What research or surveillance systems do we need to change policies and practice ? Dr Heather Gifford Whakauae Research for Māori Health and Development Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Pre-congress Workshop Adelaide Sept 2012

Who is doing the surveilling? Who is being surveilled? What is surveillance data being used for?

Questions being asked are of interest to the Government and defined by the Government and may not necessarily be the questions that are interesting or relevant for indigenous people themselves; said another way the agenda and control for what information is collected remains largely in the hands of the Government.

Statistical indicators with which progress in closing the gap will be measured represent Indigenous Australia not as a society, but as a population comprised of individuals, that may be grouped in geographically bounded ‘communities’ for the purposes of analysis or interventions. Such a framework does not account for the dynamics within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander societies, or of the structural conditions and relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. Kerryn Pholi 2009.

If we dispense with that definition of Aboriginal people and treat Aboriginal people as First Peoples - that is our status derives from us being here before settlement - not on the basis of race but an historical argument, then Aboriginal people become citizens with an attribute that is political, not racial. Professor Marcia Langton, Melbourne Writers Festival, 2012.

Source: Hill S, Sarfati D, Blakely T, et al. Ethnicity and management of colon cancer in New Zealand. Cancer 2010;116(13): of colon cancer in New Zealand. Cancer 2010;116(13): Step 2: What are the causes of these trends and inequalities? Incidence (e.g. tobacco, alcohol) and survival (e.g. comorbidity, health services) Example: Receipt of treatment for colon stage III cancer by ethnicity.

such reductionism and essentialism of Indigenous identity requires Indigenous people to either conform to the prevailing depiction of Indigenous status—to be sick, poor, under- educated, marginalised and oppressed—or cease to exist as an ‘authentically’ Indigenous person. Yin Paradies 2006

This is an example of the wishful thinking around the power of statistics that seems to be at work in Indigenous policy circles in Australia: that improved and increased data will magically translate into improved and increased health and wellbeing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. In the absence of a nationally representative Indigenous body, best positioned to provide the link between data, theory and policy development, such a translation may indeed have to be magical. Kerryn Pholi 2009.

Government Response to the Report of the Māori Affairs Committee on its Inquiry into the tobacco industry in Aotearoa and the consequences of tobacco use for Māori – The long term goal of making New Zealand "essentially a smokefree nation by 2025"