Project Name: Kanyirninpa: health, masculinity and wellbeing of
desert Aboriginal men; and
Developing, sustaining and evaluating health programs for
Aboriginal men.
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Project Numbers:
SE 114 & 185
Project Leader:
Dr Brian McCoy
- Funding support through the National Health and Medical
Research Council (NHMRC) and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS).
- Transfer of knowledge through the CRCAH. It supported
travel for the men involved from the Western Desert to Melbourne to
share their story with other men's groups, and learn from men's
groups and services.
- University support through the Centre for Health and Society
(The University of Melbourne) and the Australian Research Centre in
Sex, Health and Society (ARCSHS, La Trobe University)
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Background
Aboriginal men’s health was identified at the last CRC
for Aboriginal Health Convocation and Chronic Conditions
roundtable as an area that is under-researched and requiring
greater attention.
Brian McCoy is a researcher who is presently working with desert
Aboriginal men to develop health programs that are culturally
appropriate and sustainable. Brian has lived and worked in a number
of Aboriginal communities in northern Australia since the early
1970s. His doctorate explored the health of Aboriginal men in a
remote desert region of Western Australia. Since completing his
doctorate he has received a National Health and Medical Research
Council postdoctoral fellowship in Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander health, and is based at the Australian Research Centre in
Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University.
Brian explains why research into Aboriginal
men’s health is so important and the links to the Social and
Emotional Wellbeing area.
'While we know the health of Aboriginal men is generally poor,
and often worse than Aboriginal women, we do not sufficiently
understand much about the different ways in which Aboriginal men
perceive their health. Nor do we understand how a Western model of
health might engage more positively with Aboriginal men and their
health needs.
'I first came to live in the Kutjungka desert region of the SE
Kimberley in the early 1970s. I returned to live there for much of
the 1990s. Over those years I experienced the energy, culture and
life of these desert people (especially through their kinship,
ceremonies, hunting and sport) but also the regular and tragic
events that shaped their lives (young people’s funerals,
premature death and violence).
What is the research about?
'In 2001 I returned to research men’s health. Through the
cultural lens of kanyirninpa, often translated by the
English word holding, I found a way of appreciating not
only the ways in which generations of men looked after and
‘grew up’ younger men, but also how that critically
important social process had been affected over 70 years of
colonial and mission contact. As men shared their stories with me
through story, art and song, I came to appreciate that men’s
health in this region could not be separated from their
relationship to the land, the ancestral dreaming, and to one
another. Health was personal, but it was also gendered, relational,
social and spiritual.
'Through this research many of the reasons why desert men do not
use clinics became evident. For example, clinics are largely female
spaces whose confines do not allow for the multiplicity of
relationships desert people share. These relationships require
recognition and negotiation, especially by young men after they
become adult or wati. Thus, men prefer
their own clinic space where they can be treated by other men. Male
healers or maparn provided a distinctive and
traditionalist response to illness, and not always in the same way
as desert women. Male maparn, young and old, continue to
be active within this desert region.
'The research also looked at petrol sniffing, football and
prison: activities that not only engage desert men, some quite
young, but also demonstrate some of the complexity and
contradictions found in addressing health issues for Aboriginal
men. Over a number of decades petrol sniffing has provided a social
context for young men to experiment with drugs, peer relationships
and alternative forms of social and personal behaviour. It can also
disclose a need within them for older male company. Such company,
if offered, can lead young men away from petrol sniffing.
Australian Rules football offers young men a place where they can
enjoy other male company while developing a range of physical and
social skills, all of which are publicly celebrated by older
members of their communities. At the same time, sporting
competitions can also generate tensions between individuals and
families by distracting men from work and other community
responsibilities. Prison can be accepted by some men for its
benefits. While it can provide some of the nurture and care that is
expressed by kanyirninpa, it can also, and dangerously,
remove and separate men for significant periods of their lives from
their partners and children, land and cultural responsibilities.
Petrol sniffing, football and imprisonment can each provide risks
to men’s health and yet at the same time also contribute to
their physical, social and emotional wellbeing.
'So it’s important to identify the ways in which the
particular male experience and expression of kanyirninpa
can support and strengthen men across and within generations. This
can provide a valuable foundation for men’s health programs.
From this basis, we can then begin to deal with some of the other
serious health issues facing these men.'
Publications:
McCoy, Brian 2008, Holding Men - Kanyirninpa and the health
of Aboriginal men, Aboriginal Studies Press,
Canberra. Download Order Form.
Fact Sheet 2008: How do we improve the health of
Aboriginal men?
McCoy, B. 2006, 'Why change Aborigines into images of
ourselves?', Eureka Street Online, 22 August, www.eurekastreet.com.au
McCoy, B. 2006, 'Aboriginal Communities: Who may speak?',
Eureka Street Online, 30 May, www.eurekastreet.com.au
McCoy, B. 2006, 'Healers, clinics and Aboriginal people: Whose
health and who benefits?', Health Issues, no. 86, Autumn,
pp. 13–16.
McCoy, B. 2006, Kanyirninpa: Health, masculinity and wellbeing
of desert Aboriginal men, PhD Thesis, The University of Melbourne
ePrint Repository, http://eprints.infodiv.unimelb.edu.au/archive/00001886
McCoy, B. 2005, 'Generational trauma and Indigenous men's
health: Are we missing something?', Discussion Paper, No. 29/2005,
Curtin Indigenous Research Centre, Centre for Aboriginal Studies,
Perth.
Related Links:
Brian
McCoy interviewed on Speaking Out on ABC Radio, 6 July 2008
Brian
McCoy interviewed on Life Matters on ABC Radio, 23 July
2008
Brian McCoy interviewed in The Age newspaper, Melbourne, 26 July
2008
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