illustrate how history as such as has been instrumentalized by the various parties involved in the Single Noongar Claim. The applicants used historical evidence to prove the continuity of the Noongar community, a view adopted by Justice Wilcox. On the contrary, the State and Commonwealth argued that, due to the history of dispossession in the South West, the maintenance of 'traditional' laws and customs to the present day was impossible. The judges of the full Court accepted their claim that continuity had not been proved for each generation and were dissatisfied with Justice Wilcox's consideration of the historical context as an explanation for change. Eventually, to prepare themselves for the negotiations with the State of Western Australia, SWALSC used history again as an empowering tool proving the continuity and strength of the Noongar community.

Normal.dotm 0 0 1 66 381 University of New South Wales 3 1 467 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false This interview focuses mainly on Kim Scott’s new novel That Deadman Dance which won the regional Commonwealth Writers Prize (Southeast Asian and Pacific region) and the Miles Franklin Award. The topics of conversation include Scott’s involvement in the Noongar language project (and the relationship of this project to the novel), the novel itself, the challenges of writing in English, the resistance paradigm and indigenous sovereignty and nationalism.

Introduction Tambellup is a small rural town in the Great Southern region of Western Australia (WA), approximately 300 km south-east of state capital Perth. Tambellup has a much higher Aboriginal population than the national average and achieved very positive results for year one children in 2007 regional Australian Early Development Index testing. In 2009 the Great Southern GP Network (which has a facilitating role in providing early intervention strategies to families with young children at risk of disadvantage) requested that public health staff at Edith Cowan University, Perth, WA undertake an exploratory study to discover the factors protective of children's development in Tambellup. This article describes the subsequent research and its findings. Methods This 2009 qualitative study interviewed both adult members of the local Aboriginal community (Noongar people; n = 23), and non-Aboriginal leaders from a cross-section of organisations, services and the community (n = 14) to determine what made growing up in Tambellup a positive experience. Aboriginal participants were introduced to the researchers by a local cultural consultant. Non-Aboriginal participants were initially sourced from a list provided by the GSGPN and extended by asking those listed to identify other appropriate contacts. Face-to-face interviews were carried out with Aboriginal participants and telephone interviews were undertaken with non-Aboriginal participants. All interviews were conducted using a standard schedule of questions as a guide, supplemented by clarifying and broadening questions from research team members. Data were analysed in a multi-stage process of collation, extraction of common themes and verification of themes with study participants and other stakeholders. Findings were presented to local Aboriginal leaders at a community meeting and a final report was prepared and circulated to community members. Results There was substantial evidence of widespread trust and positive relationships in this close-knit community, where adults looked out for and supported both their own and others' children. The primary school played a key role in supporting children's development even before children started school. Good relations generally existed between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal residents, contributing to the stability of the population and providing many role models in successful cross-cultural relationships. Conclusion Aboriginal people in Tambellup played significant but often under-recognised roles in promoting child and youth wellbeing in the community. The community had the capacity to respond to local needs and challenges. Communication channels were effective and there was a sense of belonging, pride and 'connectedness' in the community that promoted and supported a safe environment for children. High quality services and staff (eg school and community health centre) reinforced children's developmental opportunities. The results suggest that small rural communities offer significant and untapped resources for enhancing the health and wellbeing of children in the critical early years of life.