Indigenous Australian Youth Futures

Living the Social Determinants of Health

Victoria Burbank, Richard Chenhall, Kate Senior, Victoria Burbank, Richard Chenhall, Kate Senior

• Publisher: ANU Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781760464455
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Adolescents are at a critical life stage where they will soon be able to contribute to the wellbeing of humankind, or do it great harm. Consequently, it is vital that the challenges and possibilities of adolescence be well understood and addressed. In Australia, such understanding is urgently needed with respect to Aboriginal adolescents. Not only must they adjust to their changing bodies and minds, but they must negotiate these changes within a context usually characterised by racism and poverty. They must also do this within intercultural environments that include the disparate and sometimes incompatible beliefs and practices of their multicultural populations. The chapters in this collection address these challenges to Aboriginal adolescents in the Northern Territory and the intercultural contexts in which they take place. Their discussions include the adolescents' experiences with health and health care, education, and the criminal justice system. They also address their hopes, dreams, plans and politics, engagement with social media, food preferences and nutrition, engagement with language, family, and changing mores affecting sexual behaviour and marriage.

The book aims to provide readers with a greater understanding of the day-to-day lives of Aboriginal adolescents, and some of the adults who care for or neglect them. It seeks to provide readers with a better understanding of the circumstances, processes and factors that affect adolescent health, wellbeing and future prospects in their intercultural environments, and glimpse the multiplicity of these circumstances, processes and factors and the complexity of their interaction.

Table of contents

• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Contributors
• Introduction: Aboriginal Youth in the Northern Territory: Disadvantage, Control and Hope
• 1. Living the Social Determinants of Health: My Story
• 2. Defiance in the Detail: Young Women’s Embodied Future Selves
• 3. ‘They Don’t Dance Corroboree Any More’: Youth Relations to Authority, Leadership and Civic Responsibility in a Remote Aboriginal Community
• 4. Food Practices of Young People in a Remote Aboriginal Community
• 5. Bush Medicine Knowledge and Use among Young Kriol Speakers in Ngukurr
• 6. ‘They Do Think about Health’: Young Indigenous Women’s Ideas about Health and Their Interaction with the Health System
• 7. Growing Up Fast in Two Remote Aboriginal Communities
• 8. The Aboriginal Spring? Youth, Mobile Phones and Social Media in a Remote Aboriginal Community
• 9. Juvenile (In)Justice in Darwin: Young People’s Voices from the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre
• 10. Sawyer’s Story: Guidance and Control of Adolescents in a Remote Aboriginal Community