Invisible from the Start
Learning Objectives
Having read this resource, you should have a better understanding Aboriginal people’s experience of being ‘othered’ in Australia and the opportunities that exist for social workers to develop partnerships with Aboriginal organisations.
Invisible from the Start
In this chapter featured in Working Across Difference (eds. Baines, Bennett, Goodwin and Rawsthorne), Sigrid Herring and Jo Spangaro explore Aboriginal people’s experience of being ‘othered’ in Australia, focusing on the invisibility of their knowledges and the diminishment of Aboriginal community controlled organisations.
This chapter was written on the land of the Wallumattagal and Burramattagal people of the Dharug nation, who continue their ongoing custodianship of the land and waters. We acknowledge that we are on this land as beneficiaries of an uncompensated and unreconciled dispossession, which continues today and which was never ceded. We pay respect to Elders past, present and emerging.
To find out more about this book, please click here.
Reflective Questions
1. How would you summarise the three ways identified that white social workers can use anti-oppressive thinking in working with Aboriginal people?
2. To what extent do you feel you “fully understand the history of Aboriginal people and their dispossession (Bennett, 2013)”? What steps could you take to better your understanding?
3. How might one involve Aboriginal service users as active participants in shaping the interventions they want?