Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Cultural Analysis

The Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people are Australia’s first people. They’re the Indigenous and traditional owners of our beautiful land. However, until the last few decades, this hasn’t always been recognised. The Indigenous people of Australia have faced colonization, oppression, the Stolen Generation, and all kinds of disrespect to their cultural heritage.

Compare the effects of colonisation of Australia’s two Indigenous groupings: Australian Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have faced disadvantages in various areas, particularly housing. The disadvantages these people face now are the result of policies introduced by the European settlers, then the government. The policies introduced were protection, assimilation, integration and self-determination. It is hard to understand the housing disadvantages faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people if their history is not known.

Embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives in the curriculum has now become a high priority amoungst schools across the nation. The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) (2013), recognises “that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures cross-curriculum priority is designed for all students to engage in reconciliation, respect and recognition of the world’s oldest continuous living cultures”. By including this, the curriculum will continue to see Indigenous culture throughout school become part of the norm. Furthermore Indigenous Australian perspectives can and should be included in the classroom and any barriers that arise can be overcome.

After reading the “’ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Awareness” module, my curiosity in cultural safety grew, and I realized that my role as a nursing student is not just caring patients but understanding and recognition of patient’s historical, social, economic, educational and political positions within the society. As a student nurse, I believe, we need to be educated, understand and recognize how to provide safe, efficient and quality healthcare services for different cultural groups, especially for Australian indigenous people. Cultural safety movements began in New Zealand during early 1980’s (Gerlach, 2012). During that period, Maori nurses and patients began to questioned why they should uphold nursing practices that were opposite to their beliefs and customs (Gerlach, 2012). In other words, they wanted to be acknowledged and treated as equal in health care settings.

The ‘Stolen Generations’ is a term used to describe the actions of which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, mostly children, were taken away from their families between the 1890’s and the 1970’s (Korff, 2014). Children were taken to institutions or adopted by non-Indigenous families and most never saw their families again. In the early 1900’s the Australian public was persuaded into believing Aboriginal children were deprived, mistreated and at risk in their own communities. People believed that Aboriginal children would receive a better education, a more loving and caring family and a more civilised upbringing if adopted by white families or government institutions. In reality Aboriginal children were being removed so that they

Aboriginals or indigenous Australians are the native people of Australia. Aboriginals were nomadic people who came to Australia about 40,000 – 60,000 years ago from Southeast Asia. Religion is a great part of Aboriginal culture. The essay answers these questions: What do Aboriginals belief? What is a Kinship system? What is Dreaming and Dreamtime? What rituals does Aboriginals have?

From a sociological lens, sociological theories can be applied to the drug usage of Aboriginal people. According to the structural functionalist theory, drug abuse is a response to weakening of societal norms. In relation to Aboriginal peoples, the absence of bond between some Aboriginal people and society, may be one reason why drug use is a common occurrence among people of Indigenous backgrounds. The anomie in some Aboriginal people who use drugs may exist at the individual level, which can be from biological or physiological reasons and/or psychological reasons. The norms created by society, the perception that doing drug is bad, may not be felt by some people, thus there is a weakening of a consensus of what is considered acceptable.

Introduction of new temptations into Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people’s lives such as alcohol, drugs, processed foods or un-natural to their culture, technology (more in the 20th century plus), clustered living environments, un-organization (within the community, family), money and greed

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are the native Australians and they have gone through lots of issues and trauma. The stolen generation, loss of land and culture, racism, discrimination etc. are some of the examples. Since, these events the Native Australians have stopped to trust the government and have shifted to the mountain side of the country. At present, we can see lots of changes since the last few decades. The government have given them priority in major fields such as work, and education. Despite the offers given to them, the organisations still need to encourage them to recruit themselves in the respective field. They are the most marginalised in Australia and due to the discriminatory policies and legislations, aboriginal communities have been denied access and participation in many areas such as education, health employment etc. Issues such as racism still prevails contributing to ignorance. Thus, the aboriginals need reconciliation, they need attention and inclusions to all the services provided by the government. They are the first people of Australia, which means they need more priority and importance and must be recruited in every field of development. The ways

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have a long and rich history in Australia. In the community in which I live, and hopefully will be working, many programs and events have been set up to support, encourage and maintain the qualities and efforts of the original owners of this land. Browsing through the council website, I was able to find information relating to the Aboriginal people who once lived in the western parts of Melbourne, they were the ‘Yalukit Wilum, a name meaning 'river camp' or 'river dwellers'.’ The council has provided links to a book written about their lives which details their cultural practices, their religious beliefs, their customs, key events in their calendar and other important information.

Both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal had valuable and reasonable arguments against the federal government’s decision. The technique the federal government should have used instead was to keep the rule that Aboriginal people have a right to fish when they wanted without a license and keep the fishing industry continuing their success. Since the fishing industry has been running for hundreds of years and Aboriginals come from a family of survival and fishing, then why not both work with each other in the same industry. This means that Aboriginals will still have a right to fish when they want and the fishing industry will still be running, therefore Aboriginals would find more employment.

The complex history of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people causes a great deal of mistrust in the other cultures who now live and existing in Australia, a mistrust of the systems in place. After European colonisation and the impact of the Stolen Generations, asking the original land owners of Australia to trust the policies and procedures in place in today’s society is a big ask, considering it was the policies and procedures of our government that resulted in the Stolen Generation in the first place. It is also difficult for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to prosper in mainstream culture of Australia, as there are a great many barriers preventing them from understanding the processes for everyday things such as medical appointments and assistance, education and employment. According to a the National Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage Report as quoted in a piece of writing entitled The Social Cultural and Historical Context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians ‘Indigenous people are the

Demonstrate respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural knowledge, history, lived experience and connection to community and country through inviting an Aboriginal elder to the center to give a speech about the history, trauma, cultural safety issues of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander community people and the impacts on them.

Australian Aborigines are thought to have the longest continuous cultural history in the world. Yet, within a hundred years, the near extinction of the Aboriginal culture almost occurred. This single event, the invasion of the Australian continent by European settlers, changed the lifestyle, the culture, and the fate of Australian Aborigines. Their entire lives were essentially taken away and they were forced into a white, European world where the lifestyle change could not have been any different. Aborigines in Australia today are struggling to deal with a past in which they lost touch with their culture and now are trying to regain some of that cultural identity.