The Role of Fashion and Art in First Nations Healing, Decolonisation, and Cultural Practice
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper explores the intersection of art, fashion, and decolonisation within First Nations communities, focusing on how clothing and adornment are powerful tools for healing, cultural survival, and resistance. Through art programs, fashion workshops, and community-based projects, First Nations peoples reconnect with culture, land, and history, fostering identity and continuity while addressing the traumas of colonisation. This paper examines how First Nations artists and designers engage with traditional garments, such as kangaroo skin cloaks and shell necklaces, to reclaim ancestral practices and challenge colonial traumas. By reinterpreting colonial clothes and creating new forms of fashion, artists engage in truth-telling, amplify resilience, and promote reconciliation. This paper highlights the role of art and fashion as an aesthetic expression and a strategy for cultural survival and resistance. It concludes by offering recommendations for policies and programs that support First Nations fashion initiatives, fostering economic opportunities, social well-being, and intergenerational healing. Ultimately, this paper advocates for the transformative power of art and fashion as pathways to decolonisation and empowerment for First Nations communities.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.033 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".