'Healing through culture': Aboriginal young people's experiences of social and emotional wellbeing impacts of cultural strengthening programs.

BACKGROUND: Cultural connection for Aboriginal young people promotes wellbeing, resilience and healing. There is little research on the social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB) impacts of cultural strengthening programs for Aboriginal young people, especially research that includes the perspectives of young people. There is even less research that includes the experiences of Aboriginal young people who have been in out-of-home care. OBJECTIVE: The current study sought to address these research gaps by exploring the SEWB impacts of cultural strengthening programs by amplifying the voice of Aboriginal young people, including those who have been in out-of-home care. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: Aboriginal young people involved in an innovative cultural strengthening program, the Narrun Yana art collective, established by the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency (VACCA). Also participating was VACCA's Team Leader of Children and Youth Programs, thus providing both experiences of participating in and of organising cultural programs. METHOD: A qualitative phenomenological approach was taken. Data consisted of semi-structured interviews with the team leader and two young people and written responses to the interview questions from one young person. RESULTS: Lived experience provided evidence that cultural strengthening programs; help strengthen SEWB, including connection to self, relationships, community and culture; contribute to building resilience in the context of intergenerational trauma, cultural loss and racism; and encourage help-seeking, both informal support and accessing mental health services. Young people also viewed participating in the research as worthwhile. CONCLUSIONS: Findings highlighted the importance of Aboriginal young people having opportunities to; connect to culture through participation in cultural strengthening programs, and engage in the design of these programs.

A Systematic Scoping Review of Indigenous People's Experience of Healing and Recovery from Child Sexual Abuse.

Child sexual abuse is a form of violence that occurs across nations and cultures. Collective efforts are being made to address this issue within many Indigenous communities. In Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have expressed the need for cultural models of healing child sexual abuse. A preliminary exploration of the relevant literature shows a lack of synthesis with regard to the current evidence base. This protocol outlines the methods and background for a scoping review that aims to explore and collate the broad scope of literature related to healing from child sexual abuse within an Indigenous context. The proposed review utilises a 'population, concept, and context structure' from the Joanna Briggs Institute to explore the broad scope of the literature within a scoping review framework. The target population is Indigenous survivors of child sexual abuse, including Indigenous populations from six distinct regions: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from Australia; Maori peoples from Aotearoa (New Zealand); First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples from Canada; Native American peoples from North America; Native peoples from Alaska; and the Sámi peoples of the Sápmi region in Northern Europe. The concept within the review is healing from an Indigenous perspective, which includes a broad range of processes related to both recovery and personal growth. The contexts explored within this review are any context in which healing from child sexual abuse can occur. This may include processes related to disclosure and accessing services, specific interventions or programs for survivors of child sexual abuse, as well as broader non-specific healing programs and personal experiences of healing without intervention. The scoping review will use search strings with broad inclusion and exclusion criteria to capture the potential breadth of perspectives. The search will be conducted across several academic databases and will also include an extensive search for grey literature. This protocol establishes the proposed benefits of this scoping review.

Collaborative Social-Epidemiology: A Co-analysis of the Cultural and Structural Determinants of Health for Aboriginal Youth in Victorian Schools.

Social-epidemiology that excludes Aboriginal voices often fails to capture the full and complex social worlds of Aboriginal people. Using data from an existing co-designed Victorian government Adolescent Health and Wellbeing Survey (2008/9), we worked with Aboriginal organizations to identify data priorities, select measures, interpret data, and contextualize findings. Using this participatory co-analysis approach, we selected "cultural" and "structural" determinants identified by Aboriginal organizations as important and modelled these using principal component analysis. Resulting components were then modelled using logistic regression to investigate associations with "likely being well" (Kessler-10 score < 20) for 88 Aboriginal adolescents aged 11-17 years. Principal component analysis grouped 11 structural variables into four components and 11 cultural variables into three components. Of these, "grew up in Aboriginal family/community and connected" associated with significantly higher odds of "likely being well" (OR = 2.26 (1.01-5.06), p = 0.046). Conversely, "institutionally imposed family displacement" had significantly lower odds (OR = 0.49 (0.24-0.97), p = 0.040) and "negative police contact and poverty" non-significantly lower odds (OR = 0.53 (0.26-1.06), p = 0.073) for "likely being well". Using a co-analysis participatory approach, the voices of Aboriginal researchers and Aboriginal organizations were able to construct a social world that aligned with their ways of knowing, doing, and being. Findings highlighted institutionally imposed family displacement, policing, and poverty as social sites for health intervention and emphasized the importance of strong Aboriginal families for adolescents.

Indigenous ontology, international law and the application of the Convention to the over-representation of Indigenous children in out of home care in Canada and Australia.

This paper explores the efficacy of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Convention, UN General Assembly, 1989) through the lens of the over-representation of First Nations children placed in out-of-home care in Canada and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in Australia. A general overview of Indigenous worldviews frames a discussion on the coherence of international human rights law and instruments, including the Convention, account for Indigenous Peoples' ontologies. The authors argue that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN General Assembly, 2007) and a new theoretical framework published by the Pan American Health Organization (2019) on health equity and inequity are useful tools to augment the Convention's coherence with Indigenous ontologies. The paper discusses how the Convention can be applied to structural and systemic risks driving the over-representation of First Nations and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out of home care in Canada and Australia. These two countries are included as First Nations and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in these countries have both had significant impact in advocating for their children despite experiencing similar barriers including contemporary colonialism. The advocacy work of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society in Canada and the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency in Victoria, Australia are discussed. The paper ends by outlining some of the challenges ahead that include the need to meaningfully recognize Indigenous self-determination and equitable funding and resources to enable the actualization of self-determination. Further research contrasting international human rights instruments with Indigenous ontologies could help inform possible amendments to international human rights treaties and general comments.