Buradyara Project: Creating Paths out of Prison for Incarcerated Indigenous Mothers

By Ruth Skilbeck

A book has just been published on women prisoners in Australian jails. I saw an interview with the author on the ABC a couple of nights ago. It gave the figure that 98% of women prisoners are victims of domestic violence. I know from my research: that the majority of women prisoners in Australia are Aboriginal and that the vast majority also are mothers, leaving children outside- to be looked after and also to see their mothers in prison - not a good social role model one would have thought – why jail all these women?

Last year at the University of New South Wales I designed a research project tackling this very issue of the disproportionate imprisonment of Aboriginal mothers, and the impacts on them and their children. My role was Lead Investigator in a Linkage (government research project that links with industry) and I had a very positive talk at the Australia Council about this, as well as other favourable responses by people who are concerned about this little known social problem. I was unable to pursue this research project, at that time, as just as I was about to submit the project to the Research Office, I was informed my contract was not going to be renewed.

Buradyara Project (from the word for butterfly in Sydney’s Dharag language) is the name I gave the research Linkage project I designed as Lead Investigator at the University of New South Wales last year (2012) when I was employed as a Lecturer B (teaching and research) at the university. The aim was to work with arts and artists and achieve social change.

After working on this intensively for eight months, and with the support of senior academics at the university, two days before the deadline to submit the proposal for essential feedback prior to actual submission through the Research Office, I was informed by the university's ARC research co-ordinator that I was not eligible to submit my project as my contract was not going to be renewed next year (many people had known that I was working on this for months).

When I questioned this at the Journalism and Media Research Centre, where I was employed as a Lecturer, I was told to keep on working on it and submit it this year. But how can I do that if I am not employed by a university?

The answer is, once again: you can’t, at least not directly. As there are strict rules which govern the procedures of eligibility for funding.

However in the spirit of buradyara, butterfly, the ugliest and least prepossessing being can transform into a beautiful butterfly. I have contingency plans to start up a new arts venture, which may be able to continue this work, if an actual university lecturing position is not forthcoming.

C1     PROJECT TITLE

Buradyara Project: Creating Paths out of Prison for Incarcerated Indigenous Mothers

C2     AIMS AND BACKGROUND

Buradyara Project aims to increase public knowledge and awareness of increasing number of Indigenous mothers with mental and physical health problems being given prison sentences, rather than adequate alternatives of health care /housing/counselling- in Australia, and comparatively to other postcolonial countries.

To do this thorough a creative art methodology of art as social research -performance/visual/sound working to raise awareness through making art on this theme and also working with Indigenous mothers transitioning out of prison into a creative community.

This will be given media coverage in journalism articles, and video, and a book.

This will also give international and national coverage of the artists involved in the project- and for the visual artists will include exhibitions.

Promote work of urban Indigenous artists in Australia- and will also make connections with international indigenous arts groups in Canada and elsewhere.

Create knowledge, and raise awareness, that will influence policy change and lead to Reconciliation.

*Buradyara means 'butterfly' in the local Sydney language Dharag.

The project, has an innovative relational approach, it focuses on Indigenous mothers in prison, as a way of creating a coherent focus, it relates the mothers’ situations (and individual needs) to their children and families, and the wider context of Indigenous peoples in prison including deaths in custody but the main focus is on mothers transitioning out of prison into the community- as a group to research and also to work with in the praxis of the Buradyara Project.

Background:

Using art as social research, the project will combine research into the social and economic history of Australian settlement that has led to the very high numbers of Indigenous mothers in prison, and increasing numbers of Indigenous mothers with mental and physical health problems being incarcerated instead of receiving treatment and help.

This project builds on the latest groundbreaking international research that shows that mass incarceration, the preferred ‘solution’ to crimes of poverty and social disadvantage over the past three decades in ‘post’ colonial countries, has not worked, early imprisonment of Indigenous girls and young women- in juvenile detention centres does not deter crime but leads to lifetime returns to prison, a social failure which is now conclusively proven to be a highly costly economic as well as social burden (Baldry 2012) to ‘decolonizing’ societies around the world. This project takes a highly innovative media communications and social justice based approach to researching alternative solutions, through creativity and counselling, to support working in collaboration with Professor Baldry and her life-course datasets, that show that in NSW Indigenous people and specifically women are disproportionately represented in short term recidivist incarceration figures (Baldry 2012) and by Canadian based Trident Foundation, that specializes in post-trauma online counseling and mentoring services.  Using discourse analysis the project examines postwar – to the present representations of incarcerated women and their children (research shows most incarcerated indigenous women in NSW are mothers) in media discourses (journalism); criminal justice discourse (dataset figures); medical discourse (dataset figures); educational discourse (children’s school performance); and self-based creative arts discourse – the project investigates creative arts programs and counseling as means and methods of empowering women and their children, focusing on the transitioning of women from incarceration back in to the community a process in which they will be reunited with their children.

The project includes comparative case studies of incarcerated mothers in postwar postcolonial societies in Canada and in Ireland.

The largest percentage of the project seeks to investigates alternatives to mass incarceration of women – and mothers, and research questions – asking mothers about their experiences, including:

·      What creative arts programs are run in these institutions?

·      How are they run?

·      What counseling services are there and do these work?

·      Do online, blended online and face-to-face counseling services work?

·      How are they run?

·      What impact do creative arts programs have on women’s and children’s health and overall prospects of recovery?

·      What do incarcerated women and their children want and need to break the vicious cycle of generational incarceration?

 ©Copyright Ruth Skilbeck 2012-2013