Corrinne Tayce Sullivan

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that centres Indigenous queer (henceforth, Indigiqueer) and Indigenous older people and Elders’ voices to explore the everyday tensions between protecting Indigenous cultural protocols against colonial incursions and the challenges presented by shifts in essentialist understandings of gender in the country now called Australia. There is to date very little written that address this topic, although there are two seminal works that investigate the matters more broadly, one by leading Aboriginal scholar Professor Bronwyn Carlson, and another by Noongar Wardandi scholar Professor Braden Hil. Our study uses a set of vignettes based on two interviews with Indigiqueer people and a yarning circle with Indigenous older people and Elders. The interviews and yarning circle are structured as a discussion between community members to provide some preliminary analysis about contemporary dynamic intergenerational debates within Indigenous communities in which competing understandings of culture, gender, safety, and responsibility coexist. For participants, intergenerationality is seen as central to both harm and healing, feelings of belonging and ostracism and ultimately to current and future Indigenous and Indigiqueer survivance and thrivance. Indigenous older people and Elders demonstrate an openness to different sexualities and an acceptance of sexuality-diverse people but are hesitant to allow gender-diverse people to participate in gendered community activities such as playing the didgeridoo (yidaki). To the contrary, Indigenous queer (henceforth Indigiqueer) participants articulate their fears regarding safety, exclusion, care and social isolation emerging from exclusionist gendered binary protocols. Younger generations are seen by all participants as sites of potentiality, that in combination with the power of shared storytelling and mutually constructed understandings, enable a shift towards greater acceptance, openness, and visibility. The paper also reveals the ways in which Indigiqueer people navigate spatial, cultural and social differences between regional and urban spaces, that are seen as differentially accepting of either their Indigeneity or their gender and sexuality diversity. The study’s findings also demonstrate the importance of Indigiqueer-controlled spaces and culturally safe organisations, that are grounded in community-led practices of care, belonging, and self-determination.

This commentary uses an anticolonial lens to critically evaluate the extant body of evidence on Indigenous LGBTQIASB+ peoples' health and wellbeing in so-called Australia. Scholarship in this field is relatively new; however, it has grown exponentially over the past five years across diverse disciplines including Criminology, Geography, Psychology, Medicine and Sociology. This commentary will summarise key emergent themes on health and wellbeing within the evidence base highlighting the status and direction of current research. The authors argue that the current body of scholarship has the potential to influence theoretical approaches such as Indigenous Standpoint Theory, Intersectionality, and Health and Wellbeing paradigms.

Background: Trans and gender diverse (trans) young people experience higher rates of physical and mental ill‐health due to chronic exposure to gender minority stress. Consequently, trans young people report higher health and mental healthcare service utilisation. Disconcertingly, negative experiences of healthcare services are prevalent among trans young people, especially those with additional marginalised identities and backgrounds who experience multiple forms of marginalisation. Patient‐reported experience measures (PREM) are auseful tool for improving patients' healthcare experiences however existing PREMs are not relevant, appropriate, nor inclusive of the unique healthcare experiences of trans young people, especially those facing additional forms of marginalisation. Objective: This study will co‐develop and validate a PREM for trans young people aged 12 to 25 years attending health and mental healthcare services. This PREM will capture how healthcare experiences should affirm all aspects of trans young people's identities in health and mental health services, including but not limited to their gender. Design: Underpinned by a ‘co‐production’ framework, the proposed study comprises four stages informed by a Lived Experience Advisory Group (LEAG) made up of eight trans young people from across Australia. Stage 1 is a scoping review of qualitative studies exploring the experiences of marginalised young people using healthcare services. Stage 2 is semi‐structured, one‐to‐one interviews with multiply marginalised trans young people aged 12 to 25 years in Australia ( n = 30) and healthcare professionals of trans young people in Australia ( n = 30). Candidate PREM items generated from Stages 1–2 will be appraised in a multi‐stakeholder modified e‐Delphi Consensus Survey ( N = 90; Stage 3) comprising multiply marginalised trans young people ( n = 30), healthcare professionals ( n = 30), and parents/caregivers of trans young people ( n = 30). Lastly, in Stage 4, PREM items will be reviewed by trans young people in two cognitive debriefing focus groups ( N = 14) to improve clarity, understandability, and interpretation. Discussion: This study will co‐produce and validate a PREM to effectively measure the quality of trans young peoples' experiences utilising health and mental healthcare services. The PREM will subsequently be implemented into integrated youth health services as part of a multi‐staged quality improvement project evaluating an integrated gender service model of care operating in Victoria, Australia. Patient or Public Contribution: The Whole of Self Affirming Care Lived Experience Advisory Group together with trans members of the research team in designated peer and non‐peer research roles have contributed to the design of the present study protocol and corresponding manuscript. These individuals will also contribute to analysis, interpretation, and write‐up of all subsequent data and outputs.

Geography education seeks to encourage an appreciation of the diverse ways people relate to, value and understand place. Indigenous-led geography education offers multiple ways of relating to and learning about place that centres care and repair. Storytelling, in its diverse narrative and creative forms, is a core element of Indigenous ways of knowing and a powerful mode of learning. This commentary introduces, and offers reflections on, an ongoing project aiming to develop Country-led pedagogy in a highly valued water place within settler colonial Australia. Country-led pedagogy is a form of Indigenous-led geography education which invites people, in this case high school classes and a youth group, to learn from being on Country. While curriculum objectives are accommodated in the process, learning from Country is the priority, via storying and approaching repair in water places. As a collaboration between Country, local Aboriginal people, young people, natural resource managers, educators and researchers, we document how Indigenous-led geography education can contribute to transitions to more sustainable futures.

Sensing and knowing Country in deeply colonised southeastern Australia is affected by persistent undermining, in both physical and metaphorical forms, by individuals, organisations and structures. Physical undermining occurs when extractive regimes, such as mining, damage Country while metaphorical undermining can play out when Indigenous knowledges are not centred when engaging with Country. Ngayirr Ngurambang: Sacred Country near Mudgee, Wiradjuri Country, an art exhibition led by Wiradjuri curator Aleshia Lonsdale, aimed to invite people to experience, engage with and awaken to these challenges. The exhibition brought together Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists from regional places, to reflect on, and build, sensibilities and knowledges of one part of this Country: The Drip, Goulburn River National Park. The physical undermining of this treasured women's water place comes from encroaching coal mines in the region while a form of metaphorical undermining arises in persistent settler colonial structures and processes. By drawing together insights from the curator, artists and participants of the exhibition, through interviews and qualitative surveys, this paper argues that artmaking and receiving can push against colonial hegemonic structures and enable different sensing and relational onto-epistemologies that are based in respect.

Indigenous and non-Indigenous collaborators embarked on the Dalarinji project to understand and promote the social, emotional, and mental well-being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTIQ+ young people in Australia. Initiated in 2019, this research fills a critical gap in academic literature, advancing national policy dialogue, and providing a robust evidence base for community research partners BlaQ Aboriginal Corporation. The exploration covers moments of partnership, collective contestation, and isolation, emphasising pedagogic moments and team efforts in maintaining participant safety and relationship integrity. Despite ongoing struggles, the team’s diverse identities enabled the building of solidarity, trust, and collegiality, fostering a dynamic learning environment. Inspired by bell hooks’ “Teaching Community”, the research team navigated these challenges, growing and learning from each other, while centring the rights, needs, and aspirations of Indigenous queer young people. The pedagogy of hope propelled the project forward, guiding research dynamics, and co-authorship processes.

Professor Corrinne Sullivan’s chapter juxtaposes raw talent, absolute determination and sheer will to ‘do more’ with the barely visible structures and attitudes designed to keep Indigenous people ‘in their place’. Reflecting on a career journey that spans schooling to the achievement of a senior academic role, Professor Sullivan charts a recurring theme of underestimation, first in her family and later in her workplaces. She sagely uses this underestimation to refute low expectations, whether winning awards for her honours and doctoral work, or accolades for her research. As well, Professor Sullivan powerfully illustrates the connection between ‘dreaming big’, individual agency and how opportunities seized can build momentum for the next career goal. A key lesson from this chapter is not to underestimate Indigenous ability, particularly where early signs of success demonstrate ample prospect of future possibilities, but rather to create opportunity for talent to flourish.

Indigenous LGBTIQSB+ individuals occupy a unique intersection of identities that inform their lived experiences and the ways in which they navigate colonial settler educational institutions. Despite a considerable body of evidence demonstrating the importance of inclusion, educational policies in Australia remain outdated. These policies are frequently informed by a deficit approach that justifies the absence of Indigenous and gender/sexuality diverse content within school curricula. This further acts to shore up discriminatory practices and policies. Using interviews and workshops held with young Indigenous LGTBIQSB+ people, this article reports on the ways participants experienced educational institutional settings. First, participants reported on the kinds of policies and curriculum content that discriminated against and marginalised them, as well as highlighting some positive aspects of school and university. Participants also revealed the potentialities for Indigenous and LGBTIQSB+ inclusivity that could be facilitated within educational spaces. The article demonstrates the need for safer and more inclusive educational environments, which could be achieved through the decentring of settler knowledges and heteronormativity, transforming educational spaces at an institutional level to facilitate safety at interpersonal and collective levels.

This is the introductory article for the special issue “Indigenous peoples, digital leisure, and popular culture”. Following the 2016 issue of AlterNative edited by Michelle Harris and Bronwyn Carlson “Indigenous people, popular pleasure and the everyday”, this article comments on the continued influence of the former issue and offers some new commentary on Indigenous popular and digital leisure today.

This paper charts how, in interviewing across generations of assigned female at birth (AFAB) queers in ‘Australia’ about their experiences of lateral violence in LGBTQ+ communities, we found dominant narratives of joy, solidarity and empathy across differences, generations and intersections that demonstrate the ongoing world-making inherent to queer communities. We chart the future-oriented, more utopian themes that came out, in particular around queer (as opposed to LGB) communities and the positive ethics and politics that emerge from and are forged in them.