Pillars
Indigenous
The Indigenous Pillar applies Indigenous scholarship to understand how dominant norms/beliefs and institutional structures in a society or community, including colonial, racialized and gender hierarchies, as well as hierarchies of sexuality can drive violence. Research in this pillar systematically analyses these regimes of violence, how they change over time, and investigates how they can be changed taking into account the dynamic social and environmental contexts that sustain them.
This pillar includes three workstreams, VAW Prevention and the Violence of Colonialism, Future Lives and VAW, and Racial Analysis and Anti-Racism Praxis.
The workstreams
Lead
Distinguished Professor Bronwyn Carlson
Deputy Director
Violence Against Women (VAW) has been introduced to the Indo-Pacific by imposing colonial conditions which include unequal power relations and cultures of gendered abuse and sexual violence. Countries like Australia and Aotearoa (New Zealand) are still occupied by British settler colonies, while other nations still contend with the influence of European missionaries and, foreign military and corporate presence. To address VAW is to address the legacies and ongoing impacts of colonialism. This workstream:
- explores colonisation as a gendered regime
- identifies the limitations of colonial structures for responding to systems of colonial power
- examines how Indigenous people understand and respond to systems of colonial violence
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Lead
Prof Kyllie Cripps
Chief Investigator
What is needed to have a life free of violence? What needs to change for Indigenous peoples to live and work in safe and fulfilling circumstances? And what do Indigenous peoples need to sustainably respond to and prevent VAW in their communities?
This workstream asks: What do Indigenous peoples need, to sustainably respond and prevent VAW in their communities?
The workstream uses a social-ecological model to
- understand the context of and opportunities for addressing and preventing violence against Indigenous women
- critically evaluate the responses available, the workforce resources currently invested, and the skills needed to deliver culturally attuned trauma-informed care to respond effectively to VAW
- give voice to initiatives that will highlight the sustainability of the sector, community and cultural strengths of responses, and identify best practice towards ending VAW
Lead
Distinguished Professor Bronwyn Carlson
Deputy Director
VAW is intimately connected to institutional violence and abuses of power. This workstream focuses on analysis and mechanisms for addressing institutional and systemic racism, specifically how racism occurs in the carceral system as well as in media, health, education and employment systems, and at the levels of policy, strategy and service provision. This workstream:
- applies racial analysis to VAW and the policies, services and organisations that directly respond and /or feed into it
- provides skills and knowledge to partner organisations and stakeholders to identify and address institutional and systemic racism in approaches to preventing and responding to VAW
- develops models for anti-racist practice that can be implemented in policy and strategies addressing VAW and by organisations and services that can be implemented to prevent and respond to VAW
“CEVAW’s Indigenous-centred approach and dedicated Indigenous Pillar is what distinguishes it from mainstream initiatives to address family violence. This pillar applies Indigenous scholarship to understand violence as shaped by the dominant norms/beliefs and institutional structures in a society or community, including colonial, racialised and gender hierarchies, as well as hierarchies of sexuality.”
Distinguished Professor Bronwyn Carlson
Indigenous Pillar Lead
