Gabbarli Lives in a Shoe: Working Towards Wellbeing for Older Aboriginal People

Abstract

The social disadvantage of the Australian Aboriginal population, evidenced in measures of health, education, employment, and income, is the target of a current national policy of Close the Gap. Policy makers attuned to addressing the needs of the Aboriginal population writ large can be blind to a complex communal patterning of vulnerability within this larger category. This report details recent research into addressing the mistreatment of older Aboriginal people in Western Australia. Interviews with 37 (29 Aboriginal) front line practitioners with older Aboriginal people established that issues surrounding the mistreatment of older Aboriginal people are dissimilar to the pattern prevailing in the total Australian population. It is suggested that surviving as an 'us' against 'them' in a lived experience of discrimination and oppression has left some older Aboriginal people with an excess of bonding capital within their family and community and a deficit of bridging capital to wider forms of social support. This report details how Aboriginal practitioners and others focused on the importance of working with the intangibles of community at the local level to address the issue.