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Leadership and role models for young Indigenous Australians involved in the Rumbalara Football Netball Club
... Indigenous Australian cultures tend to have observational learning styles, which are facilitated in sports and recreation programs in a highly effective manner (O'Brien et al. 2009). Young people are able to observe, and then emulate behaviours to which they aspire (O'Brien et al. 2009). ...
... Indigenous Australian cultures tend to have observational learning styles, which are facilitated in sports and recreation programs in a highly effective manner (O'Brien et al. 2009). Young people are able to observe, and then emulate behaviours to which they aspire (O'Brien et al. 2009). ...
... Similarly a coach who is genuinely caring yet disciplined can provide a role model to which young people can aspire (Hartmann 2003;Light 2010). Likewise, younger players often emulate the behaviour of talented Indigenous footballers, provided the senior players' on-field and every day off-field behaviours are consistent (O'Brien et al. 2009). ...
What we know • There is some evidence, in the form of critical descriptions of programs and systematic reviews, on the benefits to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities from participation in sport and recreational programs. These include some improvements in school retention, attitudes towards learning, social and cognitive skills, physical and mental health and wellbeing; increased social inclusion and cohesion; increased validation of and connection to culture; and crime reduction. • Although the effects of sports and recreation programs can be powerful and transformative, these effects tend to be indirect. For example, using these programs to reduce juvenile antisocial behaviour largely work through diversion, providing alternative safe opportunities to risk taking, maintenance of social status, as well as opportunities to build healthy relationships with Elders and links with culture.
... Role models are recognised as being important for Indigenous youth in areas of sport (Macniven et al., 2019;O'Brien et al., 2009), health and well-being (Miller et al., 2020), education (Price et al., 2017), and their lives more broadly (Munns et al., 2013). Notwithstanding this work, few studies have investigated who Indigenous children look to as role models, and for what reasons. ...
... For instance, Nelson (2009) found Indigenous youths looked to Indigenous sportspersons as role models, justifying their choice on the basis of skill and Indigeneity (see O'Brien et al., 2009). Figures mentioned in Nelson's (2009) study include Cathy Freeman (athletics) and Jonathan Thurston (rugby league); some participants stated that such figures represented Indigenous people en masse when playing sport. ...
This article seeks to understand who Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children select as role models, and the reasons underlying these choices. Drawing data from Wave 8 of the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children, it comprises a sample of 307 children (169 male and 138 female) aged between 10.5 and 12 years at the time of data collection. Content analysis was used to analyse survey responses regarding two questions pertaining to role models, the analytical process being underpinned by Indigenous standpoint theory. The findings show that participants tended to select role models correlating with their gender and who were Indigenous or people of colour. For boys, most selected Indigenous sportsmen, whilst girls more evenly selected mothers, women from the entertainment industry, and sportswomen. The reasons why these individuals were selected were similar for boys and girls: the role model's ability, mastery and/or competency in a given field. These findings are important for educators and schools in guiding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youths in their educational and career choices, and for policymakers in creating campaigns and pathways into fields where Indigenous persons are underrepresented.
... Good background, you know like, hasn't done bad stuff in the past, or if he has he's made it better and is trying to be a good role model (O'Brien et al., 2009 p.212). ...
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and links to health and wellbeing
... • Changes in risk and protective factors are facilitated by providing young people with a positive role model to observe and emulate (Barwick 2004;O'Brien et al. 2009) and by breaking the links between risk factors and spiralling antisocial behaviour by providing space to think, reflect and imagine positive alternatives (Spencer & Liang 2009). ...
What we know • There is a range of risk factors that may make young people of any ethnicity more likely to engage in antisocial behaviours. These factors include the young person's own attitudes; relationships within the family; and growing up in communities where there is widespread violence, alcohol and other substance abuse, poverty, poor health and poor-quality housing. Indigenous young people face the additional challenges of dispossession, discontinuity of culture and intergenerational trauma. • A strong connection to culture—coupled with high self-esteem, a strong sense of autonomy, and with living in cohesive, functioning families and communities—can be protective factors that result in Indigenous young people choosing productive life pathways. • Mentoring is a relationship intervention strategy that can assist in building some of these protective factors. A growing body of research demonstrates that mentoring can have powerful and lasting positive effects in improving behavioural, academic and vocational outcomes for at-risk youth and, to a more limited extent, in reducing contact with juvenile justice systems. • In an Indigenous context, mentoring is a particularly promising initiative because it fits well with Indigenous teaching and learning styles and can help to build strong collective ties within a community. • Mentoring programs can involve adult or peer mentors and can be implemented in a range of ways, such as one-on-one or in groups. • Although positive results can be achieved with single-intervention mentoring for at risk youth, integrating mentoring into broader programs produces a greater level of positive change. • The way the mentoring program is run and the nature of the relationship between mentor and mentee are crucial in determining the outcomes of youth mentoring programs.
... Both of these papers highlight that organizational rhetoric about reconciliation and cross-cultural awareness is not enough to warrant effective working relationships between non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, but also supports the argument that there is no single model of sports-based social programmes that provide culturally inclusive and meaningful sporting experiences for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Broader research findings therefore suggest a focus on the importance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples leadership of sports-based organizations, the explicit need to empower local communities to develop the skills to sustain programmes and outcomes, and the maintenance of mutually beneficial interactions Reilly, Doyle, and Rowley 2007;O'Brien, Paradies, and Reilly 2009). ...
Current research suggests that Aboriginal-controlled organizations should play a larger role in developing and implementing sports-based programmes for Aboriginal young people. In this paper, we explore the influence of an Aboriginal-controlled organization and its government-funded remote sports-based programme on Aboriginal participants and non-Aboriginal stakeholders. We consider whether this sports-based programme is meeting the needs of a remote community in Northern Territory, Australia, and argue that the influence of the Aboriginal controlled organization is somewhat minimized, due to the constraints of government policy and associated funding, which focus on the socioeconomic agenda of reducing gaps between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians in health, education and employment. The Aboriginal community members and youth would appreciate the Aboriginal-controlled organization working more closely with them to improve the influence of the programme by paying respect to the local Aboriginal culture, social systems and knowledge.
... Good background, you know like, hasn't done bad stuff in the past, or if he has he's made it better and is trying to be a good role model (O'Brien et al., 2009 p.212). ...
We investigated the feasibility of a trial to provide heroin to dependent users and as part of this sought the views of three groups of users and ex-users. While a majority of each group supported a trial, a greater proportion of people who were currently users of heroin or other illicit opioids were in favour than was the case either for people who had been dependent on heroin in the past or for people who currently used or had used illicit drugs, but who had never used heroin or other opioids. Where possible, we related views about trial outcomes to additional information provided by respondents. This information supported views that a trial might a) increase the number of dependent heroin users and. for trial participants, b) improve health, c) reduce criminal behaviour, especially drug dealing andd) increase the prevalence of driving under the influence of heroin, although this would not necessarily reduce road safety. Difficulties in measuring trial effects on some of these outcome measures are discussed.
The Rumbalara Football and Netball Club (RFNC) was accepted into the Goulburn Valley Football League for the 1997 football and netball season. Since this acceptance into a mainstream 1 league, the Club has won a total of 20 premierships between the 4 football and 8 netball divisions. In 1999, the Goulburn Valley Football League second division split from the league, forming the Central Goulburn Football League (CGFL). Rumbalara's first-division football team won the CGFL's first premiership, won again in 2002, and was the runner-up in 2003 and 2004. The netball teams have been even more impressive, with the A-grade winning premiership in three consecutive years from 2001 to 2003 and then again in 2008. Since the first grand final victory in 1998 (exactly 100 years after the first premiership won by the Cummeragunja team to which RFNC traces its ancestry), the Club has defied all the odds. Sport was the original activity that brought Aboriginal people to RFNC in 1997. This was due to a determination to strengthen cultural connections with other community members, their interest in and love of football, the opportunity to display talents and challenge the individuals' skills. The cultural connection provided the platform for Indigenous players, supporters, family, and community to come together in a setting they could call their own. Prior to the establishment of RFNC, these connections, for many people, were focused on attendance at funerals as the most frequent community event – as in other parts of Australia, the Aboriginal communities of the Goulburn-Murray Rivers Region experience high rates of premature morbidity and mortality. The establishment of RFNC began a journey that allowed Indigenous people to strengthen spiritual, emotional, and physical wellbeing,
Ethnographic interviews have become a commonly used qualitat ive methodology for collecting data (Aronson, 1992). Once the information is gathered, res earchers are faced with the decision on how to analyze the data. There are many ways to anal yze informants' talk about their experiences (Mahrer, 1988; Spradley, 1979; Taylor & Bogdan, 1984), a nd thematic analysis is one such way. Although thematic analysis has been described (Benner, 1985; Leininger, 1985; Taylor & Board, 1984), there is insufficient literature that outlines the pragmatic process of thematic analysis. This article attempts to outline the procedure for perform ing a thematic analysis.
This paper describes a health promotion program conducted within the Koori community of the Goulburn-Murray region of northern Victoria, Australia. The program was community-directed, state-funded and involved university researchers. The program comprised three separate but related activities devised and carried out within a Participatory Action Research framework with the aim of promoting nutrition and physical exercise. Although the activities did not always meet all their intended aims and problems arose with the evaluation of some activities, they were nonetheless deemed to have made a valuable and sometimes unexpected contribution to health promotion in the community. Principles of participation and collaboration were central to the program's success. Challenges and benefits of working in genuine partnership are discussed. For many years now Aboriginal people
In this study we explore and compare concepts of mentoring from both mainstream and Aboriginal perspectives. Our objective was to identify fac-tors that could influence the development of an Aboriginal specific mentor-ing program in a mainstream national program. Key factors for Aboriginal mentoring programs were determined through interview and focus group discussions about program successes and challenges in local communities. It was determined that successful mentoring programs should be developed in collaboration with community members from the outset and built on ex-isting strengths and programs within the community. Successful Aboriginal mentoring programs must also include the mentee's family, traditional val-ues and culture, and adequate resources for sustainability. Formation of a community advisory group for guidance and support is essential for success and sustainability, especially for programs involving outside organizations.
A social identity theory of leadership is described that views leadership as a group process generated by social categorization and prototype-based depersonalization processes associated with social identity. Group identification, as self-categorization, constructs an intragroup prototypicality gradient that invests the most prototypical member with the appearance of having influence; the appearance arises because members cognitively and behaviorally conform to the prototype. The appearance of influence becomes a reality through depersonalized social attraction processes that make followers agree and comply with the leader's ideas and suggestions. Consensual social attraction also imbues the leader with apparent status and creates a status-based structural differentiation within the group into leader(s) and followers, which has characteristics of unequal status intergroup relations. In addition, a fundamental attribution process constructs a charismatic leadership personality for the leader, which further empowers the leader and sharpens the leader-follower status differential. Empirical support for the theory is reviewed and a range of implications discussed, including intergroup dimensions, uncertainty reduction and extremism, power, and pitfalls of prototype-based leadership.
In a previous article (Yancey, 1992), the literature on identity development in individuals from socially devalued racial and ethnic groups was summarized. It was postulated that the social maladaptation of adolescents in residential group foster care is reflective of identity disturbances created by the negative images of African-Americans and Latinos perpetuated by the dominant society and unfiltered by optimal parental racial/ethnic socialization. The present article describes the development of a pilot preventive mental health intervention, the PRIDE (Personal and Racial/ethnic Identity Development and Enhancement) program, designed to provide components of parenting that are necessary for promoting positive self-image in ethnically marginalized adolescents and that are typically lacking in the group foster care milieu. PRIDE utilizes successful, ethnically relevant role models in interactive group sessions to create a significant cognitive and emotional experience for teens. While the utility of role modeling for at-risk youth is widely accepted, there is little research on the packaging, delivery, and influence of this intervention modality. This study demonstrates the feasibility of a "hybrid" role-modeling approach (intermediate in intensity of exposure and cost between one-to-one mentoring and career-day programs). Implications for further research on this type of intervention are discussed.
This paper explores both Indigenous and non-indigenous critiques of 'Western' research frameworks in an Aboriginal health context. It also discusses the 'reform' of Aboriginal health research practices since the 1980s, particularly in relation to the development of ethical guidelines.
The text is based on both archival research and a critical review of secondary literature.
It is argued here that efforts to reform the practices of mainstream Indigenous health research since the 1980s have oscillated between taking concrete steps towards actually changing research practice and placing too great a reliance on written guidelines and positive rhetoric. In offering this analysis, the paper argues for a more challenging conception of reforming mainstream research, involving an emphasis on shifts in institutional arrangements as well local research practices.