Abstract
Acknowledgments: (which come first not last in Aboriginal culture) Thanks to my manager Lance James of the Yorta Yorta people for helping me prepare this paper. Thanks to the Woiwurung people upon whose traditional land the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service stands. Thanks to the Kuarna people upon whose traditional land we are presenting this paper.
Introduction: I am a white first generation English migrant working in Fitzroy, an inner urban Melbourne suburb. I attended primary school, secondary school and University in NSW, but learned nothing of indigenous matters. I started learning when I left Australia and people asked me about Aborigines. I knew nothing except pre-contact, pre-invasion as I now recognise it to be. I started working in the area in 1987, and have returned to it at grass-roots level in October 1998.
Objective: This presentation is descriptive not theoretical. I do not think we have enough basic data to elaborate complex metatheoretical frameworks for the sort of work I am going to talk about. It is all too new, and too emergent.