ExemplarB_Self-Reflective Report IHW-1 copy

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May 31, 2024

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Exemplar B 1 Self-Reflective Report INTRODUCTION This Self-Reflective Report is a detailed account of the themes surrounding specific workshops conducted in the subject 95735 Indigenous Health and Wellbeing and how they have invoked transformational change in my mindset and attitude. Before beginning this subject, I had a basic level of knowledge about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and minimal understanding of the health inequalities they face in Australia. Through Workshop 3, I was able to learn about the solutions that Indigenous people have to help their community and the importance of their individual role in self- determination and how it can help with healing. Workshop 6 reflected a similar mindset and educated me on how Western scientific methodologies differ from Indigenous methodologies and the work needed to decolonise these scientific methodologies so our future research targets and observes a broader scope of data and results. After learning about Indigenous people and how prejudice affects their health, I was surprised to learn about my own biases, privileges and the role I play in advocacy. I was able to educate myself on the benefits I carry in society in Workshop 5 and how I can use my inherent advantages to empower and advocate for Indigenous-led voices and solutions in Workshop 4 without speaking for them or coming across as self-serving. The subject also further enlightened me on the impact of unconscious biases in Workshop 2 and how these prejudices can harm groups of people. Through constant self-reflection, we can ensure these assumptions do not cause harm to others. REFLECTION 1: PREJUDICE The theme I’ve chosen as a focus for the Workshop 2 reflection is “prejudice”. I’ve chosen this theme as I learned more about the effects of intergenerational trauma through this module and its influence on the present and made links to my own experiences to address the preconceived conceptions, biases, and assumptions I subconsciously have. Through this workshop, I reflected on my childhood and the way my parents raised me. This reflection helped me empathise and understand the real, long-lasting repercussions of colonisation and reflect on how this can continue to impact Indigenous people today. I’ve made connections to my upbringing and experiences in childhood concerning the knowledge I’ve learned in the workshop. For example, when my parents arrived in Australia in 1999, they tried to assimilate into Australia as immigrants. Although reasons differ, this is slightly similar to how many Indigenous people were also forced into assimilation. Unfortunately, this change has caused us to lose an aspect of our identity, our cultural background, and our connection to our heritage. Understanding and learning about this aspect of Indigenous health and wellbeing will help me learn skills applicable to all aspects of work and life and how important it is to remove biases, prejudice and assumptions we have of other people from diverse backgrounds. It is essential that we gather information about others on a case-by-case basis. Eliminating or limiting my biases towards others can help me remain open-minded to new changes and allow myself to accept others for who they are and not who I have created them to be in my mind. The weekly content has helped solidify the aspects of medical health where institutional, systemic and structural racism is pervasive and has given me the knowledge to have more awareness, understanding and patience with people around me (ANTaR, 2021). I am much more self-aware and mindful of how my personal biases and judgements towards others can influence and possibly threaten their cultural safety, both in and out of the workplace. I aim to educate myself more and have a broader cultural awareness and competence. I also understand how difficult it is to remove one’s full biases, so I alternatively aim to question my decisions and ask myself if a preconceived assumption is guiding me or my prejudices (MacArthur, 2020). Through constant self-reflection of my attitudes, I strive to improve my cultural intelligence and become a more well-rounded individual who treats others with dignity and respect, regardless of background.

Exemplar B 2 REFLECTION 2: HEALING The theme I’ve chosen as a focus for the Workshop 3 reflection is “healing” due to its overarching effect on the workshop’s contents and modules and its role in guiding me to understand the importance of partnerships with Indigenous peoples. This week’s content also addressed the individual role self-determination plays in having the confidence and the support needed to receive and seek help when needed, ultimately reducing health inequity. As well as this, I understood how important it is to voice your own opinions and discuss them to find solutions that pertain to your own life and your community. Ultimately, communities should have the final say on choices and decisions that affect them. I also personally never realised how much community matters in the context of health-related decisions and the effect it can have in terms of long-term healing, and how Indigenous communities can create change themselves with their own solutions. For example, watching the videos on how Indigenous Australians utilise plants and bush medicines to treat many illnesses and how they had come to use these ways of healing before methods needed to be repeated, proved and verified by the scientific method (SBS The Feed, 2018). In the future, this information will aid me to respect and appreciate the different ways of healing and learn from those whose solutions have helped them and their community. I also learned more about partnerships and relationships and how these tie into the importance of community. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are relational people, and to them, relationships are central to their culture. The relationship between each other, the relationship with the land and with their community are incredibly valued, nurtured and reciprocal (Share Our Pride, 2022). Aboriginal Ngangkari spiritual healers (SBS The Feed, 2018) showed me that the pathway to healing is through connectedness and country, encompassing a holistic view. This different approach to healing is fundamental and should be maintained in the Indigenous culture and should be educated to health professionals so they can understand Aboriginal health holistically. I also learnt more about Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services available that can and do interact with Aboriginal people and are led by Aboriginal people to adapt and practice their approaches to healing. For example, Waminda, South Coast Women’s Health and Welfare Aboriginal Corporation (Waminda, 2022). The idea that evoked change in my mindset the most was the holistic perspective on healing and the incorporation of connection to country. As well as this, the differences between traditional and mainstream medicine and how these can go hand in hand to assist the health care industry and our community as a whole also influenced my attitude toward this topic. REFLECTION 3: ADVOCACY The theme I’ve chosen as a focus for the Workshop 4 reflection is “advocacy”. The theme of advocacy was incredibly prevalent in this workshop, and the ideas presented all linked to a more significant role non-Indigenous people play in reducing health inequity and influencing the majority to make changes, especially regarding health policies (Curtis et al., 2019). This week’s content made me feel like there was a bit more hope for the future in finding solutions to the inequalities and prejudices that Indigenous people and their communities have. I saw in this workshop that Indigenous communities have a significant amount of resilience. They continue to forge new and traditional ways of thinking, growing and healing, and they can empower themselves using solid partnerships, as seen through the Birthing on Country program (Waminda, 2021). I realised that Indigenous people have their own solutions and strategies; they don’t need someone to be their saviour. Instead, they need allies and people who can help advocate for their causes. I think this was eye-opening because when it comes to discrimination and oppression in other groups of people, I personally am concerned with ways we can “save” these people. What should I post, talk about, and share with others? What petitions do I sign, and where should I donate? Through the modules, I realised that the discussion becomes less about those who are oppressed and more about who is helping, how they are helping, or why they aren’t helping (to the same degree as the majority). Again,

Exemplar B 3 “saving” minorities becomes a competition and a badge of honour. I see it online, too. More people are concerned with actively showing the world that they support a cause to save face or get attention, but are very neutral and couldn’t care less in the real world. The materials made me much more aware of my own values and how I use my privileges to aid those people and be a good ally. I learned that advocacy is a journey and to always keep an open mind and listen to feedback that Indigenous people give you during the process, continuously learn new things and update yourself on the information (Amnesty International, 2018). The content was significant to me as I’ve become slowly more aware of other facets of the human experience. I aim to use my resources to broaden my horizons, ask more questions, continue educating myself and learning, and advocate for Indigenous people. REFLECTION 4: PRIVILEGE The theme I’ve chosen as a focus for the Workshop 5 reflection is “privilege”. Although this week’s workshop also focused on other themes such as cultural safety, social justice movements and more, I’ve chosen privilege because of the themes it relates the most to my situation and has allowed me to change my judgement towards a previous position more than any of the other topics despite the fact that the other topics were fascinating to learn. Through learning about my own privileges in this workshop, I was able to empathise further and understand my position in society and the aspects of my life that I take for granted and benefit from, whether I am aware of these benefits or not. I learnt that although white privilege was a term coined to describe the implicit societal advantages that European settlers who established the systemic structures in Australia benefit from (Kendall, 2012), it is not a universal experience applicable in other places. This was a different viewpoint as I had never considered this before, growing up in a diverse, multicultural society where I was forced at a young age to assimilate with those who represented Caucasian and Anglo-Saxon communities, I was ashamed of my own culture and absorbed a Eurocentric lifestyle to stand out less despite the racial diversity of people I grew up around. I also realised the impact of privilege on other components of my life through the activity by The Safe Zone Project (The Safe Zone Project, 2014). For a long time, I believed advocacy involved Anglo-Saxon or Caucasian people assisting and supporting BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) voices in the media and in real life. Because of this, I saw myself as someone who didn’t need to advocate for other racial demographics because I belonged on the side of the oppressed. In my mind, I didn’t need to spend time trying to better myself or advocate for others because I assumed I was supposed to need others to advocate for me. I have broadened my worldview to know now that oppression stems from multiple different components. For example, I am privileged in the way that I am able- bodied, that I can afford a roof over my head and food. I am also privileged enough to receive higher tertiary education and that my ancestors were able to maintain and practise their culture in the land they immigrated in. I took these aspects of my life for granted, and I’m grateful I was able to address and discuss these privileges in the workshop to aid my understanding of how I can identify the societal advantages that I am currently benefitting from and use them to assist others who aren’t as privileged within this structural system. REFLECTION 5: EPISTEMOLOGY The theme I’ve chosen as a focus for the Workshop 6 reflection is “epistemology”, the study of knowledge. Specifically, scientific methodologies and how the scientific community should work to decolonise these types of procedures in scientific research to incorporate a more holistic view of medicine that empowers Indigenous people with their permission, participation and input. The modules in this workshop opened my eyes to how our minds are wired to work using Western frameworks. These frameworks favoured a Eurocentric point of view and relied on things we can sense and repeat in similar conditions with the same results. Our narrow perspective only reflected a

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