CHILD PROTECTION INTERVENTIONS WITHIN INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES - AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

In recent times, child welfare bureaucracies have been required to re- define their relationship with indigenous communities, particularly in view of the impacts associated with their past interventions within t hese communities. This process of readjustment has been grounded in th e apparent endorsement by child welfare bureaucracies of the principle of indigenous self-determination and their declared acknowledgement o f the desirability of devolving greater responsibility for decision ma king about child welfare matters to indigenous communities. This paper suggests that, despite statements to the contrary the processes and m echanisms employed by child welfare agencies to promote indigenous aut onomy have not adequately acknowledged the saliency of indigenous soci al domains nor have they seriously challenged the precepts of the exis ting administrative domains that govern child protection interventions . Consequently the processes employed by child protection agencies to develop culturally appropriate services have seldom matched the rhetor ic associated with them. It is still the case that indigenous Australi ans are expected to fit within the current structure of child welfare agencies, and that their expectations should conform with the accepted orthodoxies that govern child protection interventions. This paper se eks to examine the processes by which child welfare bureaucracies have , on the one hand, attempted to re-cast their relationship with indige nous communities, while, on the other hand, maintaining the primacy of their administrative domains.