The goal of this study was to gather information from Aboriginal offenders and develop a categorical map that describes the factors that help and hinder maintaining a crime free life after incarceration. The critical incident technique was utilized to examine 42 Aboriginal offenders’ journeys from prison to the community. Three hundred and forty-one incidents collapsed into nine major categories representing themes that were helpful in maintaining a crime free life: 1) transformation of self; 2) cultural and traditional experiences; 3) healthy relationships; 4) having routine and structure in daily living; 5) freedom from prison; 6) purpose and fulfillment in life; 7) attempting to live alcohol and drug free; 8) professional support and programming; and 9) learning to identify and express oneself. Seventy-eight incidents formed four categories representing obstacles that interfere with maintaining a crime free life: 1) self; 2) unhealthy relationships; 3) substance use; and 4) lack of opportunity and professional support. The findings were compared and contrasted to two major theories in the literature: desistance and the risk-needs-responsivity principle. Most of the categories were well substantiated in the literature contributing knowledge to theory, policy, practice, and the community. Information obtained from this study provides an increased understanding of the needs of Aboriginal offenders and offers guidance concerning useful strategies to incorporate into their wellness plans when entering the community, most notably respecting Aboriginal culture and traditional practices. The findings also add awareness of those circumstances, issues, and problems that arise during transition that may be harmful or create obstacles to a successful transition.

The purpose of this research is to contribute a non indigenous perspective to current discourse on sense of place in contemporary Australia. The research employs a number of strategies to investigate current responses to our geographic and historical time position. Within the exegesis there is a vers libre poem, written from the imagined viewpoint of members of the Burke and Wills’ expedition. The poem is supported by a superimposition of the Don Quixote story over that of the ill-fated inland Australian explorers. [...] / Master of Arts (Visual Arts)

The vesting of pounamu back to Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu brings to the fore a whole new dimension of resource mangement to New Zealand�s wider resource management environment. As is highlighted in this study and noted by a number of academics, Maori people, like other indigenous communities, have their own planning systems values and appropriate processes for decision-making about the environment. But the relevance of such indigenous management systems has long been overlooked by the decision makers and authorities to the continued frustration and anxiety of indigenous peoples. This lack of recognition has been at the fore as a concept fundamental to many indigenous peoples grievances, both past and present. The subsequent vesting of pounamu has brought about the validation that Maori have to resource management rights. In identifying issues associated with the management of natural resources by indigenous peoples, this study provides an examination of number theoretical concepts and a practical dimension associated with the management of natural resources by indigenous peoples and has placed pounamu in context. The placement of pounamu in context has provided the basis from which a number of central issues were identified and discussed. A combination a literature study, analysis of an application traditional knowledge in a contemporary context and in-depth interviews and liaison with key stakeholders involved directly and indirectly in the management of pounmau were undertaken, has established that the management of natural resources by indigenous people is more about the management of number of associated processes rather than about the management of a single commodity, in this instance pounamu. Within these processes there exist a number of complex relationships that reflect the fundamental transaction of power and privilege associated with natural resource management. Further conclusions that this study has made, is the increasing need and importance of legislatures and planning professionals alike to further recognise the validity and become familiar with alternate methods of resource management and the application of indigenous systems and methods.

This thesis approaches the issue of bicultural nationhood as articulated through a Maori/Pakeha binary in Aotearoa/New Zealand by interrogating the deeply entrenched social forms that inform liberal democracy and that institutionalize capitalism in the modern nation-state. More specifically, it explores the concepts of �self-governing people�, �public sphere� and �free market� as three forms of collective agency that discursively construct �society� within the social imaginary and that interact to set the terms of democratic citizenship. Central to this discussion is the indigenous/non-indigenous binary constituting biculturalism and the manifestation of �indigeneity� as both unassimilable difference in the project of modernity and as political struggle for recognition and power. This study elaborates through the mediated texts of the mediasphere and argues that there is a constant relation between nation, culture and class wherein culture-as-difference provides a framework for masking class struggle in capitalist relations of production as well as for enabling the dominant group to discursively construct their own ethnicity as national cultural identity. What is at stake in this discussion is the contrast between cultural difference as it emerges in the performance of everyday life and as reaction to issues of economic marginalization and cultural difference as it is contrived by the nation-state in terms of a Maori/Pakeha binary. The aim of this thesis is to highlight the necessity of difference in cultural identified, labeled and marketed as a fixed concept, but is an ephemeral by-product of ongoing social struggle for survival, recognition and political power. The objective is to undercut current ideological propositions and demand a just, equitable and democratic approach to the conceptualization of nationhood in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

This thesis is a comparative study of the West�s intellectual responses to the indigenous inhabitants of Australia and New Zealand from the period of first contact through until 1850. The thesis does not attempt a comprehensive history of the West�s encounters with Australasia nor does it attempt to discuss the role of the indigene within these encounters. The thesis does, however, discuss the formulation and expression of those intellectual traditions that informed the Western response to the Maori and Aborigine. Specifically, each chapter addresses a particular aspect of the West�s interaction with the indigenous peoples of Australasia in order demonstrate how the Western narratives of exploration, travel and settlement were informed by the wider discourse of colonialism. Amongst some of the themes addressed in the course of this thesis are: the ideal of the �Good Savage�, the shifting notion of a �Great Chain of Being�, the rise of natural history as a system for classifying human difference and the importance of ideas of savagery in framing the colonial response to the Maori and Aborigine were characterised by similarities and continuities as much as by the more commonly acknowledged differences and discontinuities.

Woolum Bellum KODE (Koorie Open Door Education) School is located at Morwell in the Latrobe Valley of Victoria. The school is unique in that its curriculum is centred on the Gunnai/Kurnai language and culture of the traditional owners. The aim of this thesis is to describe and tell the history of Woolum Bellum School. My research questions are: 1. what led to the establishment of the Woolum Bellum KODE School? What are the critical success factors of the school attaining autonomy within the Victorian State Education system? The story of Woolum Bellum and its journey is important in the context of sharing knowledge. It exemplifies how a school like Woolum Bellum can be autonomous and how it presents a challenge as it comes to terms with what works and why. As a community we can assess the overall success of the school in terms of outcomes for the community. The benefits are seen in the generation of young people who attended the school over the past fifteen years. Their experience of schooling at Woolum Bellum as opposed to their experiences in the mainstream system amounts to significant successes. My ways of knowing have informed how I have used a method of research that respects my knowledge gifted from my Elders and Ancestors. My indigenous ways respected in using Dadirri as a methodology for narrative inquiry in research underpins and informs respect for honouring an indigenous paradigm; with tools within that paradigm to guide and shape my research. My cultural ways of knowing, my guidance in reciprocal and respectful relationships, talking together in circles, telling stories in conversations, and understanding community are at the core of these ways of knowing. My quilts crafted with multiple layers of knowledge offer the community a visual representation of the journey. They share the narrative and knowledge in conversations and in stories. They are relational and interrelated and they interpret the issues from my ways of knowing. This is a story I have shared with others already who believed in the possibilities for a Woolum Bellum School. Like me, they welcomed the challenges, the responsibilities that came with it to our community and Elders. And like me, the community held on to the dream that time and through listening, through learning and with knowledge, the possibility remains.

The concept of cultural safety arose in Aotearoa me Te Waipounamu/New Zealand in the late 1980�s in response to the differential health experience and negative health outcomes of the first nation people of Aotearoa me Te Waipounamu/New Zealand, the New Zealand Maori. It was introduced and developed by Maori nurses initially, as they recognised the effect culture had on health and understood safety as a common nursing concept. The concept of cultural safety has developed into a disipline which is taught as part of all nursing and midwifery curricula in Aotearoa me Te Waipounamu/New Zealand. As cultural safety has developed the concept of culture has been extended to include people who differ from the nurse by reason of: age, migrant status, sexual preference, socioeconomic status, religious persuasion, gender, ethnicity, and in Aotearoa me Te Waipounamu/New Zealand, the Treaty of Waitangi status of the nurse and recipient/s of her/his care. Nationally and internationally, health experience and health outcomes are poorer for people of minority group status than for people who are part of the dominant group. Public-health research is therefore generally conducted on, or with, people with minority group status. Public-health researchers, by education, are members of the dominant culture and may be unaware that their own and their clients; responses may relate to one/other or both cultures being diminished do not always ensure the safety of their own culture or the culture being researched. This study�s objective was to develop a flexible, culturally safe public health research framework for researches to use when researching people who are culturally different from themselves. The study will argue that the use of such a framework will contribute significantly to improved health outcomes for people with minority status and will assist the movement towards emancipatory social change. The methods undertaken included: gaining permission from Irihapeti Ramsden, the architect of cultural safety to undertake the research, conducting a literature review, consideration of primary sources and their key concepts, consulting widely with people in the field of public health and cultural safety, self reflecting on the writers own personal and professional experience and finally designing the culturally safe public health research framework.

The world�s indigenous peoples have been subjected to exploitation, discrimination, dispossession, relocation, assimilation and in some cases genocide since contact with the Western world. They have been the victims of an invasion which has since secured their position among the lowest social qualifiers. For centuries, they have been ignored by nation-states throughout the world. However, a new dawn has risen for the first peoples of the world, and for the past two decades thaey have experienced a cultural, political and social revival which has been gaining in popularity, intensity and effectiveness since it�s inception. The politicisation of indigenous movements and their fundamentally local characteristics has occurred at the same time that the world is experiencing a sense of accelerated globalisation. Economic integration through trade agreements has diminished boundaries and has allowed multinational corporations to travel, sell and trade at will. The sense that the world is �one place� has fast become a reality through "the increasing volume and rapidity of the flows of money, goods, people, information, technology and images." (Featherstone, 1995:81) The simultaneous globalisation and localisation of the world seems to be two contradictory phenomenon acting in opposition to one another. However, as several theorists have pointed out, the two are actually related and each to some degree attributes to the existence of the other (Eriksen, 1993:9; Featherstone, 1990:10; Friedman, 1990:327). In fact, indigenous movements themselves, while asserting local issues and rights, have undergone a recent transformation and now attempt to achieve their goals through global strategies. They have expanded their methods and now not only at the community and national levels, but also within the international arena. The Maori and the Native Hawaiians are two groups of indigenous peoples who have been fighting for their rights and land for over a century. Both groups represent small percentages of their nation-states� population. This has forced them to pursue their struggle with creative strategies and persistent, patient pressure. Thus, their struggles have undergone continouos transformations in attempts to discover the most effective formula which would eventually cause their respective nation-states to recognise and address their grievances. Recently, the Maori and the Native Hawaiians, have broadened their movement to incorporate an international tier. Activity on the international level includes international conferences, international visits/exchanges, ratification of indigenous declarations, indigenous networking, and international indigenous solidarity organisations. These activities have increased over the past twenty years as the effectiveness of such activity has also increased. New Zealand, the United States and other nation-states are being held more accountable for past injustices and are being driven to answer to the world�s indigenous community.

The Treaty of Waitangi specifically recognises the rights of Maori to control and manage their fisheries resources. However, since the imposition of fisheries legislation in New Zealand, this right has been consistently eroded. It is only recently that Maori customary fisheries rights have been given a degree of recognition in New Zealand�s fisheries management regime. The taiapure provisions of the Fisheries Act 1996 are one of the few policy initiatives available for Maori to manage their fisheries resources in accordance with their customary tikanga. This study examines the effectiveness of the taiapure legislation in providing for Maori customary fisheries management. The Maketu taiapure in the Bay of Plenty is studied to analyse the implementation of the initiative at the local level. The study has found that there are limitations inherent in the legislation and that these are further complicated by inadequacies in its implementation. Recommendations regarding the size, management and establishment process, are made at the conclusion of the study to highlight the amendments needed for the taiapure provisions to properly recognise and provide for the role of Maori, as Treaty partners, in the management of their local fisheries.

This thesis constructs and verifies a methodological practice of conversation groups and grounded theory for examining and changing the dominant discourse that situates Indigenous Australian tertiary students in mainstream education. Within this research, not only was a rich shared discourse development on a conceptual level valuable and necessary in the telling of our stories but it offered us as co-researchers—Indigenous students and a non-Indigenous researcher—a means of revealing and working through understandings and mis-understandings. Using such a methodological approach also suggested future possibilities for effective Indigenous/non-Indigenous stakeholders’ working relationships in research, and possibly policy-making in Australian institutions generally. As a methodological and communicative tool for opening up a dialogic space, the use of conversation groups for developing effective communicative relationships held promise for highlighting the experiences of Indigenous students who themselves, then negotiated the position for theoretically and pragmatically directing individual and collective decisions and actions. Inviting Indigenous students into this space provided an environment for the development of an Indigenous standpoint, which is not merely an Indigenous opinion but requires an engagement with the questions and issues affecting Indigenous students as interdependent individuals. Such a standpoint does not happen automatically and needs opportunities to grow and mature. I found that conversation groups involving the Indigenous students and me working together as co-researchers provided this opportunity. With Indigenous students’ narratives of success chosen as the research topic, productively communicating views became a verification of the research methodology used and an enactment of their right to be heard, both highlighting voice and representation issues. The research methodology we used and the ensuing discourse development became an entwined interplay, where each served to reinforce the other. The Indigenous students and I were practising the research approach of conversation groups while developing a conceptualised discourse on being successful. This transdisciplinary approach in co-research, encompassing Indigenous and Western research approaches, allowed for experiential and theoretical engagement with questions of cultural authority, representation, power and agency by Indigenous students and me as a non-Indigenous researcher. Central to the Indigenous students’ stories were notions of “place” as created, negotiated and manipulated by successful Indigenous students as they move between and within fluid subjectivities or stances in relationships, time and space. A broader view was taken of how intersections, layers and parallels are negotiated by the Indigenous students within and between multitudes of places in the blurring of living in two worlds: Black and White.