Does community cultural connectedness reduce the influence of area disadvantage on Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander young peoples’ suicide?

Abstract

ast and present colonisation in Australia has resulted in injustice against First Peoples through forced removal of communities from traditional homelands and children from their families, as well as genocide, dispossession, subjugation and discrimination. [1][2][3] Discriminatory legislation, paradoxically titled 'Protection Acts' , provided state governments, or 'Chief Protectors', the authority to remove children without evidence of neglect, take property and deny access to lands, displace people, control wages (if wages were received), control who people could marry and dictate where people could reside. 1,[4][5][6] Many regulations existed until the 1970s, and some components of these policies still exist today. 7 The systemic and widespread oppression of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia has resulted in profound inequalities across multiple domains, including employment, housing, income, education, incarceration, infant mortality and life expectancy. 1,8 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities also bear disproportionately higher burden of psychotic and mood disorders, involuntary hospital admissions and substance use disorders than non-Indigenous communities in Australia. 8,9 Throughout the paper the phrase 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people' is used to represent the First Peoples/First Nations peoples in the lands now referred to as Australia, while references pertaining to international First Nations or First Peoples populations are reported as such.Of immense importance, First Peoples die by suicide at more than twice the rate of other people in Australia, with young people particularly overrepresented. 10,11 In the state of Queensland specifically, the suicide rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people is four times higher than the non-Indigenous rate. 12,13 Moreover, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people are more likely to reside in communities that experience known risk factors for youth suicide generally, including

Predictors of Land-Based Activity Participation in a National Representative Sample of Indigenous Individuals Living Off-Reserve

“…The results in the present study support the relationships described in the FNMWCF model-specifically, that belonging fostered through culture is a significant predictor of engagement in land-based activities. This finding supports existing models that describe how increased engagement in cultural practices and identities among Indigenous communities is protective against adverse physical and mental health outcomes, including racial discrimination, colonialism, and historical trauma [33,38,39,49]. For example, cultural resilience has been significantly associated with mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing, including self-reported physical health [49].…”

“…The benefit of culture as both a process one actively engages in and/or an outcome indicator has been conceptualized in a variety of ways within Indigenous health research. These include various processes and outcomes that relate to engagement in culture, including promoting cultural identity [35][36][37], cultural connectedness [38][39][40][41], cultural efficacy [42], and cultural continuity [43][44][45]. For example, among residential school survivors, connectedness to culture has been associated with better mental health outcomes [39].…”

“…For example, among residential school survivors, connectedness to culture has been associated with better mental health outcomes [39]. Within rural areas in Australia, Indigenous language use has been associated with lower rates of suicide, particularly among individuals experiencing increased racial discrimination [38].…”

How diverse is child language acquisition research?

“…Language plays an integral role in the lives of humans; the loss of language has profound human cost because it is through language that we encode and transmit cultural and intellectual knowledge (Evans, 2010; Holtgraves & Kashima, 2008; Vygotsky, 1962), or as Hale (1992) put it, ‘the priceless products of human mental industry’ (p. 36). Language also asserts our social identity as members of a particular culture or cultures (Gallois et al, 2005; Giles et al, 1991), and in minority groups its preservation is linked to higher wellbeing (Gibson et al, 2021; Hallett et al, 2007). Language loss also represents a significant loss for our science; in scientific terms, every language death represents a lost opportunity to understand the boundaries of diversity in the human language faculty.…”

A theoretical conceptualisation of connection to culture in Australian First Peoples children

“…Scientific discourse on this topic is limited, but research has found engagement in cultural activities to be a protective factor. For example, it enhanced family functioning (Lohoar et al, 2014), it protected youth from suicide (Berry et al, 2010; Burgess et al, 2009; Gibson et al, 2021), and it was considered central to healthy child development in First Peoples from Western Australia (Scrine et al, 2020). Public schools that engaged children in learning traditional First Peoples languages found that this strengthened students’ development of cultural identity, pride, and self-worth, which increased their engagement in learning (Korff, 2019; Purdie et al, 2008).…”