What are you doing on your sabbatical, anyway??

A number of you have asked about my work at the University of Queensland. I'm writing this blog post in response ... if you aren't interested, stop here!  No worries, Mate!

This wasn’t my intention, to become immersed in issues of Indigenous health or to seek an immersion in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (“ATSI” as I’ve had to learn, an oft-used acronym for this hugely diverse group of peoples) issues.

My Transpacific Fellowship was intended to focus on health policy matters on the global scale (well, that was one part, the other is to explore teaching approaches using digital and distance learning techniques).  But when I got here, one of my colleagues, Peter Hill, really wanted me to help his research team that’s delving into the import of something called the “Indigenous Burden of Disease” study, or IBOD.  

IBOD, conducted in the mid-2000s, used some sophisticated methods to update the levels (“burden”) of disease and disability in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities (the Torres Strait runs between the northern-most point of the Australian mainland, the York Peninsula, and Papua New Guinea).  The study came up with a new composite measure of that burden called “disability adjusted life years,” which adds up in a single number the effects of death and sickness from many different causes.  And, it came up with a new estimate of the gap between the life expectancy of ATSI and non-Indigenous people.  The new estimated gap of about 11 years caused some concern, as it slashed the previously, widely accepted gap of 20 years.  

Now, 11 years difference in life expectancy is a lot less than 20, but it’s still ELEVEN FEWER YEARS that a new-born Aboriginal baby can expect to live!

Ok, so this study was published, and since then some national policies have evolved – for example, Australia now has a “Closing the Gap” campaign to reduce gaps between ATSI and “white” people in education, health, and other things – and the question Peter’s team is trying to answer is, “Did IBOD influence policies concerning ATSI people and, if so, how and why?”  To ferret out the answers to that question, the team conducted interviews with policy makers, researchers, and government bureaucrats.

My little piece of the puzzle is to understand how policy makers and researchers viewed the study and its findings – What did they expect would happen when the results were published? What value does a study like this have for each group of people?  Did the sophisticated methods used by the study’s researchers add something of value to the policy discussions or were they only of value to the researchers themselves?

So, a young researcher and I are reading through the interviews and analyzing their content to try to understand how these two “cultures” – policy people and research people – differently value such research.  We plan to have a paper written for submission to a journal by the time my fellowship ends at the end of May.

The team was to present the work, to date, as a panel at the AIATSIS conference in Canberra at the end of March, and I was invited to go as an observer and to meet the rest of the research team (which is at the University of New South Wales in Sydney).

And so, the AIATSIS conference: 

The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders is variously described as a policy center, a research center, and a repository of culture and history.  Whichever it is, the conference itself was focused on Indigenous studies – the research and teaching about ATSI and the colonial history and present.  

The plenary presentations were all, but one, given by Indigenous academic leaders from Australia and New Zealand, each commenting on the field of ethnic studies and life for an Indigenous academic within the white-dominated academy.  One takeaway for me: the tendency of academics to speak in dense, theoretical terms knows no national or cultural boundaries!  What struck me was the similarities with the struggles in the U.S. circa 1960-70s of “ethnic studies” or “women’s studies” programs, for recognition, for a defined identity (are we a discipline?).

The one plenary exception was an African American scholar from San Francisco who had clearly had a transformative experience by coming to Australia to “discover” “Black” people who had been living here for 60,000 years.  He gave a somewhat rambling commentary about “blackness” and the struggles against racism in America, dropping many names and instances that I suspect many in the audiences didn’t get.  But his overall point, that much would be gained through trans-Pacific scholarship about power, oppression, and colonialization, was heard with enthusiasm by the Australian academics I talked with afterward.

One cool thing was that each morning the conference started with dance and music by a troupe of Indigenous youth.  This one was a father and his children, very cool:

The comments made by someone from each group made it clear that the dance and music served multiple purposes – transmitting cultural knowledge from one generation to another as well as providing a path for young people to develop their own identities (some amazing fusion of hip-hop and tradition dance!) and their self-esteem.  In some cases, this was a very deliberate strategy to reduce drug and mental health problems in ATSI communities.

A custom at the conference and, I take it, among people who work in this field, was to begin one’s remarks with something like “I want to acknowledge and honor the traditional custodians of this land and their elders, past, present, and future.”  This is no small thing, as Australia as a nation only recognized in 1982 the fact that the land was inhabited when the English arrived 200+ years ago and began granting Aboriginal rights to their traditional lands more recently than that. 

The health challenges in ATSI communities mirror those of African American and First Nation communities in North America – not surprising, as the histories of disenfranchisement, oppression, and racism run parallel, as well.  As in the U.S., the government and health professionals struggle with how best to address those challenges; how to balance addressing immediate needs, like reducing smoking or addressing depression, versus economic development or access to education (a big problem, given the fact that many Indigenous people live in very remote place far from the nearest schools).

OK, this blog is long enough!  One final photo: While in Canberra I stayed at the hotel on the grounds of the Australian National University.  It has a feeling of a place for visiting academics, calm, quiet, contemplative, including this pond just outside my room.  How could one NOT think big thoughts here?