Where's your country?' New approaches for working with problematic alcohol use among Indigenous Australians in an urban setting

Abstract

Conversations between Indigenous Australians meeting each other for the first time often include the question, ‘Where’s your country?’. ‘Country’ is used by Indigenous Australians to refer to land which for them has historical and cultural significance. The association between Indigenous Australians and country and emerging literature on the importance to wellbeing of maintaining that association suggests that dislocation from country may have significance for treatment and rehabilitation of problematic alcohol drinking. Our paper has two parts: it describes a project conducted between 2008 and 2009 that evolved into a PhD commencing late 2009 (RL undertaking, PD and JG supervisory panel members); it then describes the PhD, which hypothesises that some people may be living on country from which they may not derive Indigenous cultural identity and that problematic alcohol use is associated with that dislocation.