ATSI Health Readings

Week 1 - Tutorial Notes

• Assessment 1 - Cadmus Essay 600 words (20%) Due Friday Week 3 (7th March), needs at least 2 peer reviewed articles as references. Choose an Aboriginal Community controlled health service and how it works (give an intro with the name, services provided, history of the service, and include a response to the following questions within the essay):

  • Why is there a need for an aboriginal community controlled health service

  • Services include things along with primary care services. Why are these important?

  • What is a nurse’s role within these community controlled health services?

  • Consider a familiar mainstream service, what are some of the differences you can think of between mainstream health services and the aboriginal community controlled health service you have chosen?

• Assessment 2 - 1200 word Reflection (40%). Reflect on your experience of undertaking this course and how this experience and your learning will inform your nursing practice. Use the Gibbs reflective cycle as a framework to describe your experience, share your feelings/thoughts about the experience, analyse/make sense of the experience, form a conclusion about what you have learned and what you could have done differently, create an action plan for how you may implement what you have learned in your nursing practice

  • Describing how you feel about something in in particular, both the good and the bad things (eg. you can write about a particular aspect of the stolen generations that has stuck with you/made you think)

Week 2 Reading: The importance of local history for nurses: an Aboriginal Australian micro-history

• Listening to individuals recall their life experiences informs assessment, diagnosis, and the development of treatment plans

• Aboriginal Australians experiences the trauma of colonial frontier wars, stolen land and stolen children, along with systemic racism and discrimination that excluded them from Australia’s national constitution, and not having the right to vote until 1967

• Following the invasion of NSW in 1788 and subsequent colonisation, Aboriginal Australian warriors like Pemulwuy and Cannabayagal fought back by raiding British farms and engaging in battles known as the Frontier Wars. When Cannabayagal was killed, he was beheaded and his head sold to a young Scottish naval surgeon Dr. Patrick Hill for thirty shillings and a gallon of rum. The head was de-fleshed and preserved in alcohol during the voyage back to England

• Phrenology promoted the idea that the shape of a person’s skull could be used to make generalisations about the content of their personality and the characteristics of the race that they were a member of.

• Historical trauma - Refers to past events that leave a long-lasting impression on whole communities. It’s widespread in nature, its traumatic events lead to collective suffering and it is perpetrated with malicious intent, impacting group dynamics within families and communities

• Greater awareness of historical trauma, like that experiences by Aboriginal Australians, may position nurses to develop a trauma-informed approach that assists individuals and communities

Week 3 Readings

• Common triggers for Stolen Generations survivors include reminders of childhood trauma, like being touched without permission, clinical settings resembling a dormitory/institution, situations resembling a lack of control experienced on forced removal, authoritative tone of voice

Week 6 Reading: Bridging cultures in Aboriginal health

• Cultural vitality - The emotional strength, the spirit, the essence of people who strive and struggle to maintain strong identity and adapt to new and challenging environments, while they value the past and pass on distinctive cultural beliefs, practices, and life ways.

• Adaptation - Requires people to manipulate and negotiate the environments that influence their life chances.

• Family organisation and cultural vitality - Aboriginal people belong to extensive family networks that extend beyond particular places and “blood” definitions. They have direct and indirect kinship.

• Women play a role in community and leadership affairs beyond immediate families and family networks which shows cultural vitality, as they are striving and struggling to maintain strong families and adapt to new and challenging environments while they pass on distinctive cultural beliefs, practices, and life ways to their children and grandchildren.

• Principles of reciprocity - Patterns of sharing based on clear rules and regulations which define one’s rights, duties and obligations within their kinship structures. They exist in all Aboriginal communities but they manifest differently in each network. These ideals are usually applied in the following situations:

  • Generosity/sharing from parents to kids and vice versa

  • Between siblings (more frequently)

  • From adults to nephews and nieces

  • Grandparents to grandchildren, not always vice versa

  • Between friends (age-mates) may be a strong reciprocal

  • Between fellow reserve/mission residents

• By giving, individuals not only show how much they care, but they establish power relationships where the giver may want to influence or pressure the receiver if exchanges are not equal

• Aboriginal people prefer individualism in decision-making rather than communal decision-making. Individual interest comes first, then family interest, and then community interest. Individuals rarely give up their right of veto as even though someone may have been elected to represent individual views, actions have been decided by a majority of people at community meetings. Those who do not agree, simply distance themselves so as to show that the elected individual does not speak on their behalf.

• Child decision making - Many maintain that children have become so aware of their ‘rights’ that they won’t listen to adults, accept any form of discipline, and will do whatever they like. Some blame the government as it provides income support for youth who leave home, others believe they have lost control when it became illegal to chastise children. These dilemmas have a lot to do with unemployment rates and changing indicators of adulthood.

• Land is central to Aboriginal people as they protected it during colonisation and grieved it when it was taken away from them.