Week 6.5

Question 1

Issues with this deficit research (3)

Answer 1

• Not one positive thing - disease free, no suicide
• Only looking for why different or deficit from Europeans
• Not motivated to get better

Question 2

In studies so far, was the primary focus on positive aspects of society [sense of community, environmental guardianship, etc], negative aspects [poverty, poor health outcomes, etc] or a balanced view?

Answer 2

Of the information re indigenous culture - the primary focus is on negative aspects [poverty, poor health outcomes, etc]

Question 3

Introductory text books and Indigenous research

Answer 3

• Find little to no information about indigenous abilities - cognitive etc
• Find most introductory texts will have a chapter on Indigenous populations [generally include New Zealand Maoris who have no relationship to Australian indigenous people
• Find that introductory texts cover history and geography and then make negative comparisons - eg education, health, etc. The continued raising of these disadvantages is considered benevolent racism

Question 4

This is…

Answer 4

This is the major complaint about white society researching indigenous peoples and the reason why indigenous peoples and the Australian Research council

Question 5

Issues with research (6)

Answer 5

• Even in the 1970s, Judith Kearins found enhanced cognitive abilities in memory in Indigenous children
• She used a racist graph [see next slide]
• Explained it in terms of Social Darwinism and not social disadvantage
• Indigenous children evolved these enhanced abilities due to hunter-gather evolution
• Non-indigenous children evolved from agricultural stock and did not need these abilities to become successful
• A simpler social environmental explanation is that there are memory differences due to different language and different educational experiences

Question 6

Issues with Judith Kearins graph

Answer 6

• Researchers measure the number of correct responses not the number of errors
• In Kearins graph, she uses number of errors which gives the impression that Anglo-Australian children out-performed Aboriginal children
• White children on the top, Aboriginal children on the bottom of the graph - think that they are worse because on the bottom of graph (racist)

Question 7

Further issues with Judith Kearins findings

Answer 7

• Said that their memory was better because they think differently from White Australians (deficit model)
• Memory being verbal, memory being 7 items - these results blow contradict these theories

Question 8

1970s Indigenous research

Answer 8

1970s psychologists still completed deficit research [what areas are non-Indigenous Australians superior to Indigenous Australians] and continued to indicate that Indigenous children would be better off intellectually and educationally if they were separated from their parents and their community

Question 9

Quote from Seagrim & Lendon, 1980

Answer 9

“Children reared in ‘culturally poor’ communities will not have adequate cognitive structures on the basis to assimilate and accommodate to the white culture”

Question 10

Recent research [early 2000s]

Answer 10

Psychology concluded the importance of kin and country for self and well-being, that loss of that connection would increase mental ill-health, but failed to [or even suggest] interventions to affect positive changes in Indigenous mental health

Question 11

What changed in Indigenous populations in terms of suicide

Answer 11

from no suicides, to people being 3 times as likely as European people to kill themselves but no recommendation on how to change this

Question 12

Continuing institutionalized racism

Answer 12

Three investigative studies - Moore et al (2010); Coory et al (2008); and Valery et al (2006) using matched samples of hospital records of 800+ indigenous with non-indigenous patients

Question 13

Findings of these three studies (5)

Answer 13

• Diagnoses at a later stage
• Less offer of treatment, even when stage of diagnosis controlled for
• Lower hospitalization rate for cancer treatments - indigenous (16 per 1000) versus non-indigenous (24.6 per 1000)
• Matched indigenous and non-indigenous lung cancer patients and found 46% of indigenous patients were treated (surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy) compared to 72% on non-indigenous
• Less offer of treatment because of more co-morbidities (such as diabetes and chronic renal disease)

Question 14

Findings of these three studies continued… (4)

Answer 14

• Less likely to have treatment - offered less treatment
• More likely to die
• Why is this diagnosis being given later
• Not going to treat for the diabetes because chronic renal disease - or because have two illnesses not going to treat person for either of them

Question 15

Research continuing into 2000s

Answer 15

Researchers continued to highlight deficits until the NH&MRC created ethical guidelines for Indigenous research and now researchers can no longer impose research paradigms on Indigenous peoples

(Have to talk to someone from in the community about research and what trying to achieve)