Finalised IRX Grant Projects
Many of the IRX funded research projects are complete, and grantees are uploading their research outputs to Yumi Sabe.
The outputs our grantees have produced through the IRX grant program represent many hours of hard work. The generosity of knowledge shared is a valuable contribution to the IRX purpose of making research findings more accessible, contestable, and useable, especially for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
You can learn more about the finalised projects below.
Victoria University, Moondani Balluk Indigenous Academic Unit
The number of Aboriginal children in Out-of-Home Care and under Protective Orders is increasing. The Footprints for Success (Footprints) Early Years Project currently has several families under the scrutiny of DHHS Child Protection. This collaborative, culturally informed project is timely and aims to address these statistics and the growing program delivery tensions. It seeks to build a coordinated, community-led response to the issues faced by Aboriginal families, women, and children.
Australian National University
A shared understanding of success is critical for best practice in repatriation. While the removal of Ancestors caused long-term injury, repatriation can combine factors essential to healing and wellbeing in a powerful and unique manner. This project will co-design and trial a protocol with the NMA to translate findings into Ngarrindjeri/NMA repatriation engagement. This in turn will inform recommendations for repatriation policy and practice nationally and internationally.
Yolŋu Nations Assembly Aboriginal Corporation
In the Northern Territory, a large proportion of remote Aboriginal communities continue to live according to their customary law and maintain their traditional languages and ceremonies. The Ŋärra Rom Project, led by the Yolŋu Nations Assembly (YNA), seeks to maintain, document and share the vitality and true meaning of its traditional Maḏayin legal system with the Australian community.
Central Queensland Indigenous Development
There is a crisis in the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in Australia’s child protection system. The children in out of home care are at serious risk of permanent separation from culture as only about 45% of children are placed with an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander carer (SNAIC, 2019). This research project will provide independent, credible endorsement of a community led and owned cultural intervention and strengthening program. The findings will improve practice and expand delivery of cultural strengthening for children.
Charles Darwin University
Dharraŋanamirr dhukarr guŋgayunaraw djamarrkuḻiw ga gurruṯumirriw marŋgikunharaw ḏälkunharaw gakalwun dhiyakun marrmaw’nha romgun. Understanding pathways to support Yolŋu children and families to achieve strong learning in two systems. A high priority for families is recognition of, and respect for, cultural strengths to ensure children stay strong in the Yolŋu system as they move into early childhood programs and school.
Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Cultural Centre
Existing anthropological research recognises a long history of Aboriginal peoples travelling on country, following deeply spiritual song lines and exchanging significant items or tools. However, the evidence is incomplete and Aboriginal Elders with lived experience of the trade routes have not been brought together to share their cultural knowledge nor to compare it with contemporary practice. This project will fill the knowledge gaps and thus empower the cultural bosses to reinvigorate fundamental and foundational cultural governance systems.
Mogo Local Aboriginal Land Council
The Environmental Stewardship Resurgence in Walbanga (Yuin Nation) Land and Sea Country initiative aims to develop a toolkit for Mogo and Batemans Bay LALC rangers to strengthen their capacity to influence environmental management decisions across their Country. This project aspires to increase Walbanga’s participation in the governance of their territories and support their everyday resurgence through environmental stewardship practices articulating work on Country and Walbanga's philosophies.
ABC Foundation Ltd
Currently, young women in remote Australia face limited on-country employment opportunities. Meanwhile, non-profits and government organisations face difficulty in assessing the value of their remote programs. The ABC Foundation’s social program AWRAE pushes the boundaries of Indigenous Data Sovereignty, creating employment and empowerment for Aboriginal women in remote communities. The women are taught the skills of planning, data collection and analysis, and then mentored through contract evaluations.
Noongar Boodjar Language Cultural Aboriginal Corporation (on behalf of KARDA, University of Notre Dame, Curtin University, Brave and Curious)
Settler mapping has historically disregarded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge when representing land and urban landscapes. This project documents Whadjuk Noongar led cultural mapping for Whadjuk Noongar and non-Whadjuk Aboriginal communities, local government and built environment industries. These maps can then communicate and influence Whadjuk landscapes in the planning system and educate future leaders about the respect and use of Aboriginal knowledge.
Warmun Art Centre
This project will locate the history of the Warmun Art Centre within the Gija tradition of self-determination and advocacy. It will collect the histories of the artworks, and of the Old People’s contribution to the Art Centre. It will document what about the establishment of the Warmun Art Centre made people feel good. A major outcome will be activation of the collection as a relevant resource with Gija people being able to take control of Gija resources and develop them in ways that will support contemporary community needs.
Undalup Association
This project demonstrates a pathway to re-embed a Wadandi Songline as a conservation corridor in a socially and ecologically fragmented landscape. The Wadandi cultural landscape integrates spiritual, social and ecological networks, manifested in Songlines. Re-embedding Songlines into land management is imperative to reconnecting a fragmented landscape for social and ecological health.
Aboriginal Health Council of South Australia Ltd
It is important that health research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is conducted appropriately and is aligned with community research priorities. This project contributes to building a health and medical research sector that is more aware of how to conduct research effectively with Aboriginal communities by providing a RoadMap for strengthening the sector’s ability to respond to Aboriginal priorities using Aboriginal principles for conducting research. An aware and capable sector will result in the Aboriginal community experiencing greater benefits from research.
University of Queensland
Since 2008 the Australian National Curriculum has included Indigenous histories and cultures as a national cross curriculum priority. To effectively teach Wakka Wakka language, schools must have access to high quality local curriculum resources, and these must be made in partnership and under the leadership of traditional owners and historical Elders of Cherbourg. Through this project a series of digital and written stories from Wakka Wakka Country will be developed to enhance a Wakka Wakka language teaching program.
Wabubadda Aboriginal Corporation RNTBC
Wabubadda Aboriginal Corporation (WAC) supported Jirrbal field officers to participate in basic archaeological, vegetation and animal survey techniques. The field officers undertook drone imaging and carried out pedestrian surveys in a culturally significant area previously not investigated for its cultural and natural values. Previous and new data collected will inform future co-management plans of cultural and natural resources.
Federation University
Reconciliation provides benefit to Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples and other Australians. By producing a model Indigenous Voice to Tasmanian Parliament, this project will increase the ways in which plural opinions are valued through Indigenous leadership and flow outwards through mainstream governance and management of public policy.
University of Technology Sydney (on behalf of a group Gugu Badhun Nation, Gunditjmara People, Ngarrindjeri Nation, Nyungar Nation, Wiradjuri Nation)
From time immemorial, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations have worked both to fulfil their obligations to Country and to achieve their communities’ development aspirations. Australian settler-colonial law, including those provided by the CATSI Act, state incorporation legislation and co-management agreements, do not provide governance structures that simultaneously support First Nations to fulfil their obligations to Country under their own lore/law. This research explores whether a new model of collaborative governance might address this concern.
Centre for Inclusive Design
Deaf and hard-of-hearing Aboriginal people face significant communication barriers that hinder their access to essential services. The lack of readily available interpreters and culturally appropriate support exacerbates frustration and limits their participation in crucial interactions, perpetuating cycles of disenfranchisement and inequality. This project proposes an AI-powered mobile application that offers a comprehensive communication support system, designed in collaboration with Aboriginal communities.
University of New South Wales
Recent years have witnessed a significant increase in the inclusion of “Lived Experience” across mental health and suicide prevention initiatives including research, policy development, and project design. However, very little research has been done to examine Indigenous lived-experience and peer-led programs in the mental health and suicide prevention space. Fewer programs have been evaluated. This project aims to fill this knowledge gap through the stories of healing and capacity building expressed by participants, to identify long term risk and protective factors for Australian Indigenous peoples.
Taragara Aboriginal Corporation
Mura Maarni is a cultural methodology which provides a mechanism to repatriate cultural knowledge stolen from Aboriginal communities and retained in archives. Since the colonial invasion, white researchers have taken Aboriginal cultural knowledge away from traditional custodians. Mura Maarni proposes to use digital technologies to live-stream archival sessions with objects and artefacts, linking back to Communities, who are supported to be online.
Tangentyere Council Aboriginal Corporation
Through this project, data will be reviewed by researchers and analysed in line with the seven framework dimensions and fed back to the participants in a series of workshops, to develop local community-led strategies to improve wellness. These strategies will be developed in partnership with the NT Government, in accordance with the Local Decision-Making Agreement from July 2020.
The South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute
Older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people receiving aged care services experience a significant burden of grief and loss because of accumulated unresolved trauma. Currently, the aged care system fails to recognise the holistic, unique cultural and social and emotional wellbeing needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The findings of this research will inform the service responses required to meet the social and emotional wellbeing needs of older Aboriginal people and Home Care Package Program staff.
Children's Ground Limited
The provision and evaluation of First Nations early childhood and youth initiatives is characterised by a lack of culturally appropriate, place-based assessment frameworks and outcome measures. This project responds to the need for First Nations perspectives in the conceptualisation and measurement of First Nations by empowering First Nations people to design and undertake data collection before analysing it for their own purposes and communities.
University of Melbourne
Evidence suggests that arts-led approaches, and specifically theatre, can strengthen sexual health promotion and education in First Nations communities. By centring participants’ stories and experiences, participatory theatre gives community members ownership over material, and agency in discovering culturally safe ways to reduce stigma and address sexual health. ‘The Score' addresses gaps in evidence, program design, and research evaluation methodologies for effective sexual health promotion and education among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia.
University of Canberra (on behalf of: Yalu Marŋgithinyaraw Aboriginal Corporation, Menzies School of Health, Swinburne University of Technology & Australian Securities & Investments Commission)
Reducing disaster risks is an urgent priority. In Northern Australia, substantial natural processes seriously threaten human health and life, and bear enormous environmental, social and economic costs. Remote Indigenous communities are particularly vulnerable to disasters due to colonisation. Through this project, Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples will work together to facilitate Galiwin’ku reviving and strengthening their Yolŋu law, knowledges and cultural practices, especially governance, to heal from disasters, (re)build Indigenous capacities that reduce the risk of natural and social disasters and increase recognition of the value of Indigenous culture.
Australian National University (partnering with the Mayi Kuwayu Study
Community development is an approach commonly used amongst Aboriginal communities in Australia to identify priorities for advancement (Snijder et al. 2015). However, there is some evidence that over the last two decades Indigenous community development has become increasingly dislocated from the local context (Hollinsworth, 1996). This project, 'Yarrabah Counts', will see the Yarrabah Leadership Forum (YLF) and the ANU defining community development indicators, designing a data collection instrument, administering the data collection tool, realising statistical capability, establishing a baseline for each community development indicator and designing a monitoring and assessment framework.
University of Melbourne (on behalf of Eastern Maar Aboriginal Corporation
The colonial impact on Indigenous peoples’ food practices was catastrophic and its effects still reverberate today. Murnong (Microseris sp.) is often referred to as ‘yam daisy’ and was one of the most important staple foods for Aboriginal people in south-eastern Australia prior to the British invasion. The Eastern Maar are in the process of designing a Cultural Landscape Project, to map dreaming stories across all their territories as means of documenting the multi-layered and Country-specific cultural practice embedded within historical and contemporaneous Eastern Maar land management practices.
Institute for Collaborative Race Research
This project explores how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have exercised control through community sector organisations. What does community control mean, and how has this meaning changed over time? Where do Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs) see the sites of struggle and resistance within their own work? This project honours the political significance of the Queensland community-controlled sector, tracing its emergence from the violence of the Protection Act and assimilation era.
University of Technology Sydney, Jumbunna (on behalf of AbSec - NSW Child, Family and Community Peak Aboriginal Corporation)
The over-representation of Indigenous children in child protection systems remains a pressing human rights issue facing Australia. With its roots in past policies of protectionism and assimilation, numerous reviews have urged structural and practice reforms to address this challenge. This project seeks to build on the strong foundations of the NSW Aboriginal community-controlled child and family sector, adapting existing Aboriginal Participatory Action Research methodologies to the child protection sector, building local capabilities and setting community-led priorities to direct ongoing research and reform.
Illawarra Local Aboriginal Land Corporation
"The Djeera Project", has been identified by the Illawarra Local Aboriginal Land Council as a priority initiative to improve the knowledge of both the local Aboriginal community as well as broader community of the high significance of Mt Keira in the cultural frameworks of local custodians. Djeera is a prominent feature of the escarpment which runs north-south through the Illawarra region. This project aims to enable the local Aboriginal community to reclaim this important Aboriginal place as an area of learning and cultural significance and protect it for future generations. Information will be gathered from historical archives and by documenting oral histories and contemporary connections.
Ebony Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Institute Ltd
The Ebony Institute believes truth-telling is one of the critical components of enabling meaningful social change and self-determination for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. Building on existing evidence bases and strong relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, communities and organisations, the Ebony Institute wishes to answer the question 'What are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities’ views on the best way to tell the truth in Australia?'.