Acknowledgement of Country

1
Acknowledgement of Country

• I would like to acknowledge the Traditional
  Custodians of this country that we are meeting on
  today.
• I would also like to acknowledge the Elders of
  this country, both past and present

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Aboriginal Cultural Competence/Awareness Training
A Brief Overview
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What We Offer at AHC

• 2 Day workshop
• Includes access to resources, workbook and
  reference materials
• Offers a culturally safe environment for all
  participants, panel members and facilitators
• Is evidence based
• Accredited unit of competency (HLTHIR404B Work
  effectively with Aboriginal Torres Strait
  Islander people)
• Accredited training (

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What the course offers

• The course offers the opportunity to
• increase cultural awareness
• develop and maintain culturally safe work
  environments/practices
• enhance worker capacity to work in culturally
  safe ways with Aboriginal clients.

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The course will enable participants to

• increase understanding of factors impacting on
  Aboriginal health and service delivery
• improve awareness and approaches to reflect on
  and implement culturally safe ways of working
  with Aboriginal clients and co-workers
• use more culturally inclusive practices when
  working with Aboriginal clients and co-workers

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Benefits to the community

• Increased awareness of culturally inclusive
  practices and enhanced cultural safety in work
  practices
• Improved service delivery and greater
  cross-cultural understanding.
• Services are more Aboriginal sensitive and
  focused

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Other benefits

• Establish a network of Cultural Brokers
• An opportunity to discuss issues around
  Aboriginal community engagement with a panel
  consisting of Aboriginal people
• Establish a Charter of Engagement with local
  Aboriginal communities
• Encourages a standard of practice whilst
  acknowledging local cultural protocols

8
55,000-60,000 years ago At a site in Arnhem
Land, Northern Territory, a rock shelter was
used by people about 60,000 years ago. 45 000
years ago Rock engravings made in South
Australia. These are the earliest dated rock
carvings. 30,000 years ago A man from Lake Mungo
area was buried in a shallow grave. 26,500 years
ago The body of a woman from Lake Mungo, New
South Wales, provides the earliest evidence of
ritual cremation in the world.
9
1770 James Cook claims possession of the whole
east coast of Australia. Cook raises the British
flag at Possession Island, off Cape York
Peninsula in Queensland. 1788 The First Fleet
lands in Port Jackson - British settlement in
Australia begins. Clashes between Aboriginal
people and the settlers are reported over the
next 10 years in the Parramatta and Hawkesbury
areas outside the main settlement
areas. 1798 Bass and Flinders circumnavigated
Van Dieman's Land (Tasmania).

10
1799 (October 14) Five settlers
are charged with murdering two Aboriginal
boys. Although they are found guilty, they are
released on bail, pending a decision from London
about their punishment. 1803 Van Dieman's Land
was settled. 1804 Settlers in Van Dieman's Land
were authorised to shoot Aborigines.
11
1824 Martial law is declared in Bathurst, New
South Wales, when seven Europeans are killed by
Aboriginal people and conflict with Aborigines is
seen as a serious threat to white settlement.
After up to 100 Aboriginal people are killed,
martial law stops in December.
12
1830 Tasmanian Aboriginal people are forcibly
settled on Flinders Island. Conditions are
appalling and many die. Later, the community is
moved to Cape Barren Island. 1834 In Western
Australia, Governor Stirling leads 25 mounted
police against the Aboriginal people. Official
records say 14 Aboriginal people were killed.
Aboriginal accounts suggest that the attack wiped
out an entire tribe.
13
1838 Myall Creek Massacre.
Near Inverell (NSW), settlers
shoot 28 Aboriginal people, mostly
women and children. 11 Europeans were
charged with murder but are acquitted. A new
trial is held and seven men are charged with the
murder of one Aboriginal child. They are found
guilty and hanged. The seven men responsible
for the killing of 28 Aborigines at the Myall
Creek Massacre are executed. Before their
execution the men confessed to their crime. In
defence of their actions they said it was because
killing Aboriginal people was a common frontier
sport and they did not realise that it was
illegal.
14
1848 New South Wales native police
troopers were brought to Queensland to kill the
Aborigines and open up the land for
settlement. 1868 Transportation of convicts
ended. The first Australian cricket team (all
Aboriginal) left Sydney for a tour of England.
15
1883 The NSW Aborigines
Protection Board is established. In 1915 the
Board is empowered to remove and apprentice local
Aboriginals without a court hearing. This power
is abolished in 1940. 1901 Australia becomes a
Federation. The Constitution states that that the
Commonwealth would legislate for any race except
Aborigines. The states therefore retain their
power over Aboriginal affairs.
16
1911 Aborigines Act (SA). This
makes the Chief Protector the legal guardian of
every Aboriginal and 'half-caste' child under 21
years old. The Chief Protector also has control
of where the child lives.
Federal Government passes the Northern Territory
Aboriginals Ordinance. The Chief Protector is
made the legal guardian of every Aboriginal and
'half-caste' child under 18 years old. Any
Aboriginal person can be forced onto a mission or
settlement, and children can be removed by force.
17
State and Territory laws authorising forcible
removal of Indigenous children Source Human
Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission,
Appendices 1-7, Bringing them home Report of the
National Inquiry into the Separation of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children
from Their Families, (1997).
18
1915 The NSW Aborigines
Protection Board is given
powers to remove Aboriginal children without a
court hearing. 1937 First Commonwealth/ State
conference on 'native welfare' adopts
assimilation as the national policy the destiny
of the natives of aboriginal origin, but not of
the full blood, lies in ultimate absorption
with a view to their taking their place in the
white community on an equal footing with the
whites.
19
Institutions in NSW where stolen Aboriginal
children were brought to be trained as domestics
or labourers

• Bomaderry Children's Home (United Aborigines
  Mission) which operated from 24 May 1908 to 1981.
  
• Cootamundra Aboriginal Girls' Home which
  operated from 1911 to 1969.
• Kinchela Aboriginal Boys' Home (Kinchela
  Training Institution) which moved to Kempsey in
  1924 and closed in 1970.
• Mittagong Boys' Home
• Kempsey
• Parramatta Girls' Home which operated from 1887
  until 1986
• Kahlin Compound, Darwin
• The Bungalow, Alice Springs
• Box Hill Boys Home, Melbourne

20
Caste categories in an identity card used in the
1940s
21
From 1910 to the 1940s authorities
classified Indigenous people into castes.
They defined a 'full-blood' as a person who
had no white blood, a 'half-caste' as someone
with one white parent, a 'quadroon' or
'quarter-caste' as someone with an Aboriginal
grandfather or grandmother, a 'octoroon' as
someone whose great-grandfather or
great-grandmother was Aboriginal. These terms
pervaded literature of that time. Today these
words are considered offensive and racist.
22
1938 Australian Aborigines
Conference held in Sydney. Meeting on January 26,
the 150th Anniversary of NSW, Aborigines mark the
'Day of Mourning.' 1940 The NSW Aborigines
Protection Board loses its power to remove
Indigenous children. The Board is renamed
Aborigines Welfare Board and is finally abolished
in 1969. 1948 The Universal Declaration of
Human Rights is adopted by the newly-formed
United Nations, and supported by Australia.
23
Jack Patten reads the resolution at the Day of
Mourning Conference on 26 January 1938 "We,
representing the Aborigines of Australiaon the
150th Anniversary of the whitemens seizure of
our country, hereby make protest against the
callous treatment of our peopleand we appeal to
the Australian nation of todayfor full citizen
status and equality within the community."Man,
March 1938. Mitchell Library, State Library of
New South Wales
24
1956 'Permanent residence' status
created to allow non-European migrants to
claim citizenship and bring out their
families. 1953-1957 Atomic tests take place at
Emu and Maralinga in South Australia. Aborigines
describe a 'black mist' and report sight loss and
skin rashes. Many die from radiation poisoning.
Hundreds of families are forced the leave their
homelands because of contamination.
25
The testing range boundaries were not properly
monitored, allowing people to walk in and out.
Any signs were in English, which the local
Aboriginal population could not read. Fallout
from the ground blasts led to massive
contamination of the Australian interior. The
fallout from Maralinga even reached Adelaide and
Melbourne. Some places are still heavily
radioactive due principally to the presence of 20
kg of plutonium, the most toxic element known to
humans.
Fallout pattern from the Maralinga tests.
Fifteen thousand Australians were involved in
the work at the three British test sites over the
twelve years in Australia.
Source Australian Ministry of Defence, 20 March
1984
26
1962 Commonwealth Electoral Act amended giving
permission to all Aboriginal people to
vote. 1965 Aboriginal leader Charles Perkins
leads Freedom Ride through western NSW.
27
1967 National referendum amending the
Constitution. Australians confer power on the
Commonwealth to make laws for Aboriginal people.
Aborigines are included in the census for the
first time. 1971 Neville Bonner was sworn in as
Australias first Aboriginal Senator.
28
(No Transcript)
29
1971 The first Aboriginal Medical
Service (AMS) was initiated on a voluntary basis
in Redfern, Sydney
The first Aboriginal Community Legal Centre
opened in Redfern in New South Wales. 1972 Aborig
inal Tent Embassy is pitched outside Parliament
House in Canberra demonstrating for Land
Rights. Withdrawal of regulation from Teachers
Handbook (NSW) which allowed Principals the right
to refuse to enroll Aboriginal Children into
schools
30
1980 Link-Up (NSW) Aboriginal
Corporation established. Followed by Link-Up
(Qld) in 1988. Link-Up provides family tracing,
reunion and support for forcibly removed children
and their families. 1985 Uluru is handed back
to the traditional owners.
31
1992 The High Court of Australia hands down its
landmark decision in Mabo v Queensland. It
decides that native title exists over particular
kinds of lands unalienated Crown Lands,
national parks and reserves - and that Australia
was never terra nullius or empty land.
32
1997 Human Rights Equal Opportunity
Commission (HREOC) presents Bringing them home,
its report on the findings of the National
Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Children From Their
families to the government.
33
In the Social Justice Report 2005, the Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice
Commissioner, Tom Calma, called for Australian
governments to commit to achieving Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander health and life
expectation equality within 25-years. From the
Social Justice Report, the Close The Gap campaign
was born. The Close The Gap campaign calls on
federal, state and territory governments to
commit to closing the life expectancy gap between
Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within
a generation.
34
2006 Aboriginal Torres Strait Island
Commissioner, Tom Calma congratulated Tasmania
for being the first jurisdiction in Australia to
legislate to provide compensation to the Stolen
Generations and their families. It legislated
to create a 5 million fund to provide payments
to eligible members of the Stolen Generations and
their children.
35
2007 Bruce Trevorrow is the first
person from the Stolen Generations to secure
compensation after a long hard struggle through
the courts. Mr Trevorrows win in South
Australia represents a watershed moment for all
members of the Stolen Generation. It sends a
powerful message to other states and territories
that compensation is rightfully owed to the
victims of these policies which were in place
across Australia for most of the 20th century,
and impacted badly on generations of Indigenous
Australians Aboriginal Torres Strait Island
Commissioner Tom Calma said.
36
2007 Introduction of the Northern
Territory National Emergency Response Legislation
by the Federal Government. The immediate nature
of the Australian Government's response reflects
the very first recommendation of the Little
Children are Sacred report into the protection
of Aboriginal children from child abuse in the
Northern Territory which said "That Aboriginal
child sexual abuse in the Northern territory be
designated as an issue of urgent national
significance by both the Australian and Northern
Territory Governments
37
2007 Native Title has been upheld over
Tennant Creek, marking the first time a claim has
been made over a whole town. It is also the first
time agreement over a town has been reached
without litigation. This was a process that
lasted 8 years and the final decision was handed
down by the Federal Court.
38
13 February 2008 Formal apology to the Stolen
Generations, led by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd,
and passed by both houses of the Parliament of
Australia. Previous apologies had been offered by
State and Territory governments in the period
19972001
39
(No Transcript)
40
Aboriginal Language Groups(As per AIATSIS
Languages Map)

• 64 - NSW
• 127 - Northern Territory
• 210 - Queensland
• 43 - South Australia
• 9 - Tasmania
• 34 - Victoria
• 122 - Western Australia

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The Federal Government defines an Aboriginal or
Torres Strait Islander person as someone who Is
of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander
descent Identifies as an Aboriginal or Torres
Strait Islander and Is accepted as such by the
Indigenous community in which they live.
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Contact Details for AHC

• Terry Smith, Manager
• 02 9019 0731
• Email tsmith_at_ahc.edu.au
• Gwen Troutman-Weir, Team Leader/Assessor
• 02 9019 0733
• Email gtroutman-weir_at_ahc.edu.au