School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
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ItemFrom segregated institution to self-managed community: the contribution of community social work practice towards Aboriginal self-management at Lake Tyers/Bung Yarnda Victoria( 2006)The central purpose of this thesis was to explore the contribution of community social work practice to a process of planned social change orchestrated by the Victorian Government's Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs during 1970-1971. This process aimed to reconstruct the living conditions of the residential Aboriginal population of Lake TyersrBung Yarnda so that the residents became land owners and managers of their physical, economic and social country. The thesis has sought to analyse the planned social change process that included two components - community development and legislation. The study found that legislation provided the necessary conditions to effect the social change sought by the residents, but the Government's grant of communal land title involved management of a corporate organisation, which conferred unexpected accountability standards and demanded new administrative skills of them. The study also found that the transfer of a new social and economic status required different attitudes and standards of behaviour from the residents, Government and the environment. Social change came with a price for all parties but especially the Aboriginal residents of Lake Tyers. The thesis has assessed the engagement of the community social worker, explored the theoretical ideas that guided the community social worker's practice, and analysed the social planning approach used by the Executive of the Ministry. An autobiographical method was used drawing on primary data from the community . social worker's practice records written during the intervention and collected materials. A content analysis of this data, from the perspective of practice ideas then and now, has facilitated the reconstructed account of what happened. Later historical, sociological, psychological, and community social work practice literature concerning the social and economic development of residential Aboriginal populations, was utilised to provide a contemporary contribution to the analysis of the process. The foundation of the study was the integration of a critical social theoretical approach with the qualitative Indigenous methodology of 'decolonizing methodologies' (Smith 1999). Consequently, the central focus has been the Aboriginal residents', and the community social worker's cultural constructions of a social reality formed by colonisation and racial structure. The study found that the process of social change at Lake Tyers in 1970-1971 was primarily agency-controlled by the Ministry's Executive to ensure the Government's goals were realised; and that the process of locality development played a secondary and restricted role. The thesis has argued that past and present community social work practice knowledge has reflected a dominant Western world view. It has suggested that when formulating community development strategies, planners and practitioners have failed to recognise the fundamental importance of Aboriginal social organisation - the primary group relationships of Aboriginal extended kin networks, the under-development of secondary group relationships, and reliance on tertiary relationships with the state. The national Aboriginal land rights social movement and the organised protest over the future of Lake Tyers have been identified as key factors instigating the process of social change. Specific historical, sociological and psychological concepts have been suggested as crucial to gaining insight into the context that created the seriously under-developed economic conditions of the residents of Lake Tyers in 1970. They include the oppressive nature of the Station regime that ensured the people's livelihood depended on tutelage with the state, stultified individual initiative and squashed leadership, protected residents from experiencing separation of home from work place, limited participation in the market economy, restricted interaction with civil society, and inhibited the formation of a racial community or secondary group to promote social needs and cultural interests. The thesis has argued the need to conceptualise an Aboriginal approach to community social work in which the process of social change is controlled, negotiated and directed by an Aboriginal executive management; where social policies are shaped by Aboriginal people identifying their needs from their distinctive experience of colonisation and cultural adaptation; and where the engagement of a non-Aboriginal practitioner has been sanctioned by the Aboriginal executive.