When I studied psychology at an Australian university in the early 1960s, the content of our courses came almost wholly from the United States (Hull, Skinner, Bruner) or Europe (Piaget, Freud, Bartlett). A small local tradition of social psychology addressed community and educational problems, but this died away. Much later I became concerned how global-North perspectives dominated the human sciences, marginalizing the knowledge practices of colonized and post-colonial societies. Yet an enormous intellectual resource existed here, including work on the psychological dimensions of oppression and social struggle (Ignacio Martín-Baró, Ashis Nandy, Paulo Freire, Maritza Montero and more). In this panel, I hope to raise issues about how a decolonized psychology concerned with social justice and community activism can be fostered in the university sector, where most psychological training is located. Among the problems are the increasingly corporatised, commodified and competitive structure of the university system, and the re-masculinization of the psychology discipline as a field of techno-science. Among the possibilities are the opening of university curricula to multiple knowledge formations; the re-design of professional education around social and ecological responsibility; and a democratization of decision-making in higher education institutions. (Background: Southern Theory [2007]; The Good University [2019]).

Making the Road by Walking Otherwise

This presentation addresses Indigenous psychologies learned in the affective conviviality forged with Indigenous communities in Mexico. Building solidary, intergenerational relationships I learned from their rich cosmogony, axiology, and praxes that have resisted colonization. Colonial knowledge systems embrace a doctrine of progress and civilization that justifies the exploitation of others for the benefit of a few, the abuse of nature and animals, and the appropriation and erasure of other cultures and knowledge systems. Euro-American psychology has collaborated in maintaining coloniality by imposing its theories and applications on other cultures. We begin the new era of decoloniality stopping the erasure of contributions emerging from the Global South that are not anthropocentric and whose common theme is the sacredness of nature, the cultivation of spirituality, and accountability to maintain harmonious relationships with humans and other-than-humans. These contributions make sustainability and sumac kawsay (wellbeing) possible. Solidary collaborations co-construct the Zapatista vision of a world in which many worlds are possible. These are sketches of decolonial praxes to co-construct “the otherwise” in order to address the pervasive ecocide and epistemicide still existing in our troubled times. This presentation will invite the audience to co-construct decolonial, transdisciplinary, and intercultural community psychologies performing epistemic disobedience in plurilogue.

Abstract title: Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mental Health and Suicide Prevention

Mainstream western approaches to mental health have an ongoing history of failing to consider and include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ needs. This includes the failure to acknowledge historical and cultural contexts within conceptualisations of mental health and wellbeing. The wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples cannot be understood without appropriate recognition of these important contexts.
In psychology, decolonising strategies are necessary and some of these involve reframing the discipline of psychology to incorporate Indigenous knowledges and worldviews. Also, concurrently increasing the involvement of Aboriginal psychologists, mental health practitioners and community healers in contributing to an Indigenous psychology. Our work involves advocating for the integration and legitimation of Aboriginal concepts of mental health and social and emotional wellbeing within mainstream health and mental health sector.

I discuss the importance of approaches that are grounded in strength-based concepts of community ownership and valuing culture that are essential in suicide prevention. Mental health and wellbeing amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities has become a critical issue and evidence suggests that it is worsening.

Emerging from a developing method of collaborative thinking and writing, in this presentation we share further notes for a liberatory Africa(n)-centred community psychology for the world as well as what the consequences of such a praxis might be for psychosocial change. Accordingly, we take up the challenge of imagining how critical psychologists working in communities might situate and think Africa – with its myriad and often contradictory historiographies, politics, ideologies and cultures – within their work, and how this situated thinking is able to re-write the disciplinary boundaries of community psychology. From here, in arguing for the transdisciplinary impulse of this kind of psychosocial praxis, we introduce and look to the revolutionary scholar and activist Neville Alexander as a figure whose work, despite having no formal ties with community psychology, and is rarely – if ever – drawn on by community psychologists, serves as an important resource for those around the world seeking to articulate a liberatory Africa(n)-centred community psychology. We conclude by considering some of the challenges faced by positioning the psychological within social change efforts, and what this means for psychologies of community within Africa and beyond.

Maori are the Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand. Our knowledge, customs, lifeways and language situate us as an interconnected people in time and place. Our origin narratives position us as a people of land, sea and sky. Our voyaging narratives locate us in the Pacific. Our change narratives bring us to the settler society of Aotearoa New Zealand, and contemporary circumstances. The mere fact of our continued existence is testimony to our commitment to survive and thrive, and to do so in uniquely Māori ways. Great strides have been made in language revitalisation, culture reclamation, land repatriation and engaging cultural knowledge and practice to inform lives, science and technology. Te Ao Māori – the Maori world, remains an essential pillar for Māori flourishing, demonstrating how Indigenous knowledge systems can make a critical contribution to sustainable futures for the world.