Responding to COVID-19 and Beyond: Key Recommendations for the Effective Public and Mental Health Response to Support the Well-Being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in Australia

The Australian response to COVID-19 demonstrates how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leadership, partnership, and self-determination are critical in ensuring public health measures and pandemic response planning is effective for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This chapter outlines the key evidence-based recommendations and actions developed by three national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led groups, […]

“Getting It Right: Creating Partnerships for Change”: Developing a Framework for Integrating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Knowledges in Australian Social Work Education

This article proposes a theoretical framework for integrating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges in Australian social work education as a central focus of the Getting it Right: Creating Partnerships for Change project. This article presents analysis from a literature review to suggest ways Australian schools of social work can adapt their curriculum in order […]

Communicating cancer and its treatment to Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients with cancer: a qualitative study

Purpose To investigate the successful strategies of health workers who support and regularly communicate with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people about cancer and its treatment. Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted face-to face or via telephone and audio-recorded with twenty-three health professionals (medical and radiation oncologists, oncology nurses and Aboriginal Health Workers), 5 identifying as […]

Layered spaces: a pedagogy of uncomfortable reflexivity in Indigenous education

University disciplines are grappling with how best to incorporate Indigenous content and frameworks for practice into their teaching to better prepare graduates to work with Indigenous communities. Yet the pedagogical approaches that can best engage students in Indigenous Studies as a field of critical study are still being debated. This article has two aims. The […]

Working at a cultural interface: co-creating Aboriginal health curriculum for health professions

Historical exclusion of Aboriginal people and Aboriginal epistemologies in Australian higher education, including health professions education, has produced generations of healthcare professionals who are ill-equipped and lack confidence to provide culturally safe care for Aboriginal communities. This article recounts efforts undertaken at a university in Melbourne to foreground Aboriginal ways of knowing and being through […]

The Role of Psychologists in a Changing Time

This is the third video in a three-part video series and collaboration between the Transforming Indigenous Mental Health and Wellbeing project and Pearson Australia. This dynamic three-part video series provides foundational learning about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural knowledges, and explores contemporary global issues, such as the Black Lives Matter movement. Together, the video […]

Kaartajin Ngundabut Indigenous Cultural Knowledge

This is the second video in a three-part video series and collaboration between the Transforming Indigenous Mental Health and Wellbeing project and Pearson Australia. This dynamic three-part video series provides foundational learning about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural knowledges, and explores contemporary global issues, such as the Black Lives Matter movement. Together, the video […]

Introduction to Indigenous Psychology

This is the first video in a three-part video series and collaboration between the Transforming Indigenous Mental Health and Wellbeing project and Pearson Australia. This dynamic three-part video series provides foundational learning about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural knowledges, and explores contemporary global issues, such as the Black Lives Matter movement. Together, the video […]

School psychological practice with Indigenous students in remote Australia

This chapter presents a brief snapshot of Australian Indigenous culture and history and discusses the challenges and opportunities of providing school psychological services in remote Indigenous communities in Australia. It is a unique and rewarding experience to work as a school psychologist in this context. Available research on this topic is limited, and some of […]

Ausplat Conference: 17-19 September 2021

The following document provides links to access the Ausplat (Australian Psychology Learning and Teaching) conference presentations, held in September 2021. Several of these presentations related to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Knowledges and Psychology Education (see page 3).

Psychology Education and Work Readiness Integration: A Call for Research in Australia

Supporting students to develop transferable skills and gain employment is a vital function of Universities in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. A key area is work readiness, which has steadily grown in importance over the last 2 decades as tertiary institutions increasingly aim to produce graduates who perceive and are perceived as work […]

Unsettling Australian settler supremacy: combating resistance in university Aboriginal studies

Higher education courses designed to equip students to work effectively with Indigenous peoples by teaching about racism and inequality often encounter resistance to these concepts. In particular, students argue that individual and structural racisms, and their own white privilege, are ‘not their fault’. This article examines different forms of student resistance expressed within a number […]

Australian Indigenous Psychology Education Project Workforce Capabilities Framework

The objective of the AIPEP Workforce Capabilities Framework is to document the knowledge, skills and values required of psychologists working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in order to build the capacity and competency of all psychology graduates to work appropriately and effectively with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Is funder reporting undermining service delivery? compliance reporting requirements of Aboriginal community controlled health organisations in Victoria

This paper describes a case study of the compliance and reporting requirements of Rumbalara Aboriginal Co-operative. It demonstrates that on top of the reporting overburden, incredible complexity is introduced when single organisations work across a range of health and community service sectors and consequently have to report in different ways, on different performance criteria, using […]

Back to the Future: Traditional knowledge healing learning journeys

The theme of this paper is embracing traditional knowledge in innovative educational change to move back to the future while stepping into action. A pertinent theme given many Indigenous health professionals have been leading action in our nation for many years in providing holistic healing opportunities for Indigenous communities. However, there is still much to […]