Resistance to Assimilation: Expanding Understandings of First Nations Cultural Connection in Child Protection and Out-of-home Care

ABSTRACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures are integrated into child protection and out-of-home care (OOHC) systems via the connection element of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle (ATSICPP). This article focuses on cultural connection in Australian child protection and OOHC systems over time, from its inception to its contemporary use to improve health and wellbeing and ameliorate cultural disconnection. An expanded understanding of cultural connection in Australian OOHC systems is articulated where cultural connection is theorised as a process of culturally connecting, while a critical position concerning the risk of cultural disconnection in OOHC is held. Indigenous cultures are fundamental to individual and community health and wellbeing. However, cultural connection in Australian OOHC systems risks becoming a site of bureaucratic policy compliance to ameliorate the effects of cultural disconnection produced by disproportionate First Nations child removals. This article illuminates this critical position while theorising how culturally connecting can be better understood in OOHC. IMPLICATIONS Cultural connection for First Nations children and young people is important for health and wellbeing, but is poorly understood in child protection and out-of-home care contexts. Cultural connection includes a community element, where culture acts as a point of distinctiveness to show that Indigenous peoples are surviving. At this juncture, cultural connection is a tool to resist the assimilatory impacts associated with ongoing child protection removals. Cultural connection can be understood as a complex journey of connecting for First Nations children and young people.