Jenna Woods

This report, "Post-Referendum: What’s Next for Universities?" focuses on the role universities can play in advancing reconciliation efforts following the 2023 Indigenous Voice to Parliament Referendum. The report captures insights from a National Reconciliation Week event, hosted by Murdoch University in collaboration with Edith Cowan University and James Cook University, featuring First Nations leaders in higher education. It explores the impact of the failed referendum on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and outlines the challenges and opportunities for universities in advancing Indigenous matters across their organisations. Key points of discussion include the importance of Indigenous self-determination in higher education, the role of Reconciliation Action Plans (RAPs), and the importance of embedding Indigenous perspectives into university governance, teaching, and learning. Insights from reflective activities and discussions from the event provide actionable steps for institutions to engage in meaningful reconciliation practices, including increasing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workforce and student enrolments, supporting student and staff success, and fostering community-led initiatives. The report emphasises the need for universities to lead by example and act as transformative spaces that support self-determination, justice and equity in relation to Indigenous people and communities.

Previous studies on the impacts of racism on adolescent development have largely overlooked Indigenous youth. We conducted a scoping review of the empirical literature on racism against Indigenous adolescents to determine the nature and scope of this research and to establish associations with developmental outcomes. Our literature search resulted in 32 studies with samples from the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Studies were limited to self-reported experiences of racism and thus primarily focused on perceived discrimination. Quantitative studies found small to moderate effects of perceived discrimination on adolescent psychopathology and academic outcomes. Qualitative studies provided insight into structural forms of racism. We offer recommendations for future investigations into the impacts of overt and covert racism on Indigenous adolescents.

Transformative learning theory articulates a process whereby students experience a change in perspectives that expands and transforms their worldview. Despite being well established and regarded within the literature relating to adult and continuing education, Mezirow's (1978) seminal education theory remains largely absent in the research relating to Indigenous higher education. This study explores the transformative impact of university learning on the student journeys of three Aboriginal graduates from a Western Australian university. Applying a collaborative auto-ethnographic approach, each author-participant's personal narrative of their student experience was exposed to comparative, thematic and critical analysis. It was found that each author had faced similar cognitive and emotional challenges at university. Significantly, it emerged that university had changed the author-participants’ identities in ways that aligned with Mezirow's transformative learning construct. The narrative data also revealed elements that appeared related to the students’ negotiation of Nakata's cultural interface. A dominant theme in the data referred to the relationships formed during university, as being integral to transformation. Furthermore, family was understood to have a paradoxical influence on their educational journey. The insights garnered from this study prompt further consideration as to how transformative learning theory might be mobilised at the cultural interface.

Family violence in Aboriginal communities is an ongoing tragedy and a blight on Australian society and governments. Developing a clear understanding of the nature of family violence in Aboriginal communities and the barriers preventing Aboriginal women’s help seeking is, therefore, of the upmost importance. In collaboration with target communities in Armadale and Kwinana, the following research question was devised: what barriers do Aboriginal women face when seeking help to address family violence? Community focus groups and individual interviews, guided by the Indigenous Research Methodology of ‘Yarning’, were held in the two focus sites. A total of 37 women participated in this process and three types of barriers to help seeking are identified from their stories. There are: i) barriers within our own communities; ii) structural barriers, and; iii) institutional racism. The barriers within our community were the normalisation of violence, problematic family intervention and a collective fear of child protection. Structural barriers were refuge accommodation inaccessibility, police negligence and harmful child protection intervention. Thirdly, direct and indirect experiences of institutional racism from members of two key institutions, the police force and child protection agency, were found to negatively influence the women’s willingness to seek assistance and protection. The findings of this research provide a comprehensive account of Aboriginal women’s experiences of help seeking in the context of family violence within the Perth metropolitan region.