Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T18:49:56.143Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Aboriginal Community Education Officers’ Border Work: Culturally Safe Practices for Supporting Migrating Indigenous Students From Country into Urban and Semi-Rural Schools

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2013

Bindi MacGill
Bindi MacGill*
Affiliation:
Yunggorendi First Nations Centre for Higher Education and Research, Flinders University, Australia
*
address for correspondence: Bindi MacGill, Yunggorendi First Nations Centre for Higher Education and Research, Flinders University GPO Box 2100, Adelaide SA 5001, Australia. Email: [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

Since 2001 there has been an increase in migration patterns by Indigenous families from remote communities to urban and semi-rural locations. Indigenous student emigration from remote Indigenous schools to urban and semi-rural schools is an emerging crisis as there are routinely inadequate service providers for Indigenous émigrés. Migration away from a particular location from which a person's ancestors, kin and Dreamings come (henceforward named as Country) to semi-rural and urban locations raises many complex issues. This article outlines Aboriginal Community Education Officers’ (ACEOs) role as support workers for Indigenous students who utilise an Indigenous ethics of care framework as a support mechanism to aid the transition of Indigenous students into new schools. The article draws on research undertaken between 2000–2008 (MacGill, 2008) in conjunction with current literature in the field (Pearce, 2012) to highlight ACEOs’ border work and ethics of care practices necessary for successful Indigenous student transitions as émigrés.

Keywords

Aboriginal Community Education OfficersIndigenous ethics of careborder crossing
Type
Research Article
Information
The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , December 2012 , pp. 181 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anzaldúa, A.G. (1987). Borderlands/La frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Spinsters/Aunt Lute.Google Scholar
Anzaldúa, A.G. (1990). Making face, making soul/haciendo caras. San Francisco, CA: Spinsters/Aunt Lute.Google Scholar
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2010 ). Population characteristics, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, 2006 (Report No cat. no. 4713.0). Retrieved from http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/lookup/4704.0Chapter2102010Google Scholar
Blanch, F. (2011). Young Nunga males at play and playing up: The look and the talk. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 32 (1), 99–112.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J. (1990). Reproduction in education, society and culture. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Boyd, S., Rhoades, H., & Burns, K. (1999). The politics of the primary caregiver presumption: A conversation. Australian Journal of Family Law, 13, 1–25.Google Scholar
Casey, K. (1990). Teacher as mother: Curriculum theorizing in the life histories of contemporary women teachers. Cambridge Journal of Education, 20 (3), 301–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Department for Education and Child Development. (2010). Resources entitlement statement and supporting information. Retrieved from http://www.leadersdesktop.sa.edu.au/resource/files/links/School_RES_Notes_2011_24_1.pdfGoogle Scholar
Dousset, L. (2003). On the misinterpretation of the Aluridja kinship system type (Australian Western Desert). Social Anthropology, 11 (1), 43–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fordham, M. A., & Schwab, G. R. (2007). Education, training and Indigenous futures, CAEPR Policy Research: 1990–2007. Canberra, Australia: The Australian National University.Google Scholar
Frankenberg, R. (1993). The social construction of Whiteness: White women, race matters. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraser, N., & Honneth, A. (2003). Redistribution or recognition, a political-philosophical exchange. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Giroux, H. (2005). Border crossings, cultural workers and the politics of education. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gray, A., Tromf, P., & Houston, S. (1994). The decline and rise of Aboriginal families. In Reid, J. & Tromf, P. (Eds.), The health of Aboriginal Australia. Sydney, Australia: Harcourt Brace & Co.Google Scholar
Groome, H. (1992). Developing appropriate pedagogies for Aboriginal studies. Kaurna Higher Education Journal, 2, 37–44.Google Scholar
Harding, S. (2004). Introduction: standpoint theory as a site of political, philosophic, and scientific debate. The feminist standpoint theory reader, intellectual and political controversies (pp. 1–15). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hochschild, A.R. (1983). The managed heart. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
hooks, b. (1990). Yearning: Race, gender and cultural politics. Boston, MA: South End Press.Google Scholar
Krieg, A. (2009). The experience of collective trauma in Australian Indigenous communities. Australasian Psychiatry, 17, 29–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacGill, B. (2008). Aboriginal education workers: Towards equality of recognition of Indigenous ethics of care practices in South Australian school (Unpublished PhD thesis). Flinders University, Australia.Google Scholar
Malin, M. (1990). The visibility and invisibility of the Aboriginal child in an urban classroom, Australian Journal of Education, 34 (3), 312–329.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mattingley, C., & Hampton, K. (1988). Survival in our own lands: Aboriginal experiences in ‘South Australia’ since 1836. Adelaide, Australia: Wakefield Press.Google Scholar
McIntosh, A., Stayner, R., Carrington, K., Rolley, F., Scott, J., & Sorenson, T. (2008). Resilience in rural communities literature review. Retrieved from http://www.une.edu.au/carss/pdf/Lit%20Review%20Resilience%20in%20Rural%20Communities.pdfGoogle Scholar
Moeckel, M. (1983). Aboriginal women's role today in early childhood school education. In Gale, F. (Ed.), We are bosses ourselves: The status and role of Aboriginal women today (pp. 104–121). Canberra, Australia: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Studies.Google Scholar
Pearce, L. (2012). AEWs: Skilled uncles and aunties smoothing out the bumps on the road to learning (Unpublished Masters by Research dissertation). University of Wollongong, Australia.Google Scholar
Prout, S., & Howitt, R. (2009). Frontier imaginings and subversive Indigenous spatialities. Journal of Rural Studies, 25, 396–403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rahman, K. (2010). Addressing the foundations for improved secondary student outcomes: A South Australian qualitative study. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 39, 65–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rolón-Dow, R. (2005). Critical care: A color(full) analysis of care narratives in the schooling experiences of Puerto Rican girls. American Educational Research Journal, 42 (1), 77–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, D.B. (1988). Exploring an Aboriginal land ethic. In Edwards, W.H. (Ed.), Traditional Aboriginal society (pp. 288–296). Melbourne, Australia: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Thompson, A. (1998). Not the color purple: Black feminist lessons for education caring. Harvard Educational Review, 68 (4), 522–553.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Titelman, P. (1998). Clinical applications of Bowen family systems theory. New York: Haworth Press.Google Scholar
Townsend-Cross, M. (2004). Indigenous Australian perspectives in early childhood education. Australian Journal of Early Childhood, 29 (4), 1–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vinson, T., Rawsthorne, M., & Cooper, B. (2007). Dropping off the edge: The distribution of disadvantage in Australia. Melbourne, Australia: Jesuit Social Services.Google Scholar
Williams, C., & Thorpe, B. (2003). Aboriginal workers and managers, history, emotional and community labour and occupational health and safety in South Australia. Adelaide, Australia: Seaview Press.Google Scholar
Whitehead, K. (2001). Do men still manage while women teach?: Using four reports on middle schooling to portray continuities and changes in teachers’ work. Australian Journal of Education, 45 (3), 309–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar