Prof. Pat Dudgeon's Groundbreaking Life and Work on Social Emotional Wellbeing
Episode Description:
In this inspiring instalment of Never the Same, host Dr Tony Pisani welcomes Professor Pat Dudgeon, the first Aboriginal psychologist in Australia and a global voice for First Nations mental health.
Pat describes how confronting the racism in the system sparked her mission to “decolonise” psychology and build a new framework called Social and Emotional Wellbeing, a model that places self, family, community, culture, and Country at the centre of healing.
Across the episode, Pat and Tony revisit moments such as the Ways Forward national report, discuss why Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicide demands distinct responses, and celebrate community-led successes, from Indigenous Rangers caring for land to universities rewriting psychology curricula.
Key Themes
- Pat’s path to becoming the first Aboriginal psychologist
- Origins and pillars of the SEWB paradigm
- The Ways Forward report and Boat Shed Declaration
- Distinct drivers of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander suicide
- Success stories: Indigenous Rangers, psychology curriculum reform
- The role of climate action and caring for Country
Guest:
- Professor Pat Dudgeon is a Bardi woman from the Kimberley and Australia’s first Aboriginal psychologist. She is the director at the Centre of Best Practice in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention and advocates for culturally informed mental-health systems worldwide.
Host:
- Professor Tony Pisani is a professor, clinician, and founder of SafeSide Prevention, leading its mission to build safer, more connected military, health, education, and workplace communities.
Referenced Resources:
Transcript
Tony: Well, I am beyond honoured to today welcome Professor Pat Dudgeon whose work I've been familiar with for a number of years and over the past couple of years we've been able to have a few conversations with but her contributions to mental health, to Aboriginal mental health or as she coined, Social and Emotional Wellbeing, cannot be overstated. In the state that we're in which is Western Australia but really nationally and internationally. It's a real honour to have you here. Thank you for
Pat: Oh, my pleasure, Tony.
Tony: being here. I wonder if we could start by just hearing about you as a person, as an Aboriginal person, maybe where you're from?
Pat: I've lived and worked in beautiful Noongar Boodja. So Perth is Noongar Country and I've been here since, ooh, the early 80's. But, because I came down to study psychology. I was actually born and grew up in Darwin, in the Northern Territory but my people are from the Kimberley, so that's north of Western Australia on the coast. So that's where "my mob" are from and occasionally I go back to the Kimberley's where my people are from. So I'm from the Bardi people of the Kimberley but I always say, a little part of my heart also belongs to Larrakia Nation, which is the Darwin Aboriginal groups because I grew up there. But I did travel down here because there wasn't a university in Darwin at the time. Now there is or there's a lot of higher education opportunities now but I had to choose to go down south as we called it to study and I wanted to do psychology.
It was a interesting and hard journey studying psychology at university. I got through and luckily for me, I didn't realise, I was actually the first Aboriginal psychologist to graduate. Yeah, so I'm glad I didn't know, I think I would've become paralysed with fear had I known.
But in any case, I came through and it's been a bit of a journey then. I chose to do psychology because I wanted to help people but going through the system, going through university, there was no place for any indigenous people. In the theories, in the classrooms, we were not included. The discipline totally excluded us and other cultural groups as well. So I think, when I first started I actually read some African American writings on psychology and that opened my perception right up because before we were trying to see how we could fit indigenous realities into white psychology, basically. And then I read Black Psychology and they were just throwing aside Western paradigms and saying we have to build our own paradigms and our own reality. So that was a big moment. I can still remember reading that particular journal. So after that we realised then that if you tried to have a indigenous white psychology, you'd always be a pale imitation, you know? So you did need to step back and say, "What are indigenous knowledges and what are important for indigenous people?" And that was my journey, and also to critique mainstream psychology because implicit in it, it's still a part of the colonising story and there's racism in its concepts and in its systems and everything else.
Tony: Well, actually it's interesting that you say that because I didn't know that there was another kinds of psychologies out there until I read your work about decolonising psychology and we were talking before about when exactly that was. I'm not sure, but it was long before I ever set foot here in Australia. It struck me at that time that it took a lot of creativity and boldness to think about how to create a new psychology. I'm curious to know because I mean, it probably, it was probably extremely obvious that you weren't included, that there were these things that didn't match with what you knew were part of your background, but it's a totally other thing to actually do something about that. So I'm curious, was there anything in your childhood or in your growing up that gave you a questioning or a creative kind of disposition?
Pat: Not really. I think it was the lived experience of discrimination and prejudice. There's lots of stories I could tell about my family and my people being excluded and looked down upon too. Always, looked down upon. But I think I did originally, you know, we were aware of that racism. I think people weren't naming it up so clearly and powerfully as we are now but I did go into it because I wanted to study psychology. I actually did anthropology as my minor and I love anthropology. That, I would've changed direction and gone for anthropology because that actually had terms like ethnocentrism and they did their research methodology was participant observation and they were much more, still very western, still the power stayed in white hands but they were more open to self reflection than psychology was.
It was, you know, you had your outliers who question psychology but I think they did it, it was not a very serious occupation at the time and I think a bit half-hearted if you ask me. And so you did have your ones that you know, oooh is there, you know, what's psychology about? And then it wasn't probably until the 1990s that there was serious changes with critical psychology coming in and you know people like, Isaac Prilleltensky who I've met and written chapters in his books.
Tony: Yeah.
Pat: And a whole range of different writers who started challenging the very, the whole conception of psychology.
And I can remember, I think it was Dave Parker? And very grounded people too, respectable. And he'd written, how do we know what personality is? It could be a flock of birds or, you know, a cloud of rain. How, do we really know? So they were starting, I mean, it does sound fanciful and it was, but they were starting–
Tony: But it was questioning.
Pat: Yeah, they were starting to question. Because I think psychology's had a bit of an identity crisis. It always wanted to be a science and so it became as empirical as it could and even now in Australia, a lot of the schools of psychology in universities they call themselves the schools of psychological science. So, I think it's always yearned to be considered like a hard science and it isn't. Sorry, but it isn't. You know, maybe the neurological parts of it and the chemical changes in your brain, that's obviously that could be considered scientific but we're not gonna address some of the big problems we have being humans just using a scientific method. It has to be a bit more than that. I've probably lived through those changes.
Tony: Yeah.
Pat: And something, I don't know whether I'm making this up or not? Tony, I could be but maybe it's true there was something serendipitous that happened in the 1990s but
Tony: Yeah.
Pat: It was 1995, so all these techs started coming out and also our big Ways Forward Report came out and that's probably a foundational work in Indigenous Mental Health and Wellbeing.
Tony: Could you talk about it a little more? Yeah, that was important.
Pat: Oh, so psychologists weren't really engaged in cross-cultural activities or it was still from their own Western hegemony or hugemonia i've too been told, I call it hegemony. Some people call it hugemonia. Anyway they were psychologists never really questioned their Western hugemonia as much as psychiatry and other, you know, I think psychiatry's a bit ahead of the, you know, the game in terms of trying to look at culturally-inclusive discipline.
But the Ways Forward was led by Professor Beverly Raphael and Pat Swan, an Indigenous Mental Health Nurse and they were a fabulous people and they did a big national tour talking to everyone about indigenous mental health and what needed to happen, they called the first big National Conference on Indigenous Wellbeing. I was actually a part of the consultations and also went to that conference and then they delivered this report called, Ways Forward. I'm sure there's more to it but I'm blanking out at the moment.
Anyway, they delivered this really fabulous report called Ways Forward and that influenced a lot of the work that we did. It had built on work that had happened in the 1970s, so our Indigenous health leaders were already calling for different approaches in health and by subsequently mental health but they were calling for holistic approaches. So some of Western thinking is to divide things up, to categorise them, to make sense of them. And they were going saying, "No, that doesn't fit us." You can't separate mind from body and this and that, we need holistic approaches and relationships in there are important as well. So the Ways Forward Report was a seminal moment in our history of Indigenous Mental Health and Wellbeing and then soon after that the government, so the government's sort of been, you know, trying to facilitate some change as well, they developed this big policy document called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People's Mental Health and Social Emotional Wellbeing Framework and that was developed and I think a lot of the people that were involved in the Ways Forward were involved in this new Framework, and then it was promoted, da tada, put out there but nothing ever happened. So it was a brilliant document, so myself and other indigenous psychologists, we took that report and all the other work that had been done and we actually created this diagram of Social Emotional Wellbeing. So, we captured all the important bits that had made SEWB and that has become ubiquitous. It's everywhere and mainly our own people love it so that we're accountable to our people.
Tony: And we'll provide in the episode notes, some links to that work to the.
Pat: Yes.
Tony: To the Way Forward Report but also to your work on Social Emotional Wellbeing.
Pat: Yes.
Tony: And I think that would be actually a good place to go into some depth here because I don't know that all of our viewers would be familiar with it. Obviously, if you spent any time here in Australia at all, you couldn't not be aware but could you talk about the Social Emotional Wellbeing Model?
Pat: Happy to, Tony, yeah. So basically what it is, and I see it as a new paradigm. You know, a new way of looking at notions of Self and also of service delivery. So we'd distilled from those the previous work, this diagram and I remember we talked a lot, I delivered it to a conference of about 250 indigenous social emotional wellbeing workers and it sounds easy now but at that time they were not suffering fools gladly. So, you know, if you are inauthentic or not culturally appropriate, they'd kick you out the door. So they're a feisty group but authentic. And so, my colleague actually went and hid her... I don't know if I should be saying, oh, bugger it, makes it interesting.
Tony: Yeah.
Pat: My colleague actually,
Tony: I've never known you to hold back.
Pat: Yeah, my colleague went and hid in her hotel room because she was so nervous but I thought no, I'm happy to, i'm feeling confident. So I...
Tony: So let me just, so there was already some of the language of social emotional wellbeing.
Pat: Yeah.
Tony: But there wasn't really yet, an articulated model.
Pat: Yes. So I presented the model, they loved it!
Tony: They did?
Pat: Yeah, so I was confident if I was any way, a bit apprehensive I would've been hiding.
Tony: Back in the hotel room too.
Pat: In the hotel room as well. And then other colleagues, because there was a group of indigenous psychologists who came together to develop the model and they presented it at different conferences in particularly indigenous, because we were really concerned that we could do something useful for our people. So we knew that white psychology and mental health did not fit us and it seemed at that time that the Ways Forward Report and the SEWB Framework was a bit far away, so this was us trying to distill that knowledge to make it useful for our community.
Tony: That's really interesting. Yeah.
Pat: So that was our intention and we had a chapter in the Working Together book and since then it's just become an important concept in its own right. At the second iteration of the SEWB Framework as we called it, the government took our model out as a discussion point and we said, "Yes, please take it." we said, "But feed back to us any thoughts from the community." And they did. We adjusted the model a little bit because we had put holistic SEWB in the middle and the community said, oh, well that's a bit, you know, self, you know, already explained, "Put Self in the middle." So we did because we were probably shying away from using Self because it was so, Western-Self was just so very isolated and not a relational-Self.
So that's probably why we shied away. We had also put connection to land and people said, "No, put Country but with a capital C." So I'll segue now into describing what
Tony: Yeah
Pat: our model was.
Tony: Before you do though.
Pat: Okay.
Tony: I just wanted to highlight something that's pretty important here which is that it's not common that when people, especially sort of academic people develop a model that they are very focused on what the community thinks about it.
Pat: Yes.
Tony: It does seem like at every step of the way, it was really important that does this actually personally resonate? Am I right that's been an important preoccupation?
Pat: Yes, and most of our work that we, in fact, all of our work that we do include as many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, you know, in the very beginnings of it.
So we are very concerned with co-design, so even though we're Aboriginal it doesn't give us a magical pass, we need to go and talk to people and include them in the development of any idea, program or service and do it in a good way, too not a tokenistic way and I'll talk about that when we talk about suicide prevention.
Tony: Yeah.
Pat: And our ATSISPEP Report that we did.
Tony: Yeah.
Pat: But with Social Emotional Wellbeing and again I wanna say something 'cause even though I'm really committed to social emotional wellbeing, it's not the only model out there. There's gonna be other models and that's what we have to not hang our egos, which is easy to say, hard to do
Tony: Always.
Pat: But we have to be careful not to hang our egos on the model that we developed and think it's gonna be the be all and end all. Right now it's useful and it's reflective of people's realities but I wanna see other models come about, emerge, local ones and I think that you know, there's, at the moment it suits everyone. It suits the government too, they're, you know, they're looking at doing initiatives and funding based on that model but it's not the only model. There'll be others that should, we need to make room for other indigenous knowledges to come through.
Tony: Yeah, see. Even just that is I think a rare thing to hear.
Pat: Easy to say, hard to do.
Tony: Well but for people to say this thing that I developed... you know, because obviously if you developed it, it's 'cause you think it has a lot of value, right?
Pat: Yes.
Tony: You wouldn't put it out there if you didn't think it was good?
Pat: Yes.
Tony: I mean, I just wonder where does that come from? That, I guess humility about your work, where does that come from in you?
Pat: It is the experience of academic oppression, if you like, or intellectual oppression. If we are serious about nurturing Indigenous knowledges, we can't repeat the what's been done to us. We can't oppress our people in any way including, intellectually if we want everyone to be, to have social justice and to live thriving lives. So...
Tony: That's profound.
Pat: So, yeah. So we just have to make, you know, one day the SEWB model will no longer be useful. I think there'll be more complex and deeper models and they might all be local, much of it might be local and that's okay as well. But at the moment it serves its purpose and I think for me and the other indigenous psychologists who developed it, we are really happy with that; and we did do it, we were very clear that this was for our people. So, and we're happy it's become so popular.
Tony: Sure.
Pat: But there'll be other models that come forward too and I can see them like in the Kimberley they've got a notion of Self at where LEAN? Is important and that's sort of a soul spirit. And so they're starting to develop that up. And, Professor Helen Milroy who's our first Indigenous Psychiatrist, she's got a model of wellbeing called Dance of Life. So, there's other and they're the ones off the top of my head that I can mention but there's a lot more going out, there's a lot more happening and yeah, it'll be an interesting.
Tony: And you celebrate that
Pat: Yes
Tony: that
Pat: Yeah, and globally as well.
Tony: Oh yeah. Yeah. There's, I mean, there's a lot of work happening around the world and even in our country.
Pat: So, we actually have a really great person i've met and I need to make time to go overseas. It's Mark Standing Eagle Baez. He's the Chair of the Native American Psychologist Association and we've actually had him here. Our Indigenous psychs invited him over to keynote at our Indigenous Suicide Prevention Conference.
Tony: Oh yeah. I'd love to look into that.
Pat: Yeah, he's got this method called the Sweetgrass Method of research of braiding together the best of western knowledge and, the best of indigenous knowledges to come up with solutions. So, very interesting, work.
Tony: Yeah, i'd love to meet him. Maybe you can help me, help me meet up? So now let's get into the Model itself.
Pat: Oh, okay. The model.
Tony: Yeah. Tell, yeah. Yeah. The model.
Pat: Okay, the model. Basically it's a notion of Self and it can be used for service and also for policy. But it's a notion of Self, where Self is in the centre but we're made up not only of our connections to our mind and emotions.
So that's part of you know, you being a human being but also to our physical selves and there's risk and protective activities we can do to make those healthier and more thriving. But where it probably departs, the model departs from Western thought is that we as importantly is our connection to our family. So, family is very big for Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people, very important. So our connection to our family and then the other important connection or domain we call them, is connection to community. But families will usually make up community. So, you know, it'd be, it's good when we have healthy inclusive communities.
Then there's a connection to Culture. So our cultural activities that we still do and I think that we need to write more and celebrate that. You know, we see that there's been this amazing reclamation of cultural activities that's happened in Australia and so I think part of the process of colonisation was to destroy that and they went underground. I can remember about 35 years ago when I was working at Curtin University, we were looking for Noongar speakers to teach staff Noongar language and at that time I couldn't find anyone. Maybe I didn't look very, well enough? There are now Noongar language has, you know, flourished, so I think we ended up getting a Wongi speaker to come in and teach staff, Wongi language but it was difficult. Now you could, you know, Noongar language is everywhere, it's so fabulous to see all these languages being reclaimed.
So your connection to your culture and cultural activities, your connection to your Country with a capital C. So where you come from is very important and also that's part of, so the protective factor is often people will go back to Country to heal or regroup or strengthen their cultural identity. A connection to Country and connection to your spirituality and your ancestors. So those are important domains that make up a healthy functioning human being but that's not on its own.
So, Graham Gee, our colleague who worked, he actually led the chapter on the Social Emotional Wellbeing Model. You know, he said, "Well, it's not static, too. It's how we experience these things and how we express it." So that's what makes it all happen.
Tony: Experiencing and then expressing. So this kind of a,
Pat: Yeah. Expressing that connection to Country
Tony: A flow?
Pat: Yeah, so it is an active part you know, notion of self but it's not in isolation. Behind it and that's really important for us too. Is that there are other determinants like historical determinants. We come from a history of colonisation.
I think yesterday was National Sorry day and when I was growing up, no one spoke about stolen generations for instance, and for international listeners
Tony: Yeah.
Pat: stolen generations isn't just exclusive to Australia, it also happened in other countries and I know in the US and in Canada they had residential schools where indigenous children were sometimes very forcibly removed from families and communities and the aim was to civilise them so they'd become productive and contributing members of society. Obviously they did not occupy the upper echelons of society, they would be seen as the slaves and the servants of white society.
Tony: You know I have to say, I'm ashamed to say this but I only learned about these literally two years ago. There's a colleague named Dean Seneca, who's of the Seneca people, which is the land where I come from and I'd never heard about this. I was shocked and the fact that
I'd gone through quite a bit of education but never really learned. I mean, maybe I don't know, maybe I was closing my eyes but I think it just also wasn't there?
Pat: It wasn't there. That's why truth-telling is important and we've got some of our states, Victoria for instance, they've got the big Truth-telling Commission.
Tony: Ahh, I didn't know.
Pat: So telling the truth about what happened, even the massacres and that happened to our people, I don't know about America.
Tony: Yeah. Same.
Pat: That seem to express, you know, the resistance that Native Americans
Tony: Yes.
Pat: put up for Australia that was wiped out too. It was like, oh, they were sitting on their butts and they just sat there looking at us docile as we came in and saved them by civilising them. They didn't speak about the big resistances that happened across the country.
Tony: Yeah.
Pat: That's only recent news.
Tony: And yeah, I think since I've been spending so much time here, I've just learned so much and there's... I know that there's a lot of dialogue happening back and forth between the countries but I think there's also, but for example, I know that this week is Reconciliation Week.
Pat: Yes.
Tony: We don't have that kind of concept but I wonder if you could for, you know, for people who might not know about Reconciliation Week, if they don't live in Australia, if you could explain what it is and what does it mean to you?
Pat: Specifically, I know that it's separate to National Sorry Day. So National Sorry day is when we do, "remember", I won't say celebrate when we remember the stolen generations in particular. Because there was some big reports that were done like Bringing Them Home and we know that, I think, you know, a huge percentage of Aboriginal people were forcibly removed. That happened in my family. So my mother was removed to Beagle Bay Mission in the Kimberley, so she was put into a mission and that had a, while it was a Catholic mission, so, it was very much about imposing Christianity and all the rest onto the people who grew up in the mission but she stayed in her own Country which was fantastic. She said she was always grateful that she could, you know, in the mission she could see her Aunties and her Mimi's and her people there. So, when I read the Native WelfareRecords, because there was this great deal of surveillance on Aboriginal people in Western Australia in particular, we got the Native Welfare Records about my mother and my grandmother and they were very zealous. I think the "native welfare protectors" as they were called and they were actually talking about sending my mother and my aunt down south to Moore River Native settlement and my blood, red cold. You know, these are girls from the Kimberley who will wouldn't have coped coming down to a winter and colder.
Tony: Yeah.
Pat: And different Aboriginal people, it would've just been a real hardship. So for some reason the records ended and they didn't end up sending them but it just made me very upset that on a government whim, some government worker said, "Oh, well we should send these two down south", and it could have happened. So, you know, there was no way of objecting but we do have the records of all that activity when the surveillance was on and it was like Aboriginal people were in, they were like, on governor's parole in their own country or in concentration camps and if you made trouble and didn't follow all the rules, bad things could happen to you. You could be sent, my grandmother for instance, because she wouldn't listen and she did what she wanted to do and so they sent her to this cattle station out in the middle of nowhere and it was like being imprisoned on Governor's pleasure. And she wrote these letters. First of all they were indignant, which, you know, she was mission trained and grown up so, you know, she was writing letters, saying this is, you know, not fair and I shouldn't be here, blah, blah, blah. And then after a couple of years they became begging letters. So, yeah, there was no power and not for doing anything specific, just because you wouldn't follow the rules.
So, indigenous people have gone through a lot and that you could have your children taken away like that as well. When we talk about, you know, when I talk to a lot of non-indigenous people, they say, "oh, you're carrying on about the past." You know, we should start right now and forget about the past. You can't. It's very much what has shaped indigenous, Australia today and also it's not like that's in the past and then there's this cut-off where, you know, white Australia becomes all we're gonna treat you like equals that ain't happening, I can tell you right now, there's racism and disadvantage that continues. We know there's been studies done of the police and the hospitals and how they treat, Indigenous people.
Tony: the disparities there
Pat: and you know, the unconscious bias and indigenous people do a lot worse. Sometimes indigenous people make up more than 50% of any prison population or in lockups when they're being arrested.
And it's not because indigenous people are innately criminal, it is because there is unconscious bias and in a lack of good positive solutions.
Tony: Now this might be a place to talk about suicide and suicide prevention.
Pat: Yes.
Tony: Because that's another place where there's Aboriginal people are disproportionately affected.
Pat: Very much. Yes.
Tony: And you've had major contributions in that area as well. I wonder what you'd wanna say about suicide and suicide prevention, what you see as needed?
Pat: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide is different. I think we have to be careful sometimes when we talk about suicide in general because you know, every suicide is a person who's chosen not to be here.
And one of the things I've seen that a change that's happened is that the government is treating suicide in general, differently. They now talk about social determinants in suicide prevention they never used to before. It was always a clinical issue and in it, implicit in it was blame the victim that there was something wrong with people. That's why they took their lives and so on. You know, the shame of suicide not understanding that sometimes people are just too sensitive or life is too challenging and they make a decision which I'm positive they might, had they been given extra time and a safe space to go to, they may not have made that decision?
So suicide to me is important for all of us, or suicide prevention. Indigenous suicide is different, so it started happening years ago and I see it as probably the consequences of those changes that I spoke about. The historical changes, ongoing racism. You know, we, I can remember calling a big meeting to talk about racism because it wasn't on the table and I was thinking, no, it hasn't gone away. It's still here. So we actually did, the Australian Psych Society they did come to that and we called it the Boatshed Declaration and we said that we would fight against racism back in the time but now it's become so obvious and we've had some really big issues.
But anyway, back to suicide prevention. The point I was making is that it is an oppressive society for a lot of Aboriginal people. Most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to grow up in. There's a lot of racism, direct, indirect and also systemic. So, systems are racist as well they do not include indigenous people in any ways. So, we've got the historical trauma that's happened to us and we know for instance, stolen gens people, they're very vulnerable. You know, suicide rates are higher, psychological distress is higher in those groups of people because often they've been institutionalised, cut off from their Country and people and sometimes abused as well. So those things are part of our current situation in contemporary times and you can't cut it off unless you are gonna totally change the systems that we live in. So they're a reality. And, suicide was not happening, it wasn't as prevalent when I was a child, and then it became very prevalent and members of my big extended family started taking their lives and I'd avoided it because I thought it was just too heartbreaking and complex so I'd pretty well ignored suicide. Then it came into my immediate family so that's when I thought, right, you know, we've gotta do something.
So, I spoke to my cousins and family members and it wasn't, yeah, there might've been some mental health or a little bit of clinical issues but our people that we'd lost to suicide, they'd had hard lives, you know? They'd struggled. They'd try to do the right thing and live "a good white life" but, you know, society didn't give them a chance. So, we felt that very strongly that it wasn't their fault that they had taken their lives.
So, the government had given us a small grant so we went up to the Kimberley's which is and was a big suicide hotspot and we trained co-researchers, so they went out to the communities of Beagle Bay of Broome and of Halls Creek and spoke to the people. You know, what do we do about suicide prevention?
Tony: Yeah.
Pat: Because, so this is going back some time.
Tony: What did you learn from that?
Pat: Oh, lots. Firstly, and then that was duplicated later on nationally, but people were concerned, they were very concerned about suicide and suicide prevention. They didn't see it as a big clinical issue. It was that some people felt that, you know, there needed be to be clinical solutions but what they saw is the need for self-determination and also cultural solutions. So at that time we'd met Professor Michael Chandler and he had done a lot of work with First Nations people in Canada and so that was our evidence base. It really resonated with us and I checked with Canadian scholars later and they said, yeah, would've be nice if he had a First Nations researcher by his side but he was pretty good. His work was good. So they looked at suicide, him and his colleagues looked at suicide across First Nation tribes and they found that, when they desegregate all the statistics that, some tribes had high rates that were titled totally off the chart and then others had hardly any. So he called it the sore tooth effect that, you know, they weren't when you desegregated,
Tony: Yeah.
Pat: different pictures emerged. So they actually went into the communities that had no or little suicide and found out they'd an analyzed everything that was happening, found out what was happening for those communities and they came up with what they call cultural continuity measures. And they were things but boiled down in a nutshell, and I'm sure we'll put the link for people to read it in some detail?
Tony: Yeah.
Pat: But boiled down, if communities had some measure of self-determination, like they were in charge of their own, you know, civil services, childcare services and whatnot, so they had some self-determination. Women On Boards was on the council board was another one, which showed that unfortunately not that I wouldn't say the magical influence of women but it showed that community was fair and inclusive. So, women on council and if people, if communities were engaging in some type of cultural activities so that they were, you know, reinstating powwows or building a longhouse. So those were important elements. So, that resonated with us and we thought we knew it, that's a solution so that influenced our work very much. So, we'd done a small research in the Kimberley and then we were asked to do a national study and so we did the Aboriginal Torres Strait Suicide Prevention Evaluation Project, solutions that work, what the evidence and our people tell us and that took about two years and a half and we did a big you know, literature review, program review,
Tony: And that was another milestone.
Pat: Yeah, that was a big milestone.
Tony: Big milestone of paper.
Pat: And then we went out, we couldn't resist. We thought oh, it feels weird that we're not talking to people out in the community. So we thought, oh, let's go out. So we did 12 workshops across the country and we were a bit apprehensive because, you know, a lot of Aboriginal people say, "Oh, we've been consulted and then nothing ever changes." So we were worried that we were just gonna be another brick in the wall, you know, asking questions and then no change coming.
I've heard that a lot. We went out and then finally we developed this excellent report and we presented that to Ministers at Parliament House and that has been a great success. So that impacted on a lot of policies, how they were funding suicide prevention and it did what it needed to do to change things for our people. So we're very, proud of that report.
Tony: You must be. You must be, yeah. So I would really be interested to hear about what projects you have on that you are most excited about right now.
Pat: Okay, Tony. There's a few but in particular I probably would mention, two. One's a big one that I don't think... it's world first. It's a world first. So we started this project, I think it was started in 2013 where we brought together some academics who were our allies and we decide we wanted to change psychology. So we wanted to increase the number of indigenous psych students and we wanted to put Indigenous Studies into the Psych curriculum.
And so we wrote some reports, got some frameworks out and then our grant ended and we all went separate ways. It did start influencing the competencies of psychology though. And then we'd won another grant, a big research grant and I thought ooh, let's revive that old project and I did have visions of myself meeting up with my colleagues at conferences and, you know, writing papers to challenge the Western hegemony of psychology and whatnot but I thought it'd just be a small group of us who have conversations and fight the power if you like but the response was amazing. Everyone wanted to be a part of it.
So, the Australian Indigenous Psychology Education Project is flourishing. We have over 80% of schools of psychology have signed up to it. And, so a part of our process is we have a Community of Practice where senior people in schools of psychology are invited to come to regular meetings and we don't judge, you know, if people can only do one lecture, that's okay. Maybe there's other forces against them but there's a whole lot of resources that are available, it's actually changed the competencies for psychology which is gonna be very interesting. So they're out right now and they've got very strong competencies about understanding and other cultural diverse groups, in particular Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
So, this project is amazing. Our Executive Committee are all the regulators of psychology so, you know, the Australian Psych Society, the Heads of Schools of Psychology, the Accreditation Council, I think they're a member but the respect and our support we have is quite amazing. And I can see your questioning face saying what changed?
Tony: No, yeah.
Pat: Because I was suspicious when everyone was saying,
Tony: Yeah, that's exactly what I was wondering. What's the, yeah,
Pat: I was thinking, what the hell's going on?
Tony: Yeah.
Pat: And what, I figured it out is that in that time between the two projects that a lot of the old and probably limited thinkers in the discipline had retired. So they'd gone out to field, you know, and we had this new group come through who actually were progressive and who wanted our discipline to be different and inclusive. So I think what we saw was a generational change, happen. So we are really pleased with that and with this particular project and it's doing really well and it's being led now by a wonderful young Noongar clinical psychologist.
Tony: I could imagine, that's gonna... that's a huge legacy.
Pat: Yes, it is.
Tony: I mean, that, that could change the field ongoing.
Pat: It has. So, yeah. You know, there's been special additions of the Australian Psychologist, our journal. Bell and other Indigenous psychs have been responsible for that. We had a whole chapter in one of the big, most comprehensive introductions to Australian Psychology. So we had a whole chapter and the Maori people had a whole chapter too because it was for Australia and New Zealand. So it was good, you know to be able to have our colleagues on it as well.
Tony: Oh that's really exciting. Yeah.
Pat: That were not just a footnote. In previous times we were a little footnote or a little box with Indigenous Psychology, now we're like a big chapter in our own right.
Tony: Yeah. Yeah.
Pat: And so we're really excited. We have publishers approaching us to consider doing a book on Indigenous Psych, so we're...
Tony: Oh, that's huge. That's huge.
Pat: We're very happy. But that's the other one's very important as well and that's a brilliant example of co-design with the indigenous community and I know that Maureen Lewis and the Western Australian Mental Health Commission is a part of the podcast and I've gotta tip my hat to them because what they did, this, you know, in amongst all the projects that they're responsible for, is that they decided that they thought social emotional wellbeing was very important for indigenous communities so they made a nicely amount of money available and said, "we're gonna fund social emotional being through the Aboriginal Medical Services." And then they sat down with our state coordinator of all the AMS's and they talked about how they would use the resource to empower Aboriginal Community controlled Health Services and so five sites were funded across the state. We were actually asked to evaluate, so we've sent our staff into not evaluate in a punitive way. It's been a quality improvement way and supporting the whole process and those different aMS have different prior, you know, there's some fundamental things that are uniform or the same but there's also differences and we need to nurture those differences because the whole process of colonisation, characteristics of communities are different.
So their Aboriginal Medical Services reflect that. So I think the co-design of that and I'm optimistic that it'll be continued to be funded but that I always hold that up as a classic example because sometimes people say, oh, that's all very well and good in theory but how can governments co-design with Aboriginal people? And this is a good example. You know, it's sharing the power and supporting indigenous, self-determination.
Tony: Yeah. That's really encouraging. That's really encouraging. When you're speaking about education I just wanna take a little diversion here for a minute when it comes to the education of non-indigenous mental health professionals.
Pat: Yes.
Tony: What do you think is important for non-indigenous mental health staff and professionals and peers, maybe in mainstream services to know and learn?
Pat: Okay. I think they need to learn about Aboriginal people. It's amazing and I don't think this is the same in the US. The number of people have never met an indigenous person or they might know one that went to the shops down the road or whatever but they've not actually met anyone.
So I think that is a problem.
Tony: So, just prioritize plain old...
Pat: Yeah. Get to know them all.
Tony: Knowing people. Having friends.
Pat: And, you know, they might be a bit wary or a bit reserved initially but I think if you go in with a good heart and particularly if you are a professional, know the history and cultural difference because that makes a big difference.
It's little things sometimes to respect other people as human beings and to respect that you know, they, Aboriginal Torres Strait is people are the original people of this Country. Going back to more than 60,000 years, you know, the archeology, evidence keeps changing but to say there's a longer time period that we were here through an ICE age. Find out about the history, support the local organisations, media organisations. It's almost like there's two different worlds. There's an indigenous world that's really rich and thriving, find out and be a part of it.
Tony: Maybe we can turn for a minute to the future? You have contributed so much and you still are. It feels like some of these projects that you just described are kind of just getting going.
So I'm curious what you see as you look forward into 5 - 10 years ahead for Social Emotional Well-being? For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their health and well-being, what do you see in the future?
Pat: I probably neglected to say that Social Emotional Well-being can be a paradigm that's very useful for non-indigenous people as well. I know some of my psychologist colleague have used it with their non-indigenous clients and I thought, oh, that's good but what about connection to Country? Because it for me, it's like I'm from the Bardi people and it's interesting. This indigenous psychologist said, "We are all connected to Country. We are all children of this Earth and we dig our feet into the soil and we are connected and that is our healing." So he looked at "connection to Country" in a broad way, which I was very touched by and respect. So, I think we are talking some of our, well, Professor Helen Milroy's work is looking at the role of Traditional or Cultural Healers in Well-being and that role could be extended to non-indigenous people as well. So I think what I'd like to see in the future that any person, I'll focus on indigenous but non-indigenous people also should have this, can go to their local Aboriginal Medical Service and if they're feeling a bit down about their cultural identity, they could sign up for workshops that will take them back to Country and do activities or women's group to do cultural activities there or sports or they could enrol in a program which talks about healthy eating and exercise?
Or there could be cultural healers who come through, so, you know, what days are there available? Could I book in for a session? That's what we do at our conferences. So we have the Ngangkari healers usually at our conferences and people will book in and they'll do some healing on people and they really appreciate that. They love it so, and non-indigenous people as well. So I think obviously some of us have big challenges and sometimes we might need to have medication and quiet places to go and to recover and give families a chance but to not throw away those neither, I don't think we throw out the baby with the bath water but we always look to reintegrating people back into a healthy family and community.
Tony: I can't help going there because you mentioned before that it's something that you care a lot about and it does seem connected to Country, climate change?
Pat: Yes.
Tony: Tell me about your thoughts and where your passions lie.
Pat: The way "us as humans" and I'm putting myself in there too because I'm as much as a consumer as everyone else but the way that we have mistreated and exploiting the Earth is now coming back to haunt us.
Tony: Back to us.
Pat: We are looking at the consequences of that and we see that in flooding, you know, Australia.
Tony: Bushfires.
Pat: Yeah. Australia's, all the animals that have gone extinct in Australia is phenomenal. So I think, you know, we know things are not good and I think that's a source of anxiety for a lot of our youth but it's the little things that count. But we should be doing big actions but I can remember when range-free eggs were like a bit, ooh, that's very yuppie and people were scathing about it. But people were concerned too that, you know, we were exploiting fowl, so now it's very common and I won't buy eggs or eat them if they aren't. So, through our consumerism we can actually impact on some climate change, obviously it needs much more, you know.
What I'm seeing is that a return to how indigenous people lived with the environment and that was a oneness that you didn't exploit, that you lived in harmony with the country and we know now before I think a lot of the indigenous knowledges have been has been discredited. So we're seeing a revival of indigenous knowledges across a whole range of different areas but particularly in how we live on Earth and one good example is the back, bush burning that's happening.
So there was an article in the papers recently about Arnhem Land people who do all this bush burning to control bushfires. So if you do a little bit of burning, then the big fires won't come. But, the Victorian Indigenous community has started that and that's part of their firefighting strategy.
Tony: So from that heritage comes leadership in this important time.
Pat: Yeah, and I think all the states have this but Indigenous rangers. So they're people who are working out on Country and they've got very important jobs now. You know, they will count local animals, keep an eye on things.
They're responsible for caring for Country so I love the Indigenous Rangers program and it gives local community people meaningful work that's still connecting to their Culture and Country.
Tony: So what's next for you?
Pat: I've actually come to a place where I was on a lot of committees and councils which was really important but I think that there's a lot of other Indigenous people out there who can equally fill those roles so I've actually started standing down from a lot of councils and committees and what I'd like to do is just do research with the community and write papers, and be stress free which is I don't know, a bit of a fantasy. I suppose it's a dream? But yeah, that's what I'm aiming towards.
Tony: Yeah. Well, I hope you will write many papers.
Pat: Yes.
Tony: The ones that you've written so far have been really influential. I know for me as well as thousands of people and the impact that you've had in the field and I know in this state but also across the country is really second to none, so I really appreciate the chance to sit here with you have a yarn, a bit and I look forward to more times like this.
Pat: Okay. Thank you, Tony.
Tony: Thank you.