INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN YOUTH FUTURES LIVING THE SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN YOUTH FUTURES LIVING THE SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH EDITED BY KATE SENIOR, RICHARD CHENHALL AND VICTORIA BURBANK Dedicated to the memory of Pippa Rudd and David Daniels Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] Available to download for free at press.anu.edu.au ISBN (print): 9781760464448 ISBN (online): 9781760464455 WorldCat (print): 1257503258 WorldCat (online): 1256985969 DOI: 10.22459/IAYF.2021 This title is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). The full licence terms are available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode Cover design and layout by ANU Press. Cover photograph by Julie Hall. This edition © 2021 ANU Press Contents List of Figures . ix List of Tables . xi Contributors . xiii Introduction: Aboriginal Youth in the Northern Territory: Disadvantage, Control and Hope . .1 Kate Senior, Richard Chenhall and Victoria Burbank 1 . Living the Social Determinants of Health: My Story . 27 Angelina Joshua 2 . Defiance in the Detail: Young Women’s Embodied Future Selves . .33 Richard Chenhall, Kate Senior, Trudy Hall, Bronwyn Turner and Daphne Daniels 3 . ‘They Don’t Dance Corroboree Any More’: Youth Relations to Authority, Leadership and Civic Responsibility in a Remote Aboriginal Community . .53 Kate Senior, Richard Chenhall and Daphne Daniels 4 . Food Practices of Young People in a Remote Aboriginal Community . .81 Danielle Aquino 5 . Bush Medicine Knowledge and Use among Young Kriol Speakers in Ngukurr . 105 Greg Dickson 6 . ‘They Do Think about Health’: Young Indigenous Women’s Ideas about Health and Their Interaction with the Health System . 123 Mascha Friderichs 7 . Growing Up Fast in Two Remote Aboriginal Communities . 153 Sue McMullen 8 . The Aboriginal Spring? Youth, Mobile Phones and Social Media in a Remote Aboriginal Community . .165 Kishan Kariippanon 9 . Juvenile (In)Justice in Darwin: Young People’s Voices from the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre . .183 Pippa Rudd, Kate Senior and Jared Sharp 10 . Sawyer’s Story: Guidance and Control of Adolescents in a Remote Aboriginal Community . 201 Victoria Burbank List of Figures Figure 0.1: Map of research locations ........................ xvii Figure 2.1: Body map Cathie ...............................41 Figure 2.2: Body map Sarah ................................42 Figure 2.3: Body map Sarah ................................44 Figure 3.1: Corroboree at Urapunga, July 2015 .................55 Figure 3.2: The Bad Ts. ‘This is my gang, my crew. We look after each other. We are a famous crew in Ngukurr.’ ..............68 Figure 3.3: ‘This place is important, because this is where we go to talk and make decisions.’ ............................70 Figure 3.4: ‘It’s important to teach children to share, we teach them that.’. 71 Figure 3.5: ‘Our children’s futures: our kids will be strong like us.’ ...74 Figure 4.1: Body map Nickeisha .............................97 Figure 4.2: Body map Brenae ...............................99 Figure 4.3: Salty plums in a soft drink bottle ..................100 Figure 5.1: Facebook status from a young man in Ngukurr (11 May 2011). 119 Figure 5.2: Facebook status from a young mother from Minyerri (16 June 2013). 119 Figure 5.3: Facebook status from a young mother from Ngukurr (16 July 2013) .....................................119 ix List of Tables Table 4.1: Results from free-listing activity .....................86 Table 5.1: Frequency and salience measures of all taxa listed in free-listing exercise ................................114 Table 5.2: Most recent instance of using bush medicine: time .....115 Table 5.3: Most recent instance of using bush medicine: type of medicine used. 115 Table 5.4: Most recent instance of using bush medicine: ailment treated/reason for use ..........................115 Table 5.5: ‘Top 5 bush medicine’ survey results ................116 xi Contributors Danielle Aquino is a public health nutritionist and dietitian with extensive experience in nutrition, child and maternal health, community development and program evaluation in northern Australia and Vanuatu. She has been involved in research investigating strategies to prevent anaemia amongst young children in northern Australian remote Aboriginal communities, and ethnographic research exploring Aboriginal parents’ perspectives about children’s food and eating practices. Victoria Burbank PhD, FASSA, was a professor of anthropology at the University of Western Australia between 1994 and 2014. Drawing upon her experiences in the south-eastern Arnhem Land community of Numbulwar, she has published three books: Aboriginal Adolescence, Fighting Women and An Ethnography of Stress, along with a number of papers and book chapters. Now ‘retired’ she continues to draw on her expertise in psychological anthropology via public presentations, postgraduate supervision, reviewing and editing. She is currently working on her fourth book set in Numbulwar. Richard Chenhall is Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Richard has conducted research with Indigenous communities and organisations for over 20 years in the area of the social determinants of health, alcohol and other drugs, sexual health and youth wellbeing. He is the author of Benelong’s Haven and co-editor of the Social Determinants of Indigenous Health. Daphne Daniels is the Deputy Chair of the board of directors for the Yugul Mangi Development Aboriginal Corporation. She is also the editor of the Ngukurr News, a role she has held for 20 years. Daphne has been engaged in research in her community since 1998, when she was a researcher on the South East Arnhem Land Collaborative Research Project. xiii InDIGEnouS AuSTRAlIAn YouTH FuTuRES Greg Dickson manages Kriol education programs in Ngukurr, NT, for Meigim Kriol Strongbala (a program of Yugul Mangi Development Aboriginal Corporation) and is an honorary lecturer at The Australian National University. Mascha Friderichs works as lecturer in Public Health at Menzies School of Health Research, Darwin. Her PhD in Anthropology, awarded in 2019, focuses on Indigenous young women’s beliefs about health and their interaction with the health system, considering specifically the interrelationships between health, culture and identity. Trudy Hall lives in the Ngukurr community. She worked as a research assistant for the youth futures project, helping to facilitate body mapping activities with young women. She has also worked as a reporter on the Ngukurr News. Angelina Joshua lives in the Ngukurr community. After completing her education in Darwin, Angelina worked as a community-based researcher supporting an infant nutrition project. She subsequently worked with the Ngukurr Language Centre, where she developed resources in her grandmother’s language of Mara. Kishan Kariippanon is a medical doctor and researcher in the healthy ageing field using a decolonisation framework, combining public health, design and innovation. He is a co-author in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia for Global Public Health for chapters on ‘Traditional Medicine and Indigenous Health in Indigenous Hands’ and ‘Well-Being and Mental Wellness’. Susan McMullen, worked for over 30 years as a nurse in remote settings including Timor and Numbulwar in the Northern Territory. She completed her PhD, ‘Growing up fast: The social and reproductive health of young women in a remote Indigenous community’, in 2014. Pippa Rudd was a PhD student with the Menzies School of Health Research, conducting research into young Indigenous people’s contact with the legal system. She was formerly a director in the NT Department of Justice. xiv ConTRIbuToRS Kate Senior is an Associate Professor of Anthropology in the School of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Newcastle. She has worked in collaboration with Daphne Daniels and the Ngukurr community for the last 20 years, with a particular emphasis on the lives and wellbeing of young people in the community. Research conducted for her Australian Research Council Future Fellowship provided the impetus for this publication. Jared Sharp’s background is as a criminal lawyer specialising in youth justice for Aboriginal legal services, principally the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency (NAAJA). Jared has been a long-standing advocate to address the human rights failings of the Northern Territory youth justice system. He was featured in ABC TV’s Four Corners investigation into Darwin’s Don Dale Youth Detention Centre, and was involved in the resulting Royal Commission into NT Youth Detention and Child Protection. Bronwyn Turner lives in the Ngukurr community. She worked as a research assistant for the youth futures project, helping to facilitate body mapping activities with young women. She has also worked as a reporter on the Ngukurr News. xv Figure 0.1: Map of research locations. Source: Daniele Senior . xvii Introduction: Aboriginal Youth in the Northern Territory: Disadvantage, Control and Hope Kate Senior, Richard Chenhall and Victoria Burbank Perhaps the most important contribution of anthropology to the study of adolescence is the emphasis it puts on understanding the cultures within which adolescents operate. (Schlegel and Hewlett 2011, 287) Young people are poised on the brink of maturity, of arriving at a life