Welcome to our first e-news for 2017!
 
As you may already be aware, Ninti One is currently in the process of completing the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation (CRC-REP). In our initial planning, we intended to celebrate the achievements of the CRC with an all-day symposium, titled ‘Remote Australia LIVE’, in Alice Springs on 11 April 2017. As we manage the remaining research budget over the final few months leading up to 30 June 2017, we have determined that this investment would be better directed towards research outputs and on-the-ground impact in remote Australia. As such, we have decided to scale back this full-day symposium to a half-day/evening event. We are now planning to hold a CRC-REP Ninti Networks function in the afternoon for the benefit of all our friends and partners from the Alice Springs community, our CRC-REP Board and CRC-REP member-organisations and end users of the research. More information to come!
 
On behalf of Ninti One staff and researchers, we would like to congratulate our previous Managing Director, Ms Jan Ferguson, on her recent OAM being awarded for her service to the Indigenous communities of the Northern Territory. 

Jan Ferguson OAM (centre) with Professor Tom Calma AO and Dame Quentin Bryce AD
at Ninti's 10 year celebration

We kicked off the new year with our new-look website, www.nintione.com.au, which not only showcases Ninti One’s range of services and expertise, but illustrates the dynamic and collaborative relationships we have with remote Australia and the people who live there.
 
In the What We Do section, you’ll find a selection of our projects and the outcomes we’ve delivered for clients. Take a look at the collection of short films we have produced – the images alone tell as much of the story, and make us proud of what we do! Our growing social media activity is also profiled though our Home page.
 
Check out the new look Remote Australia Online (RAO) resource centre. We are currently busy incorporating all the valuable research outputs from the CRC-REP into this go-to knowledge base of evidence-based, authoritative research on topics that impact remote Australia and its people.

Our partnership with Philanthropy Australia and sponsorship of the Australian Philanthropy Awards is proving very successful and has increased our engagement with the philanthropic community across Australia. Stay tuned to Ninti One Facebook for the announcement of the award winners!

The No Smokes project aims to reduce smoking rates among young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in remote, regional and urban areas across Australia. It talks to the target audience in their voice with an understanding of their issues.

No Smokes messages on social media platforms currently engage 8,000 people in conversations about why not smoking is good for everyone, and how to quit. Follow No Smokes on website,  Facebook , Twitter and Instagram.
 
We’re delighted that the Department of Health is continuing the grant for this important initiative until June 2018.

 

The national Tackling Indigenous Smoking (TIS) program managed and funded by the Australian Government Department of Health's Indigenous Health Division, encourages and supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of all ages to quit the habit. Organisations delivering TIS activities are supported by the National Best Practice Unit Tackling Indigenous Smoking (NBPU TIS) to ensure they are being as effective as possible.
 
Among this support is a new series of videos that helps community workers with aspects of project monitoring and evaluation, such as running focus groups and analysing data. Take a look and be sure share with anyone you think may find them useful.
 
It’s just a small part of what the NBPU TIS does. To discover more, you can read their latest news here.
 
Our NBPU TIS Manager, Desley Thompson, will be presenting the outcomes from this project and the impact it is having at the AIATSIS National Indigenous Conference in Canberra in March. The theme for this conference is Impact, Engagement, Transformation. NBPU TIS consortium members, the National Coordinator for Tackling Indigenous Smoking and TIS organisations are presenting a panel session at the Conference - See the program for details.

          

As part of its water sustainability strategies, NT Power and Water Corporation engaged Ninti One to connect with Imanpa Community, which lies 160 km east of Uluru, to gain insight into attitudes towards water use, as the area is becoming increasingly depleted.
 
Through our on-ground networks, which include Aboriginal Community Researchers, Ninti One is easily able to get accurate data directly from any target audience.
 
So, earlier this month, we visited Imanpa, meeting with representatives from the council, school, and aged care facilities to plan workshops and surveys for March. The objective of these will be to gather insight into local water use and simultaneously discuss how and why water sustainability is integral to the health of the community.
 
In true community spirit, and reinforcing how critical it is to engage with the local community about matters that affect them, a community member has been employed by Ninti One to help facilitate the workshops.
 
This work derives from Ninti One being a member of a number of government Panel contracts for the Australian Government and the Northern Territory and South Australian governments.

The sixth annual Broadband for the Bush Forum, Remote, Connected and Savvy! focuses on how remote and rural stakeholders can help develop effective telecommunication policies to meet their needs and apply innovative solutions to enable businesses and communities to grow and prosper in the global digital economy.

With over 200 attendees anticipated, this event offers a unique opportunity to unite the voices of remote and rural Australians. Remote, Connected and Savvy! will capture the diversity of experiences, digital tools and emerging practices from a wide range of industries and sectors, such as health, emergency services, education, tourism, creative industries, agriculture, seafood, mining, transport, remote service delivery, conservation and land management, women in business, cultural heritage and more.

The Forum will bring together influential decision-makers and end users from across the community and public and private sectors, as well as technical experts and representatives from senior industry, Australian Government, NBN Co and academic institutions. Across the two days, the Forum will focus on four key streams that drive a positive and strengths-based approach: Digital Inclusion in the Bush – exploring best practice models to facilitate accelerated digital inclusion across rural and remote Australia; Regional innovation – from digital isolation to digital revolution; Policy and regulation – advancing digital capacity and capability in regional, rural and remote Australia; and Technology in action – emerging technologies keeping us connected and safe

The Laura Aboriginal Dance Festival is an exciting, biennial gathering in Cape York Peninsula that celebrates the many diverse communities, languages, songs, dances and stories of the region. The event attracts about 5,000 people from across Australia, so don’t miss out! Tickets are now on sale; get them and all the event details here.

Associate Professor Mike Dockery, Principal Research Leader of the Population Mobility and Labour Markets project, has published a new working paper: Culture, housing, remoteness and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child development: Evidence from the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children.
 
Using data from Waves 1–7 of the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children, this paper explores the interrelationships between a family’s housing, culture and remoteness, and their children’s outcomes in areas including physical, social and emotional wellbeing and cognitive development.
 
In analysing parental attitudes and practices with respect to passing on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture to their children, three key factors emerged: Connection to Country, Connection to Kin and the desire to pass on Traditional Knowledge.
 
The Connection to Country and Connection to Kin factors are interpreted as reflecting parental aspirations to promote the child’s sense of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander identity.
 
The results provide new evidence of positive life effects of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural attachment. Parents seeking to foster a strong kinship connection is found to contribute to positive child development across the domains investigated. The paper addresses an important weakness in the existing empirical literature, since the research design eliminates the possibility of (the child’s) outcomes ‘causing’ greater cultural identity or engagement.
 
Desire to pass on traditional knowledge appears to be complementary to better cognitive outcomes, but it is correlated with lower school attendance. These findings support arguments that schooling in remote areas should be more culturally appropriate.
 
This is just a snapshot; for the full picture, Mike’s entire working paper can be read here.

We currently have 17 PhD, Masters and Honours students with us at the CRC-REP, taking us to 36 over the life of the CRC.
 
This has indeed become a highlight of the CRC-REP achievements: a vibrant education program that supports and trains students to achieve strong research outcomes that are embedded within the CRC-REP research agenda.
 
Our hard-working students are the quiet achievers at CRC-REP, undertaking research, investigation and analysis across all three program areas. Better still, they are all performing exceptionally well, with another three having just successfully completed their PhDs:
 

• Stuart Robertson on Mine lifecycle planning to ensure enduring value to remote communities
• Skye Akbar on Marketing remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tourism to Australians
• Philip Townsend on Travelling together and sitting alongside: The use of mobile technologies in the training and professional development of Aboriginal teachers in remote communities – boosting retention rates through content provision, administrative support, and personal encouragement.

 
Philip also won Best Paper Award for the mLearn 2016 conference. The International Association for Mobile Learning (IAmLearn) organises the annual mLearn conferences which are hosted at different sites globally. The host institution last year was the University of Technology, Sydney. The conference theme was Mobile learning futures: Sustaining quality research and practice in mobile learning. Philip’s paper was titled ‘A theory of enhancement of professional learning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander pre-service teachers in very remote communities through mobile learning’.
 
Congratulations to all our students for your tremendous achievement, and best wishes to those nearing completion in the coming months!
 

Community value from mining in Latin America
Earlier this month, Enduring Community Value from Mining project team Dr Boyd Blackwell and Ann Fordham presented at the Australia Awards Fellowship: Regional Approaches to Community Engagement and Socially Responsible Mining in Latin America.
 
This fellowship program saw representatives from InnovacionAL come to Australia and learn about best practices in community mining: a situation which is in urgent need of new thinking in Latin America, where some 206 mines are subject to ongoing disputes between the companies and communities.
 
It was the perfect platform for Boyd to present on the years of experience garnered by the CRC-REP in this area.
 

In between completing the final publication for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Tourism Product project, Dr Damien Jacobsen is still hard at work and has released three new conference papers as follows:
 

• Jacobsen, D. 2017. Aboriginal perspectives of enterprise clustering, CAUTHE 2017: Time for big ideas? Re-thinking the field for tomorrow. 7-10 February. University of Otago, Dunedin. (Slideshare presentation)

 

• Jacobsen, D. 2016. Aboriginal knowledge for the business of tourism. Indigenous Business, Enterprise and Corporations Conference (Jointly convened by the UWA Business School Centre for Social Impact and the School of Indigenous Studies), 1-2 December, The University of Western Australia Business School, Perth, Western Australia. (Slideshare presentation)

 

• Jacobsen, D. 2014. Tourism enterprise co-operation in remote Australia, Australian Regional Tourism Convention, Oct 20-23, Port Stephens, NSW. (Slideshare presentation)

 
This month Damien also prepared a Submission to the Australian Government Inquiry into Opportunities and Methods for Stimulating the Tourism Industry in Northern Australia. He made several recommendations regarding the development of tourism clusters, creating a peak body to represent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander operators, and improvements to tourism infrastructure.
 
The submission covered a broad ranges of tourism topics, including domestic and international tourism, infrastructure required for tourism, effects of digital capacity on tourism and more. The full submission is here.
 
Damien has also finalised a summary paper about the great potential for reconciliation through tourism. It describes the particular case of Goombaragin Eco-retreat in Western Australia, a small, family business owned by Kathleen, a direct descendant of the Traditional Owners of the area, and her non-Aboriginal husband, John. Guests come to the retreat often having never spoken to an Aboriginal person before. With Kathleen and John providing a friendly, neutral ground where all sorts of issues can be discussed, many of their guests leave as friends. Read the summary here.

Building Efficiency: Climate Change

Also this month in the ongoing wave of CRC-REP presentations across Australia, our Climate Change Adaptation and Energy Futures team went to Wollongong to present at the Improving Residential Energy Efficiency International Conference.