The International Spot: Cultural Competency Training in Action –
The ICCLAP Experience
Presented By:
Marcelle Burns University of New England, Australia
Armidale, NSW, Australia
Presented at: ACLEA 53rd Annual Meeting July 29th – August 1st, 2017
Montréal, Québec
Marcelle Burns UniversityofNewEngland,Australia
Armidale,NSW,Australia
Marcelle Burns is a Gomeroi‐Kamilaroi first nations woman and Pre‐doctoral Fellow at the School of Law, University of New England (Australia). She has over twenty years' experience in the field of Indigenous peoples and laws, as a legal practitioner and academic. Her research interests include the recognition of First Nations in international and domestic laws and Indigenous knowledges and cultural competency in legal education. She is Project Leader for the Indigenous Cultural Competency for Legal Academics Program which aims to support academics to create inclusive learning environments for First Nations students, and build cultural competencies in all students, thus improving legal service delivery to First Nations communities in the long term.
Marcelle Burns, Pre-doctoral Fellow, School of Law
University of New England
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/British_Empire_1897.jpg
Australian Government: Senate Inquiry into Access to Justice (2009)
‘Indigenous peoples remain the most socially and economically
disadvantaged members of the Australian community. Submissions and
testimony highlighted broad and numerous legal needs which, they
argued, could only be addressed by access to appropriate legal advice
and representation, that is, a high quality and culturally sensitive legal
assistance service’. (8.2)(1)
First Australians and ‘Law’
What is Indigenous cultural competency?
• United States – diversity, inter-cultural competence, cross-cultural lawyering (1)
• Canada – Truth and Reconciliation Commission -inter-cultural competency (2).
• Australia – cultural awareness – now Indigenous cultural competency.
• Critiques – cultural humility, cultural safety, cultural inclusion, cultural intelligence (3)– Not multi-culturalism, diversity– Recognises unique status of Australia’s First Peoples
The road to ICC
Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1991)
Recommendation 96:That judicial officers and persons who work in the court service and in the probation and parole services and whose duties bring them into contact with Aboriginal people be encouraged to participate in an appropriate training and development program, designed to explain contemporary Aboriginal society, customs and traditions. Such programs should emphasise the historical and social factors which contribute to the disadvantaged position of many Aboriginal people today and to the nature of relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities today. The Commission further recommends that such persons should wherever possible participate in discussion with members of the Aboriginal community in an informal way in order to improve cross-cultural understanding. (3:79)
Recommendation 339: Reconciliation
Legal Professional Standards
Law Council of Australia
• The Model Admission Rules 2015 • Model Admission Rules requirements for Professional Legal Training (PLT)
– Lawyers skills include the need for ‘cross-cultural awareness’. – The explanatory note accompanying this requirement states that cultural awareness should
also specifically address the ‘difficulties of communication encountered by Indigenous people.’
• Policy Statement: Indigenous Australians and the Legal Profession: – promoting the study of law by Indigenous Australians and providing particular support to
Indigenous law students;– promoting the participation of Indigenous Australians in the legal profession and providing
particular support to Indigenous lawyers;– promoting participation by members of the legal profession in Indigenous cultural education
and training;– acknowledging the achievements of Indigenous law students and lawyers.
• Question extent to which Indigenous cultural education and training has been taken up by state/territory member bodies?
Law Societies: RAPs
Reconciliation Action Plans
• Provide a framework for organisation to realise their vision for reconciliation;• Practical plans of action built on relationships, respect and opportunities;• Create social change and economic opportunities for First Australians.
Key themes:• Building relationships with Aboriginal communities and organisations.• Support to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander law students and legal practitioners• Awareness of First Peoples protocols• Opportunities for CPD on Indigenous issues for legal practitioners• Procurement from First Nation Suppliers
Law Institute of Victoria:• Promote mandatory requirements for Indigenous subject matter in admission requirements, PLT
and law degrees and Torres Strait Islander content in law degrees.
Higher Education Context
• Bradley Review 2008• Behrendt Review 2012• Universities Australia 2011
• Best Practice Guidelines for Indigenous Cultural Competency in Australian Universities;
• Best Practice Framework for Indigenous Cultural Competency in Australian Universities
Universities Australia: Indigenous Cultural Competence
‘Student and staff knowledge and understanding of Indigenous Australian cultures, histories and contemporary realities and awareness of Indigenous protocols, combined with the proficiency to engage and work effectively in Indigenous contexts congruent to the expectations of Indigenous Australian peoples. Cultural competence includes the ability to critically reflect on one’s own culture and professional paradigms in order to understand its cultural limitations and effect positive change’.
Universities of Australia, National Best Practice Framework for
Indigenous Cultural Competency (2011: 48).
Need for ICCLAP (1)
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Student Outcomes in Law• Indigenous completion rates in higher education well below parity.• Behrendt Review identified that between 2005 and 2010 only 40.8%
of commencing First Peoples students completed their degree programs (2010: 8).
• Between 2003 and 2012 the completion rate for First Peoples students in law was 26.53% (DEET nd).
• The law completion rates of First Peoples in LLB programs also contributes to low number of Indigenous legal academics who constitute less than 0.8% of the academic workforce (Behrendt, 2012, 8).
Need for ICCLAP (2):ALTC - Law Academic Standards
Australian Learning and Teaching Council, Bachelor of Laws: Learning and Teaching Academic Standards Statement, (2010).
TLO 1: ‘Knowledge’
Demonstrate an understanding of a coherent body of knowledge that includes:
• The fundamental areas of legal knowledge, the Australian legal system, and underlying principles and concepts, including international and comparative contexts,
• The broader contexts within which legal issues arise, and
• The principles and values of justice and of ethical practice in lawyers’ roles.
Statement on the nature and extent of legal education
• Acknowledges law is shaped by many perspectives–including Indigenous perspectives (p.8).
• Knowledge to gain a law degree limited to ‘Priestly 11’.
Rodgers-Falk notes the ‘silence’ on Indigenous related topics within legal academic
governing standards. (2012: 15)
ICCLAP: Aims
The project aims to increase the inclusion of Indigenous cultural competency in legal education with a view to:
• Improve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student outcomes in law• Building Indigenous cultural competency in all students. • Better legal service delivery to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
communities.
Cross-university project: University of New England, University of Technology (Sydney), University of Melbourne, Australian National University, and Queensland University of Technology.
Funded by the Australian Government Department of Education and Training, until April 2018.
ICCLAP: Objectives
• Consult with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services, key stakeholders and legal academics to identify knowledge gaps and professional development needs for incorporating ICC in curricula (September 2016).
• Develop guiding principles for embedding ICC in legal education, a professional development module, and set of resources available online to assist legal academics in implementing ICC in legal curriculum.
• Deliver workshops for legal academics.
• Establish a community of practice of culturally competent legal academics to support the embedding of ICC in legal education.
ICCLAP: Project Activities
• Desktop survey of law schools
• Consultation workshop – September 2016
• Student survey – Dec 2016 and Feb 2017
• CALD Survey – July 2017
• Workshop for Legal Academics – 2 days
– September 2017
ICC: Recent Developments
• NSW Legislative Council’s Standing Committee on Law and Justice – The family response to the murders in Bowraville (2014)
• Northern Territory Law Society, Indigenous Protocols for Lawyers in the NT (2nd ed, 2015)
• South Australia, Lawyers Protocols for Dealing with Aboriginal Clients in SA (2010)
• Canada, Truth and Reconciliation Commission
ICC: Recent Developments
Higher Education Context
• Indigenous Student Success Program 2017– Eligibility criteria requires universities to promote
ICC for staff and students.
• Universities Australia, Indigenous Strategy 2017-2020– Cultural training for senior staff.
– Increasing cultural capabilities of graduates.
– Sharing the workload.
… my sister her and I went in and spoke to the prosecutor about the problem that we saw happening with the way the [Aboriginal] witnesses were being heard, the way they were being questioned, the way the witnesses were experiencing it …
[He] had such a sense in which he knew all this and did not need anybody to tell him. I do not like thinking about it as racism, but it is in a way. It is not seeing people for who they are, the stories they are telling, the feelings they are sharing.
Jeanette Blainey cited in, NSW Legislative Council’s Standing Committee on Law and Justice – The family response to the murders in Bowraville (2014)
Acknowledgements
References (1) Cross, T., Bazron, B. Dennis, K. and Issacs, M. (1989) Towards a Culturally Competent System of
Care, CASSP Technical Assistance Centre, Georgetown University Child Development Centre; Bryant, S. (2001) ‘The Five Habits: Building Cross-Cultural Competence in Lawyers’, Clinical Law Review 8, 33-107; Howell cited in Purnell, L. (2002). ‘The Purnell model for cultural competence’, Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 13, 193-196, Christine Zuni Cruz (2006) ‘Toward A Pedagogy and Ethic of Law/Lawyering for Indigenous Peoples’, North Dakota Law Review, 82:863;
(2) The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Honouring the Truth: Reconciling the Future: Summary Report of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015)
(3) Marcie Fisher-Borne, Jessie Montana Cain and Suzanne L. Martin (2014) ‘From Mastery to Accountability: Cultural Humility as an Alternative to Cultural Competence’, Social Work Education 34; Evan Hamman, ‘Culture, humility and the law: towards a more transformative teaching framework’, (2017, unpublished) available at https://eprints.qut.edu.au/104276/; Indigenous Cultural Competency for Legal Academics Program, Consultation Workshop Report -December 2016.
For Further Information www.icclap.edu.au
