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Communication and connection: Valuing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives
4
JCPSLP
Volume 19, Number 1 2017
Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology
KEYWORDS
ABORIGINAL
PLAYGROUPS
PRIVILEGE
STOLEN
GENERATIONS
URBAN
When I began my research for my Indigenous PhD, I
decided to use the setting of one of the playgroups I had
established. I was no longer the facilitator, so with the
permission of the playgroup families, I immersed myself in
it for three years to undertake my collaborative research
journey. I did not immediately become one of the mob. The
young mothers I had worked with, had, for the most part,
children in primary school, and very few of the families knew
me. I appeared as a stranger to them. I was an educated,
teacher-like authority person. I looked just like a white
authority figure in their midst. I was treated with wariness
for a long time, until they saw I was there to help the kids
without judging or devaluing them. In my role, I came to
see what is so discussed in the literature, but not often
really understood by mainstream researchers and service
providers. It was a revealing experience to me.
I came to see that Australia has many worlds. Working in
this context, I could clearly see that there is a mainstream,
white, Eurocentric Australia and there is another place.
This other place, the families called “Aboriginal world”.
In the urban context, it was not a different traditional
cultural space, but a colonised space shaped by daily
lived experiences. I found the families’ narratives of their
own school experiences full of experiences of exclusion,
racism, discrimination and fear. Much of this manifests into
anxiety and mental health issues (Malin, 2003). Aboriginal
world is not a lesser space to its inhabitants; it has a very
different tone and sensibility to mainstream world. It has
its own culture, its own history, its own language, ways of
knowing, fears and most of all the participants know it is a
place oppressed by the elite world of white authorities and
experts. Aboriginal Australians live in this colonised space
on a daily basis.
I am an Aboriginal woman, but have very little tradition
or language with which to identify. All that is left of my
language is a list of nouns and some recordings in the State
Library of Queensland. I was not brought up traditionally,
as my tribal lands, people and knowings were gone.
Nonetheless, I was brought up as a colonised Indigenous
woman with a colonised history. My grandmother was a
stolen child, taken on a shopping outing in St George,
despite her family being exempt from removal as station
workers. When she turned 21 she was granted a Certificate
of Exemption, which meant she could live as a white
woman provided she adhered to the conditions specified
in her certificate. She was not allowed to drink alcohol, nor
mix with any Aboriginal people – even her own family – and
finally, she was not allowed to speak her own language.
Most Aboriginal Australians now live in urban
centres, and many Aboriginal children and
families are not recognisable to mainstream
service providers as they are fair skinned.
This article tells what lived Aboriginal reality,
or world, is like for one Aboriginal educator
living and working within an urban Aboriginal
space. The authors, one an Indigenous
educator and academic and the other a
non-Indigenous speech pathologist who has
been fortunate to have received guidance
from many Aboriginal mentors including the
first author, will discuss how respecting and
understanding the offered lived experiences
of Aboriginal peoples, when viewed from
within a cultural safety framework, provides
non-Indigenous speech-language
pathologists with all they need in order to
work ethically and effectively within the
Indigenous space. So many professionals
come into Aboriginal settings to make a
difference. Understanding the lived
experiences of Aboriginal peoples may
enable this to difference to happen a little
better.
Robyn’s story
Ten years ago, I established a number of Indigenous
playgroups in mainstream schools in Queensland (Sandri,
2015). The playgroups were focused upon developing
pre-literacy skills and acted as a transition to formal school
agencies. I have worked in rural and remote locations, but
on this occasion, as with most of my career, I worked in an
urban mainstream setting. For those of us who do, our
Country is urban concrete. Although I have Indigenous
heritage, I had never worked in Indigenous settings or with
Indigenous people prior to establishing the playgroups. In
fact, I had lived overseas for most of my adult life, working
and studying in England and America. I knew of my
Aboriginal heritage, but it was rarely discussed or noticed
by others for I was a fair-skinned Aboriginal woman. In
other words, I look white and we fair-skinned Aboriginal
people are legion in a time of dual cultural marriages.
What is spoken, and
what is heard
Bridging the services gap via culturally safe practice
Robyn Sandri and Judith Gould
THIS ARTICLE
HAS BEEN
PEER-
REVIEWED
Robyn Sandri
(top) and Judith
Gould