Understanding the importance of connection: an indigenous exploration of the social and emotional well-being and resilience of a rural cohort of Aboriginal young people
Our story began in the pursuit of understanding Aboriginal young experiences of resilience and well-being. This was achieved by adopting an Aboriginal story method, combined with thematic analysis using winanga-li (to listen, to hear, to know and to remember) to hear and listen to the young people's stories, a method presented by Kovach ([2010].Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.) to honour the talk. This paper presents Aboriginal young people's views and experiences of resilience and well-being. Using a qualitative approach, we conducted yarning interviews with 15 Aboriginal young people. Our analysis revealed the overarching themes of belonging, experiencing distress, being strong, recognising risk and maintaining positivity, which is comprised of a set of subthemes to exemplify multiple layers of well-being and resilience for the young people in this study. These findings confirm the absolute importance of connections, culture and community to young Aboriginal people and expose the distress that results from the loss of these relationships and connections. Given the known link between connections to culture, health and well-being implications, the findings of this study have relevance for clinicians, researchers, and policy-makers.
Indigenous Resilience in Australia: A Scoping Review Using a Reflective Decolonizing Collective Dialogue
Contemporary definitions and understandings of resilience refer to an individual's positive adaptation to the experience of adversity. One of the challenges of this extant body of work is that the central concept of resilience is rarely questioned. Current understandings of these concepts, largely framed in Western understandings, are unquestioningly accepted, reframed for, yet not by, Indigenous peoples, and then are unchallenged when imposed on Indigenous peoples. A scoping review was conducted and reported in line with the PRISMA-ScR guidelines. The review involved the participation of local Aboriginal Research Cultural Advisory Groups who participated in and approved the analysis of the findings and collaborated on the design and writing of the paper. Eight publications drew on Aboriginal constructs of resilience in examining the effectiveness of programs, processes, and practices to promote individual and/or collective resilience and well-being. Most studies emphasized the need for strategies to strengthen individual or community connection to culture to foster resilience. Six studies used culturally validated strength-based tools to measure resilience, while two relied on Western constructs. This review reveals both the distinctive colonial characteristics of adversity experienced by Aboriginal people and the range of coping strategies and protective resources that support the development of resilience within different Aboriginal communities in diverse research sites across Australia. Importantly, many studies confirm adversity is linked to the enduring legacies of colonization, continuous and cumulative transgenerational grief and loss, structural inequities, racism, and discrimination. These external factors of adversity are unique to Aboriginal populations, as are the protective factors that entail strengthening connection to culture (including language reclamation), community, ancestry and land (including management and economic development) which contribute to individual and collective resilience. These findings suggest that Aboriginal community resilience is strengthened through the collective experience of adversity, such as transgenerational grief and loss, and the resulting support structures and shared resources that are developed and maintained through cultural practices to strengthen the bonds and mutual reciprocity to participate in transformative strategies to address adversity. This review highlights that strategies such as building on community strengths, capacities, and resources is critical when strengthening resilience within Indigenous communities across Australia.
COVID-19 and social restrictions: the potential mental health impact of social distancing and isolation for young Indigenous Australians
Dear Sir,
In Australia, the COVID-19 outbreak has generated swift and aggressive public health responses aimed at reducing the spread of infection. While these have been effective in curbing the outbreak in Australia, there is an increasing concern for the mental health impacts of ongoing socially restrictive measures. Despite the Prime Minister's urgings that 'we are all in this together', there is burgeoning evidence that the burden of this pandemic will not be equally shared and some are 'more in than others'. Effective measures to provide public health protection for all Australians including Indigenous Australians should be accompanied by additional effort to ameliorate the mental health consequences for those already at higher risk as a consequence of the burden of adverse social determinants.