Interviewee
Jonathan "Yotti" Kingsley, PhD Candidate, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia and visiting scholar, Cambridge University, UK
Article
'yotti' Kingsley, J., Townsend, M., Phillips, R., Aldous, D. (2009) "If the land is healthy... it makes the people healthy": The relationship between caring for Country and health for the Yorta Yorta Nation, Boonwurrung and Bangerang Tribes, Health & Place,15(1):291-9
Summary
For IPP-SHR podcasts, Michael Bouwman talks with Johnathan Yotti Kingsley about his research into the health and well-being effects Indigenous people experience when they are involved in 'Caring for Country' projects in Victoria, Australia, and how it is helping them to heal from the effects of colonization. The deep connection Indigenous Australians have with nature and their land or 'country' is described as a type of life support system. Connection with the land provided a feeling of being needed, a sense of pride, responsibility, self worth, and ownership. Participants described caring for their country as an inherent obligation intrinsic to Aboriginal identity, requiring knowledge passed down for generations. They also described the medicinal and spiritual effects of being in nature, where they felt calm and centered. Kingsley believes it would be beneficial for non-indigenous Australians to become involved with 'Caring for Country' projects as a tool for increasing overall population health.
Transcript
Michael Bouwman: I’m Michael Bouwman and today I’m introducing Jonathan Yotti Kingsley, a visiting scholar at Cambridge, and formerly of the School of Resource Management, The University of Melbourne, Australia. I’m speaking with Yotti about his article, ‘If the land is healthy it makes the people healthy’: A relationship between caring for country and health for the Yorta Yorta Nation, Boonwurrung, and Bangerang Tribes. Published in Health and Place, and co-authored with others mentioned on our website. Good evening. You mention in your article building trust with the Indigenous community is fundamental and qualitative methodology was considered the appropriate approach. Can you talk on that?
Jonathan Yotti Kingsley: I’d just like to say, firstly, that I’m non-Indigenous. This research and my views are based on non-Indigenous perspectives, not an aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community perspective. I’ve worked in partnership with communities to get this information, so I guess what I’m gonna say is reflective of that. Yeah, the qualitative methodology is I guess a way of you have to communicate with people. You have to actually build trust to have an interview with a person, so with like I guess a survey it’s quite a different thing. You don’t have any interaction with the individual. A lot of the process I went through I had a reference group of Indigenous people who recommended qualitative research, because at the first, I wanted to design a quantitative tool and the reference group said, ‘No, this can’t be done. The community isn’t ready for a quantitative tool.’ They would rather talk about how they connect with country in an interview process, to get a better understanding of what the issue is, rather than doing it in a more quantitative way. So that’s I guess why I did it in a qualitative way. The community really wanted it in that way, and research actually with Indigenous health has emphasised more on qualitative research, rather than quantitative research.
Michael Bouwman: Sure. And can you explain to our listeners a few of the notions used in your research, such as the idea of Country, and wellbeing to Indigenous people?
Jonathan Yotti Kingsley: Country is a place, I guess, a traditional boundary or traditional land that gives and receives life. It consists of, I guess, everything: people, animals, plants, earth, soil, minerals, water and air. It’s absolutely everything. And Indigenous people talk about Country in the same way that I’d talk about a person. Country is, I guess, a resource which behaves as a living being and a life support system for humans. You might have heard the whole notion of ‘land is our mother earth’. I think Indigenous people connect to land in the same way. You have to be in sync with land. It can speak to you. You can visit land. You can worry about land. You can feel sorry for land, and you can long for your land. So that’s what Country is. Caring for Country is having the knowledge, first of responsibility, an inherent right to look after your traditional boundaries or Country that has provided ecological sustainability of Australian landscapes for thousands of years. It takes a long time to gain that knowledge. So that’s what Country and caring for Country is. The Indigenous concept of health and wellbeing is a holistic notion which involves physical, social, emotional, cultural, and environmental wellbeing. I guess with wellbeing, for Indigenous communities, what the research says is that the past, present and future, all intertwine to impact on the Indigenous person, so you can’t disconnect from colonisation, and you can’t disconnect from what’s happening nowadays, and what will happen in the future. The aim of the Health and Place paper was to explore the health and wellbeing benefits of caring for Country, and how people feel on Country for Victorian Indigenous people.
Michael Bouwman: Okay. And how has that Indigenous connection to Country been challenged by European intervention?
Jonathan Yotti Kingsley: There has been a lot of damage and a loss of traditional landscapes for Indigenous communities. And for a lot of people that has caused a loss of self esteem, because of loss of land, and that’s what the research says. To this day the truth of Indigenous people’s connection to Victorian land has been limited to the wider community, and that was one of the major reasons I did this research, to get that deep connection Indigenous people have to nature, out to the rest of the population.
Michael Bouwman: Your findings indicate that caring for Country offers great benefits, including building self esteem, fostering self identity, maintaining cultural connection, and enabling relaxation and enjoyment, through contact with a natural environment. Could you elaborate on those findings?
Jonathan Yotti Kingsley: Participants of my study would talk about, when they were involved in caring for Country projects, that they felt required, needed, a great sense of pride, self worth, responsibility, and achievement. Participants mentioned that caring for Country raises people’s ability to feel good about themselves, giving them ownership as before. Some people were disconnected from that ownership and were disenfranchised. An Indigenous environmental worker I interviewed said, ‘The more involvement I’ve had, the more comfortable and strong I felt as an Aboriginal person.’ Participants also mentioned they could gain answers to personal issues from nature. They described caring for country as an inherent obligation that had been passed down for generations. It was intrinsic to Aboriginal identity. I guess they felt that their ancestors were kind of guiding them as well. In my interviews the participants would say, ‘Sometimes, it’s really hard for me to talk about this issue, because it’s just part of me. I don’t have any way of explaining it. This connection is part of my life, and it’s not something that is so easy to talk about. That identity is just natural. It’s intrinsic to Indigenous people’s identity.’ I guess with connecting back to culture: for Indigenous Victorian communities, colonisation had a really devastating effect, but participants mentioned the caring for Country project got them connected back to nature, and allowed them to heal from this. A male Indigenous educator I spoke to said, ‘I went through life at a young age, not knowing where I fitted into society; land management let me know.’ There’s so many more examples of that, I just wanted to finish with a way of talking about the relaxation that Indigenous people felt was a really great quote: ‘If I smell pretty land, my heart feels better. My head feels better. In cultural Australia we didn’t always take food or medicine orally. Some of it was sitting amongst these plants, smelling the aromas and letting it soak through. You’re in a spiritual place, calm and centred.’ For me that quote emphasises how it relaxes you, how you are connected to nature, how you enjoy nature and that is how I would say it all comes together.
Michael Bouwman: Great. And what are the practice implications of your work? I mean what should policy makers be looking at here?
Jonathan Yotti Kingsley: I think caring for country projects, for Indigenous communities, have to be also for non-Indigenous communities, to be able to interact with the projects. And I think it could be a tool for improving population health. I think I’d like to see further research done by Indigenous communities themselves, where they would do these projects and study what the Indigenous community wants out of caring for Country projects. For example, with Indigenous communities in Victoria, there are 32 different nations, and they all have different needs. I think there should be more research with every group, and make sure the needs are met for every single group in Victoria.
Michael Bouwman: Okay. Well thanks Yotti. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you on this very important topic. Thank you very much for your time.
Jonathan Yotti Kingsley: No problem. I’m happy to have given it.
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