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Following a failed 2023 referendum on constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, Australian governments must work with Indigenous leaders to chart a new way forward in policy to support Indigenous health and wellbeing. Here we report on key stakeholder views on what is required to decolonise Indigenous primary health care (PHC) policy. This article reports on qualitative research conducting yarns with 20 senior staff working in key government and non-government organisations comprising the Indigenous PHC sector (‘stakeholders’). Stakeholders see the sector as exemplifying decolonisation, motivated through Indigenous leadership. However, further changes are needed in mainstream health services, workforce development, intersectoral policy, and determinants of health. We discuss how the Indigenous PHC sector can inform decolonising policy in other sectors and reflect on the international implications of our findings. We conclude that the sector provides important lessons for decolonising Australian public policy.

EN :

Media depictions of Indigenous people have a long history of perpetuating racist, stereotyping, and victim blaming discourse. At the same time, recent scholarship asserts that news media is shifting its stance towards equity-groups involved in police-based mental health emergency response (MHER). Yet, few have sought to determine how these frames apply to police-based MHER for Indigenous people in Canada. Using an intersectional approach accounting for Indigeneity and mental illness, 168 Canadian media articles published between 1970 and 2022 were collated and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Two overarching themes, affective realities and harms created by police involvement and normative practices perpetuating police impunity were found, as were several sub-themes. Implications for the role and function of news media in supporting the health and social policy needs of Indigenous groups are discussed.

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Background: Canada’s settler history and legacy impacts of colonialization mean that policy is grounded in Eurocentric ideals which exacerbate vulnerabilities for Indigenous families due to gendered and racialized experiences. Objectives: Our purpose was to understand the experiences of Indigenous women as they try and secure safe affordable housing for themselves and their children. Methods: We utilized a community-based approach and interviewed 12 urban Indigenous women with current or recent experiences of homelessness. Results: Structural violence and racism manifested in three ways: trauma leads to homelessness which leads to trauma; families are trapped in dependency; the search for housing leads to fear of violence. Conclusion: The existence of multiple polices and frameworks to prevent human rights and housing violations are inadequate in protecting Indigenous women and children from racism and violence. An anti-colonial approach is necessary to review and align mainstream policy. This work must be led by lived experience experts.

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Documenting Indigenous patient voices through safe and culturally appropriate patient-reported outcome (PROMs) and experience measures (PREMs) is essential for monitoring impacts of health care programming and policies. We explored the literature in order to understand the current landscape of PROMs and PREMs that have been developed for and with Indigenous Peoples in Canada, United States, Australia and New Zealand. From our exploration a number of key themes regarding the development of PROMs and PREMs emerged including, applying a wholistic perspective, a relational framework with an emphasis on the role of the family, ensuring cultural fit (reflecting a resilience, strength-based and cultural approach to health), being sensitive to the ethics of survey tools, and ensuring decolonizing approaches in their development. In addition, the scarcity and the need for developing Indigenous-specific PREMs are highlighted.

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The significant increase in the urban Indigenous identity population in Atlantic Canada in the past ten years warrants an investigation of urban Indigenous policies that asks, to what extent are municipalities in Atlantic Canada bridging relations with urban Indigenous Peoples? Over half of Canada’s Indigenous Peoples reside in urban centres, yet no one level of government has taken responsibility for developing policies regarding urban Indigenous Peoples. Since the new millennium, municipalities are bridging relations with urban Indigenous Peoples. Not only are these initiatives in Western and Central Canadian municipalities varied, but they are also understudied. An analysis of Municipal-Indigenous relations in Charlottetown, Fredericton, Halifax, and St John’s addresses the following: municipal capacity for Indigenous inclusion; urban Indigenous policy initiatives; and the extent to which municipalities are responding to the Calls to Action by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

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This study explores the nature of the Fedarb sheet of the Treaty of Waitangi. The author argues that it conflicts with the conventional argument for the necessity of Treaty principles. She argues that the Treaty principles are a device of settler/invader colonialism. The study is a type of Kaupapa Māori writing inquiry. In the case of the Fedarb sheet, if there was no English treaty sheet provided, then most traditional Treaty scholarship arguments become invalid.Rather than interpret Te Tiriti in light of the English Treaty, we must recognize that all the Fedarb signatories provided to the government was the ability to regulate land-use.Mataatua waka should not have been made a part of the settler colonial construction that was the results of settlers’ inaccurate interpretations of the document..All this highlights the need to view the various sheets of The Treaty of Waitangi and/or Te Tiriti o Waitangi as not a single monolithic and homogenous document, but differentiated international treaties between sovereign hapū and the Crown of England. Each sheet should be seen as separate and different on a regional and whakapapa basis, in its own context.