For thousands of years Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people nurtured their young, allowing natural skills to develop. Education using the powers of observation and listening was the most important process used with information being delivered to the child when they were ready to receive it. Most times this information was delivered by several members of the community. Prominent Australian Aboriginal scholar Kaye Price (2012) affirms that ‘right from the beginning there was a specialised education and for each child there was a teacher, a mentor and a peer with whom to learn … who ensured that history and the essentials of life were taught’ (p. 4). Aboriginal society was based on an egalitarian system that was holistic and emphasised belonging, spirituality, and relatedness. Learning was viewed as a natural holistic process where education was centred on the land and children learned alongside adults (Martin, 2005). The traditional epistemological system that maintained Aboriginal Nations in Australia for millennia was disrupted upon colonisation in 1788 resulting in discrimination towards Aboriginal culture and traditions (Morgan, 2019).

Dr Jodi Edwards, an Aboriginal woman of Yuin and Dharawal kinship, wrote this chapter through her lens as an Elder connected to Country and the waters of the Illawarra coast of New South Wales. She explains how cultural knowledge-holders have seen, and continue to see and interpret, the natural environment through rich environmental play experiences that help shape cultural identity and strengthen Aboriginal Lore/Law. In a contemporary context, Jodi extends on these ways of understanding by sharing the rationale behind a children’s playscape and public art space being developed by the Shellharbour City Council in collaboration with the local Aboriginal community. The playscape is a play-based site for physical activity, and a place for storytelling and language learning, and for learning about bush tucker and bush medicines. It is intended to inform local young people and visitors alike about the multiple sustainable practices engaged in by the Aboriginal community of the area. At a broader level, the playscape also offers considerable potential for enhancing cultural and language reclamation, decolonisation and reconciliation.

Within a tidal wave of dispossession, Indigenous performers forged livings in scientific showmanship. In 1850, ‘Jemmy’, an Aboriginal boy, starred in a Melbourne lecture series that fused phrenology with mesmerism. During the mid 1860s, Tamati Hapimana Te Wharehinaki, chief of the Ngati Ruangutu hapū of the Tapuika Iwi, toured through the Australian colonies with the infamous Thomas Guthrie Carr. Supposedly mesmerised by the lecturers, these performers demonstrated actions that corresponded with particular phrenological organs, wrapping feigned subordination in displays of cultural difference that fascinated Europeans. An ethnographic history approach to these lecture reports reveals how these performers cannily shaped these representations for personal gain. Although serving colonial fantasies of control, the stage world nevertheless allowed them to push against the constraints that bound their daily lives. The fragile relations of power that made or broke a show enabled tactical choices for fleeting material or social benefit.

How did Aboriginal audiences experience popular science when it unfolded on stage in a mission site? This chapter considers phrenological visits to Yorta Yorta country in south-eastern Australia, and particularly the lectures of JB Thomas at Maloga Mission in 1884 and John Joseph Sheridan at nearby Cummeragunja in 1892. Like other scientists and medical men who visited here, these men perpetuated scientific racism. But newspaper reports also point to the possibility of these lectures – which also included lantern slides – as moments of nuanced interaction from which Yorta Yorta and other Aboriginal residents derived value and pleasure, rather than as straightforward impositions. As participatory entertainments, such shows hinged on uncertain moments with mixed emotions on both sides. This chapter considers the possible ways that, within the local context, phrenology and rational amusement might have become items for perusal and collection by Aboriginal people negotiating two-way living in a changing world.

The developed countries of the Australasian region have legislative and healthcare systems similar to the UK, consistent with their relatively recent colonial history. Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand both demonstrate varying approaches to provision of healthcare, disability support services and legislative frameworks for people with neurodevelopmental disabilities who commit offences. Particular areas of need are described, including the impact of the lack of capacity in neurodevelopmental disability healthcare and also the additional skills and understanding required to develop cultural competence to better support and work with the Indigenous people of both countries facing additional disadvantage. The challenges of service delivery across vast geographic areas of low population density are also discussed. Common features of both countries are discussed initially, then unique aspects in Australia andAotearoa New Zealand. Significant improvements have been made in recent years, but both countries still suffer from a lack of capacity in the workforce and sufficient funding to deliver high-quality services to people with neurodevelopmental disabilities who commit offences.

The British colonisation of Van Diemen’s Land (later Tasmania) began in 1803. There was an estimated 6,000 Aborigines (Palawa) living on the island with a history dating back over 40,000 years. By 1835, there were just over 100 Palawa living in forced exile on one of Tasmania’s smaller offshore islands. Only two residents remained when the government closed the Aboriginal Settlement in 1871. This chapter traces the history of Tasmania’s colonisation from 1803 to 1871 and finds that the British committed acts against the Palawa that meet the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: killings, child removals, and creating conditions unconducive to sustaining life. Tasmania has been cited as one the ‘classical’ cases of genocide, but the finding has also stirred debate. This chapter surveys the historiography of Tasmanian genocide including Raphael Lemkin’s 1940s finding of a clear case of genocide; Henry Reynolds’ 2001 counter evidence of gubernatorial humanitarianism; and the subsequent histories that recognise genocide within the structure of settler colonialism. This chapter concludes that the British committed genocide in Tasmania with intent, but reported and framed that crime within the rhetoric, and even the guidelines, of contemporaneous humanitarian policies.

By 1837 the British government had been sending convicts, soldiers, and livestock entrepreneurs to Australia for almost fifty years. A committee of its own House of Commons, inspired by humanitarian principles, now reported the devastating effects on the indigenous inhabitants. Evidence of ‘extermination’ and ‘extirpation’ meant that the best minds of the Colonial Office were already exercised by the devastation of indigenous peoples inflicted by settlers who might have no clear aim of damaging them. When British government was extended to New Zealand, it was soon evident that Māori, for centuries sharing a largely common language and history, had a more effective capacity to resist than Aboriginal Australians, for millennia divided into hundreds of separate peoples and languages. In all Australian colonies and New Zealand, the determination of immigrants to ‘make productive’ land they knew belonged to others created disaster. Within twenty years of settlement, the Aboriginal population of Victoria declined by eighty percent. As the British spread over the whole continent, countless nations were extinguished. Across the Tasman the indigenous population was halved and the ‘passing of the Māori’ was still openly discussed even as adaptation, intermarriage and parliamentary representation saved it from genocide.

This chapter explores the notion of diachronic toponymy, which is the discipline that deals with the reconstruction of a place name in the context of undocumented languages/language families and in the absence of historical records. In many communities that do not have a writing system, oral stories and traditions become important sources of toponymic data, as place names are passed down orally, from one generation to another. Additionally, oral stories also commemorate the land and its namers, and are an ‘oral record’ of the physical territory and the changes made to it by human inhabitation. The chapter presents a step-by-step guide for studying place names according to a diachronic toponymy approach – one that also incorporates methods from anthropological linguistics, language documentation, and field linguistics. This is applied to a toponymic system in the Abui community on Alor Island, southeast Indonesia. The authors also demonstrate how historical semantics can complement the toponymic analysis by applying its criteria to a toponymic system which includes several Abui toponyms that show a semantic specialisation of the Abui term for ‘village’.

This chapter examines how we think about questions of plurality and the relations between legal orders. It does so through a specific history of the engagement between Indigenous legal orders and the Australian common law from the perspective of the latter. This chapter approaches legal plurality through the specific lens of thinking, both conceptually and practically, with jurisdiction. It looks at the ways in which the technology of jurisdiction has worked to obscure Indigenous legal orders and hence plurality. The chapter notes the increasing division between the approach of the High Court of Australia to plurality – as a matter to be contained or ignored –and the increasingly careful histories being written of our plural pasts and present.

This chapter discusses the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from a gendered perspective, considering the different health needs and outcomes experienced by men and women. It begins by unpacking the construct of gender and discussing how gender and gender variations are viewed and accepted by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. The Indigenous understandings of women’s business and men’s business are discussed from historical and contemporary perspectives, with a strong focus on the National Aboriginal Health Strategy’s definitions of the two. The chapter then discusses the differences in health outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous men and women, and how the different views they have of health may affect them, before considering how nurses can best provide gender-appropriate care to their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients. The chapter concludes by considering how Australian policies have varied in meeting the gendered needs of Indigenous Australians, and how the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women is changing and will continue to do so into the future.

This chapter focuses on the different health needs and outcomes of Indigenous children and their families. It begins by discussing the national policies aimed at improving Indigenous child health, including the National Framework for Health Services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Families, and by considering the cultural and social considerations when providing healthcare to Indigenous children. The gap between mortality and morbidity rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and non-Indigenous children is established as the authors call for nurses and midwives to understand the stories behind these statistics, before considering the programs and initiatives aimed at improving health outcomes of Indigenous children. The chapter discusses ways to promote health, and considers common health issues experienced by Indigenous children, including poor nutrition, oral and ear health, and infections. The chapter provides concrete ways in which nurses and midwives can care for Indigenous children and also discusses examples of community programs working to reduce the rate of accidents and self-harm in Indigenous children.

The health outcomes and health needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples living in remote communities are different to those living in regional and urban communities. This chapter discusses the role of remote area nurses (RANs) and their scope of practice, along with the challenges they may face while working in remote Indigenous communities. It establishes the need for RANs to integrate with the community and lead health initiatives. The work RANs may undertake is discussed, as well as the additional qualifications, including immunisation, sexual health endorsements and x-ray licences, which may be of benefit. The chapter discusses the different burden of disease and injury in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island communities, and the holistic way these communities often perceive health. The chapter calls for cultural safety in remote area nursing, and suggests that respecting differences in culture, communication and health education is critical. The author concludes by reflecting on her own experience as a remote area nurse.

This chapter introduces nursing and midwifery students to the history and current state of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ health. It considers the deficit discourse that is often used to describe Indigenous health, which negatively contrasts Indigenous health with the health of non-Indigenous Australians. The chapter emphasises the importance of understanding the history of Indigenous health, both from pre-colonisation and in the years following. It discusses the recent Uluru Statement from the Heart and the history of the Stolen Generations, and examines the effects on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health. The chapter discusses the current health gap that exists between First Nations people and non-Indigenous Australians, and how the Closing the Gap initiative aims to improve Indigenous health outcomes to the level of non-Indigenous Australians. The chapter portrays health as a social justice issue and encourages a human rights approach to health. It concludes by detailing the personal stories of two First Nations nurses to demonstrate the positive effect Indigenous nurses and midwives can have on the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

This chapter introduces readers to Indigenous-led research, with a particular focus on qualitative methods. It begins by discussing the history of Indigenous research, which has not always been ethical or culturally appropriate, before discussing the relatively recent push for change as Indigenous people advocated for research by, for and about Indigenous people. This has seen an increase in culturally safe research, where the needs of Indigenous communities are considered throughout the research process. It provides guidance for nurses and midwives to begin research projects, and considers how they can apply ethical research in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. The chapter then considers common qualitative methods that can be used, before discussing how to undertake a culturally safe qualitative research project by understanding community protocols and engaging the community. The chapter guides readers through the process of ethics approvals, identifying and recruiting participants, conducting focus groups and displaying findings.