Developing Praxis: Mobilising Critical Race Theory in Community Cultural Development

Abstract

Race remains a significant issue in the lives of many people in Australia. For example, Indigenous Australians lives continue to be marked by social and economic disadvantage and everyday experiences of exclusion. Within this context, the Community Arts Network Western Australia promote social change and the empowerment of Indigenous groups through community cultural development. With an emphasis on community strengths and resources, community arts practice is employed to create, promote, and improve opportunities for participation, network development and empowerment. In this article, we explore these projects from a community psychology orientation, which is committed to developing opportunities for inclusion and also exposing the workings of power in everyday settings. Although there have been many positive outcomes that have resulted from the different activities with communities, there have also been significant barriers to transformative practice, in particular, issues of racialisation and continuing colonisation. We discuss our efforts aimed at understanding racism, which have included engaging with critical race theory and whiteness studies within the context of Indigenous and non-Indigenous partnerships for change.

Engaging critical community resilience praxis: A qualitative study with Mapuche communities in Chile facing structural racism and disasters

“…Consistent with critically oriented community-based participatory approaches to research (e.g., Fals-Borda, 1985;Atallah, 2017;Lazarus, Taliep, Bulbulia, Phillips, & Seedat, 2012;Lykes & Scheib, 2016;Rasmus, Charles, & Mohatt, 2014;Shapiro et al, 2017;Sonn & Quayle, 2013), the point of departure for this research project involved using CCRP (Atallah, Bacigalupe, & Repetto, 2017) Consistent with critical race theory and transdisciplinary community-based participatory research (CBPR; e.g., Bluthenthal et al, 2006;Atallah et al, 2017;Leavy, 2011;Minkler & Wallerstein, 2008;Rubin et al, 2012), as are core inspirations of CCRP, when developing this ICT as a long-term research partnership, Atallah prioritized building a "community" of colearners, emphasizing trust and the development of shared visions across the three collaborating agencies: CIGIDEN, RUCADUNGUN, and KVME FELEN. This involved initial research planning meetings that unfolded informally during community events where RUCADUNGUN and KVME FELEN invited Atallah to participate and speak, cook, and share food and stories-often presenting his previous research and empowerment work with Mapuche community members.…”

“…Analysis of such complex inequities and deep‐rooted colonial injuries are strengthened by in‐depth explorations of historical trauma and resilience processes from indigenous perspectives (e.g., Atallah, ; Hartmann, & Gone, ). In fact, transdisciplinary mapping of ecosocial intergenerational protective pathways in addition to centering inquiry on experiences of discrimination and dignity in the lives of marginalized groups remain at the core of critical race research and praxis (e.g., Ford & Airhihenbuwa, ; Sonn & Quayle, ; Yosso & Garcia, ). Public health scholars and community psychologists engaging critical race theory have argued for the importance of assets‐based methodologies, building relationships, and focusing on resilience to “counter” mainstream discourses in health‐related research, which tend to focus on disease in ways that highlight disadvantages of ethnic and racial minority groups without drawing on communities’ strengths when investigating and developing interventions and policies to address race‐based inequities (e.g., Atallah, ; Ford & Harawa, ; Sonn & Quayle, ).…”

“…Consistent with critically oriented community‐based participatory approaches to research (e.g., Fals‐Borda, ; Atallah, ; Lazarus, Taliep, Bulbulia, Phillips, & Seedat, ; Lykes & Scheib, ; Rasmus, Charles, & Mohatt, ; Shapiro et al., ; Sonn & Quayle, ), the point of departure for this research project involved using CCRP (Atallah, Bacigalupe, & Repetto, ) to engage in relationship building while seeking to understand “our place” as researchers in the social landscape of Mapuche communities and the broader Chilean society. In doing so, Atallah–a postdoctoral research fellow with the Chilean National Research Center for Integrated Natural Disaster Management at the time (December of 2015)–began to deconstruct the normative discourses and practices within which investigators in Chilean academia and related national research centers tend to create their partnerships with indigenous communities, by recognizing how racism and other forms of discrimination may be carved into even the most well‐intentioned studies, interventions, policies, and efforts by academics to increase research participation.…”

Forging Political Will from a Shared Vision: A Critical Social Justice Agenda Against Neoliberalism and Other Systems of Domination

“…They have helped Walsh-Bowers, & Mitchell 2012). Several social justice advocates across the globe have utilized CP liberation and indigenous theory, research, and practice to confront the challenges that have resulted from long-standing colonization and colonialism (Cruz & Sonn 2011;Sonn & Quayle 2013). In consonance with the line of thinking and proposals that Swift (2010) put forward in his discourse on strong democracy, several community psychologists have devoted their energies into instilling and fostering democratic ideals, collective participation, civic activism, and political involvement in the community, particularly investing in its youth (Bishop, Vicary, Browne & Guard 2009;Pancer, Pratt, Hunsberger & Alisat 2007).…”

Cultural development and local government: analytical frames, insights and observations

“…Originally, in European settings, this may have focused on 'folk arts' manifest in the local manufacture of distinctive artifacts, ceremonies and traditions (see for example, Zimmer & Toepler, 1999). More broadly there is the particular status and recognition afforded to indigenous culture that has arisen from a long history of struggle against colonialism, imperialism and the gradual and contested assertion of the unique rights and standing of First Nations around the globe (Sonn & Quayle, 2013).…”