IKC 101

Assessment 3: Expression of Interest

Due date: 14/10/2022

EOI: Health
The National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO) is "the
national peak body for Aboriginal health. In 1997, the Federal Government funded NACCHO
to establish a Secretariat in Canberra [this] increased the capacity of Aboriginal Peoples
involved in [Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services] to participate in national
health policy development."

Section 1.

Upon studying this subject, cultural competence was a foreign terminology to me, and I was

ignorant of Indigenous Australians and their history and culture. As an immigrant, my

understanding and knowledge of Indigenous Australians were limited due to the dominant

culture's narrative and insufficient insight skills and knowledge. Chisari (2012) stated that

white dominant culture "Ensures the continuing strength of certain narratives and of shutting

down debate around other issues" (p.148). The deficit discourse of Indigenous Australians

was built without acknowledging where that construction originated. However, through

reflecting on and implying Russell's anchor point (Russell, 2020) through this course, I

understood my standpoint in relation to Indigenous Australians and realized the limitation of

my knowledge. This process expanded my standpoint and led me to realize racialization

embedded in Indigenous history and culture and the deficit discourse the past government

enforced (Beresford and Omaji, 1998). It allowed me to think critically about Indigenous

histories, particularly how they are still impacted and positioned in society nowadays,

especially in the health sector. It gave me more comprehensive views and broader insight,

particularly about how Indigenous Australians have fought to protect their rights, heritage

and culture and achieve health equity in life expectancy, diseases, health access and health

funds.
The standpoint of the contemporary National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health

Organization [NACCHOs] is culturally competent, as expressed on their website, "An

ACCHO is a primary health care service initiated and operated by the local Aboriginal

community to deliver holistic, comprehensive, and culturally appropriate health care to the

community" (NACCHOs, 2022, para. 3). This standpoint of the organisation acknowledges

the discrimination and harm due to power imbalance and social division between non-

Indigenous and Indigenous Australians and understands the true needs, such as respecting

Indigenous culture and history from health professionals. This principle aligns with the belief,

knowledge and standpoints I have gained through this course. It is vital to the implementation

of this project to engage respectfully within the Indigenous community. This is my ongoing

contribution to Yindyamarra Winhanganha, which would allow for enhancing the health

outcomes of Indigenous Australians while providing culturally competent health care.

Section 2.

The government's attempts to create white homogeneity toward Indigenous Australians and

their community through the Protection Act and the Assimilation Policy created negative

health experiences for Indigenous Australians (Hampton & Toombs, 2013). Beresford and

Omaji (1998) stated, "Social Darwinism, this view was elevated into a theory which

purported to explain the existence of 'superior' and 'inferior' races, the former being able to

overrun the latter with greater energy and mental ability. No more powerful idea had entered

the debate on race. Black, inferior races would die out because they were biologically inferior

to Europeans" (p.33). The past government's collective standpoint of Indigenous Australians

created these policies, which led to discrimination and oppression of Indigenous Australians.

The policies allowed non-Indigenous Australians to categorize others with physical and
cultural traits within ethnicity. It created more social issues in Australia, as racialization can

create discrimination and inequalities in the society without the individual realizing being a

racist (Randell-Moon, 2019). These policies racialized Indigenous Australians' norms and

positioned them as being below society's standards and socially dysfunctional. Due to these

policies, Indigenous Australians were forced to abandon their culture, history, land and

traditional health practice and adapt to white medicine, which contrasted with traditional

health practices that included all elements of life (Mayes, 2020). It created a health gap

between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, such as life expectancy, behavior risk

factors and fetal death (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2018). The government

attempted to reduce the health gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians by

promoting health campaigns such as Closing the Gap. However, this top-down project

categorised people by race and ethnicity (Beresford and Omaji, 1998) and enforced deficit

discourse in Australian society (Stoneham, 2014).

Indigenous Australians were constantly exposed to institutionalized racial discrimination

reinforced by the media. "The news media, while drawing on traditions of objectivity or fact,

has the power to marginalise and contribute to discrimination against Indigenous people. The

media can articulate and transmit pervasive and negative narratives, images and ideas about

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities" (McCausland, 2004, p.85). The most

common reportage on Aboriginal health is alcohol, drug abuse, child abuse, domestic

violence, death in custody and crime (Thomas et al., 2020). This is how Indigenous

Australians are described in Australian society. Due to the ongoing impact of neo-

colonisation, Indigenous Australians have experienced "fundamental aspects of invasion and

colonisation" until today (Gale & Bolzan, 2012, p.258).

These social issues resulted in several ethical issues in Australian society. The past

government's policies restricted Indigenous Australians' access to education, leading to poor

health literacy and a high unemployment rate (Hampton & Toombs, 2013). These negatively

impacted Indigenous Australians' health as they were limited from accessing health funds,

health services, and good quality food and housing (Taylor &Guerin, 2019). Also, the

dominant culture's narrative limited health professionals' knowledge of Indigenous and

created a culturally unsafe environment for Indigenous communities. "It is hidden from view

for most of us in the non-Indigenous community most of the time, for white Australia works

hard to deny or not know – a structure of forgetting intrinsic to the properties of being a

colonist in a settler-colony" (Porter, 2017, p.650). These ethical issues became barriers to

enhancing the health outcome of Indigenous Australians, and these issues need to be solved

to create a better health sector for Indigenous Australians.

Section 3.

In order to reduce the health gap between non-Indigenous Australians and Indigenous

Australians, health professionals need to acknowledge Indigenous Australians' viewpoints,

culture, history and how Indigenous Australians are positioned in current days. Chisari (2012)

emphasized that on some resources, they describe "Indigenous culture as an old culture and

belonging to the past, with minimal connection to the present" (p.147). Proper education

about Indigenous culture and history to health professionals can improve the cultural safety

of health services to Indigenous communities (Muller, 2014). Many Indigenous Australians

avoid mainstream health care, as they perceive it as culturally unsafe and disrespectful of

their ethnicity due to decades of historical oppression (Hadjipavlou et al., 2018). In order to

engage Indigenous Australians in mainstream health services to enhance their health

outcome, the health policy needs to be changed and developed to produce a policy applicable

to Indigenous Australians of different ages, living environments, education, and socio-

economic backgrounds. During the process, it is essential to apply bottom-up projects as it

allows more community involvement and the creation of relevant, effective and culturally

respectful changes in Indigenous communities (Singer et al., 2015). This involves

"conducting research within a mutually respectful partnership framework", which requires a

collaborative approach to engage with local Aboriginal health professionals, or local Elders

to establish culturally competent and ethically applicable health policy and research in

Indigenous communities (Singer et al., 2015). "Addressing a priority health issue as

determined by the community" allows the communities to acknowledge health issues by

providing education and health literacy (Singer et al., 2015). This method allows health

professionals to recognise and challenge the healthcare experience in Indigenous Australians,

which leads towards culturally safe practices (Best, 2018). In turn, these strategies challenge

non-Indigenous Australians' collective standpoints that accuse Indigenous Australians of their

poor health and provide a culturally safe environment to enhance their health outcome

(Moran, 2009).
 Reference

Beresford, Q. & Omaji, P. (1998). Fear of the 'Half-caste'. In Beresford, Q. & Omaji, P., Our

State of mind: racial planning and the stolen generation (pp. 29-60). Fremantle Arts

Centre Press.

Chisari, M. (2012). The history and values of Australian citizenship testing. In Elder, C., &

Moore, K., New voices, new vision challenging Australian identities and legacies (pp.

137-151). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Gale, F., & Bolzan, N. (2012). Social resilience: Challenging Neo-colonial thinking and

practices around 'risk'. Journal of Youth Studies, 16(2), 257-

271. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2012.704985

Hadjipavlou, G., Varcoe, C., Tu, D., Dehoney, J., Price, R., & Browne, A. J. (2018). "All my

relations": Experiences and perceptions of Indigenous patients connecting with

Indigenous elders in an inner city primary care partnership for mental health and well-

being. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 190(20), E608-

E615. https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.171390

Hampton, R., & Toombs, M. (2013). Indigenous Australians and health: The wombat in the

room. Oxford University press.

Mayes, C. (2020). White medicine, white ethics: On the historical formation of racism in

Australian healthcare. Journal of Australian Studies, 44(3), 287-

302. https://doi.org/10.1080/14443058.2020.1796754

McCasuland, R. (2004). Special Treatment: The Representation of Aboriginal and Torres

Strait Islander People in the Media. Journal of Indigenous Policy, 4, 84-98.

Moran, A. (2009). What settler Australians talk about when they talk about Aborigines:

reflections on an in-depth interview study. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 32(5), 781-801

National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organizations. (2022). Aboriginal

community controlled health. NACCHO. https://www.naccho.org.au/acchos/

Porter, L. (2017). What is the Work of Non-Indigenous People in the service of a

Decolonizing Agenda? Indigenous Planning: from Principles to Practice/A

Revolutionary Pedagogy of/for Indigenous Planning/Settler-Indigenous Relationships

as Liminal Spaces in Planning Education and Practice/Indigenist Planning/What is

the Work of Non-Indigenous People in..., 18(4).

Randell-Moon, H. (2019). Incarceration, migration and Indigenous sovereignty: Thoughts

on existence and resistance in racist times.

Russell, G. (2020). Reflecting on a Way of Being: Anchor Principles of Cultural

Competence. In J. Frawley, G. Russell, & J. Sherwood (Eds.), Cultural Competence

and the Higher Education Sector: Australian Perspectives, Policies and Practice (31-

42). Springer.

Singer, J., Bennett-Levy, J., & Rotumah, D. (2015). "You didn't just consult community, you

involved us": transformation of a 'top-down' Aboriginal mental health project into a

'bottom-up' community-driven process. Sage Journals. https://journals-sagepub-

com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/doi/full/10.1177/1039856215614985

Stoneham, M. (2014). Bad news: Negative Indigenous health coverage reinforces stigma.

The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/bad-news-negative-indigenous-health-

coverage-reinforces-stigma-24851

Taylor, K., & Guerin, P. T. (2019). Health care and Indigenous Australians: Cultural safety

in practice (3rd ed.). Bloomsbury Publishing.

Thomas, A., Jakubowicz, A., & Norman, H. (2020). Does the media fail Aboriginal political

aspirations?: 45 years of news media reporting of key political moments.