Foundational Aspects Of Indigenous Australian Cultures And Health Impacts

Foundation of Indigenous Australian cultures both past and present

1.Outlines broad and relevant ideas on the foundational aspects of Indigenous Australian Cultures.

2.demonstrate your understanding of how history has impacted on the current health status of Indigenous Australian peoples.

3.Factors and strategies that have been shown to succeed, and which to fail, in working with Indigenous Australian peoples that enhance and promote the health of Indigenous Australian peoples.

Australia had a combination of mix people and cultures. The Indigenous people

Australia are the oldest living cultural history in the world. The main reason for its

survival so long is that Indigenous people have the ability and potential to become

adjusted to new conditions and to accept the changes over time. The main purpose of

this study is to understand the basic foundational knowledge of Australian Indigenous

culture and the impacts of the inter-generational factors on Indigenous Australian health.

The study also show some of the strategies which are used in order to enhance and

promote the health of Indigenous Australian peoples.

According to Awofeso (2011), the Indigenous people of Australia go back around 50000 year and close to 65000 years. The invasion of European in Australia leads to rapid changes and had a great impact on the ways of their living. There are some factors of Indigenous Australian people in past and present, which shows the diversity of systems that enhance and promote the health of Indigenous Australian people’s:

On the basis of Dreaming: Dreaming may be defined as a mythology. The Dreaming gives a basic structure to many of Indigenous cultures with a sense of reality, understanding and interpreting the place of humans of that world. In the past, Indigenous Australian people were completely based on the natural environment. But in the present scenario, Indigenous peoples divide the land into geographical boundaries such as rivers, lakes and mountains. In the past, there were strict rules and regulations for Indigenous communities of Australia which lead to the loss of freedom and liberties of life (Chhokar et al., 2013). Through the dreaming stage, the living conditions of Indigenous Australian people’s come into the contact with the spiritual domain and acquire power from it. The various features of landscape give the real proof and the world creating powers of the Dreaming starts and a rich complex of myths, rituals and objects which bound the humans, spirituals and physical domain together into a single order.

Effects of inter-generational factors impact on Indigenous people

On the basis of Kinship: According to Dockery (2011), Kinship refers to the system which describes where a person’s fit into the community or not. The basic concepts of the Kinship system in the traditional societies are the identity of the same sex siblings. In other words, this principle refers to people who are belonging to the same sibling line. Under this principle, all the members of the larger communities are categorized under this relationship terms. The Indigenous people of Australia ties, beliefs, values and languages are maintained by the family. For example, if a man marked another man with a specifically kin term he will use the same kin term for his brother. Similarly, a kin term also applied to a woman will also apply to all her sisters. The basic Kinship consist the nuclear family and a social unit. In the old tradition of Australian culture there are various sanctions which affecting the range of marriages options, distribution of responsibilities and rights and these factors were taken as a distinct pattern in the substructure of the Indigenous Australian culture (Downing et al.,  2011).  

On the basis of economic organization: The economic organization of Indigenous Australian culture describes the nomadic life of people. The Indigenous Australian people’s have to be well familiarizing with all the country including their range of movement and hold complete knowledge of the location, distribution and characteristics of its conditions.  The capability of the Indigenous peoples to study the ground like a map which enhances their efficiency as hunters to a greater extent. The peoples have the knowledge of resources of the vast areas of the country which was obtained through religion which is jointly related to economic life of Indigenous Australian peoples. The trade and exchange were also important factor which had an impact on Indigenous Australian health. But the nomadic culture of Indigenous peoples allowed no market for the collection of material goods and there were no attempts to control the ownership of objects. The authoritative values of the Indigenous Australian peoples were responsible for the removal of Kinship and religious obligations.

According to Ens et al. (2012), the European invasions of Indigenous people of Australia have faced the strain which results in loss of culture, land and forced removal of children. The inequality and poverty are the main contemporary factors that have been experienced as a treatment of people. The another factor which have a direct impact on the health of Indigenous Australian culture  is the  lack of equal access to primary health care and lower standard of health infrastructure in their communities. This inequality in health continuously linked to discrimination. The past Indigenous culture of Australia had a negative effect on the Indigenous people’s health. Racism is the main inter-generational factors which have a major impact on the health of the Indigenous Australian people. Racism creates a barrier as a cause of ill health among the communities. It is needed to create the awareness in the Indigenous Australian community about the health consequences of racism for Indigenous peoples. The main impacts of racism on the health of Indigenous people of Australia are unfair access of resources that are required for health, unfair exposure to risk factors, involvement in unhealthy activities and physical injury. On the other side, Terra nullius is land which is belonging to no one. The acknowledgement of Terra nullius required a more restrictive notion of territorial title. The Americans were given no theory claim to their land in the absence of centralized government. Only the few Indigenous communities which the European taken as holding the sovereignty over their land was included in the process (Kirmayer et al., 2011). Due to inter-generational factors, they have an impact on health and had an effect on higher rates substance which causes health problems.. The mix combination of socio-economic conditions, unemployment is faced by Indigenous women as they have responsibilities for their children. Thus, inter-generational and historical factors have a negative effect on Indigenous Australian health.

Effective strategies adopted for Indigenous Australian people

According to Parker (2010), there are some well-developed strategies which are evaluated and showed to succeed in working with Indigenous Australian people. The main purpose of these well-conducted strategies is to enhance and promote the health of Indigenous Australian people. The following strategies are as follows:

Indigenous Healing Foundation: According to Pechenkina & Anderson (2011), the community based healing strategies by the Indigenous Australian culture have a main aim to enhance and promote the health of Indigenous peoples and provide appropriate training for people in delivering the healing. This was the first initiative which specifically mentions the emotional wellbeing of Indigenous Australians. It specifically describes the policy structure that main focus is to providing the consistent and coordinated approach to mental health.

Indigenous Australian social and emotional wellbeing strategy: According to Tsey et al. (2010), the government of Australia initiates four mental health plans to implement a renewal Indigenous social and emotional wellbeing framework. The department of Australian Health and Agency are the main source for the development of the framework and directs its development. This framework provides the various benefits to the Indigenous Australian people values like recognition and respect of human rights, cultural understanding, recognition of centrality of family, recognition of Indigenous strengths. These two strategies are shown to succeed by government in order to enhance and promote the Indigenous Australian health. Human Rights based approach to development cooperation had taken by the government to emphasizes on the key factors of the development of the Indigenous people, involves the participation of the communities and making the strategies in order to empower the engagement of stakeholders (White, 2010).

Conclusion

From this study, it is concluded that the historical factors had a negative impact on the health of Indigenous Australian people. As a result of European invasion, the Indigenous people of Australia have experienced loss of culture, restrictions in freedom and affect the social culture and behavior. To enhance the health of Indigenous Australian people, this study provided some specific strategies and well conducted programs which are evaluated and promote the social and emotional wellbeing. There are various strategies suggested and evaluated in this study like hip hop program, cultural healing program and motivational planning that have been taken to enhance the health of Indigenous people. These strategies promote the health and provide the counseling services to the Indigenous people which have been shown effective in promoting social and emotional welfare.

References

Awofeso, N. (2011). Racism: a major impediment to optimal Indigenous health and health care in Australia. Australian indigenous health bulletin, vol. 11, no. 3, pg: 1-8.

Chhokar, J. S., Brodbeck, F. C., & House, R. J. (Eds.). (2013). Culture and leadership across the world: The GLOBE book of in-depth studies of 25 societies. Routledge.

Dockery, A. M. (2011). Traditional culture and the wellbeing of Indigenous Australians: An analysis of the 2008 NATSISS. Perth: Centre for Labour Market Research, Curtin University.

Downing, R., Kowal, E., & Paradies, Y. (2011). Indigenous cultural training for health workers in Australia. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, vol. 23, no. 3, pg: 247-257.

Ens, E. J., Finlayson, M., Preuss, K., Jackson, S., & Holcombe, S. (2012). Australian approaches for managing ‘country’using Indigenous and non?Indigenous knowledge. Ecological Management & Restoration, vol. 13, no. 1, pg: 100-107.

Kirmayer, L. J., Dandeneau, S., Marshall, E., Phillips, M. K., & Williamson, K. J. (2011). Rethinking resilience from indigenous perspectives. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 56, no. 2, pg: 84-91.

Parker, R. (2010). Australia’s Aboriginal population and mental health. The Journal of nervous and mental disease, vol. 198, no. 1, pg: 3-7.

Pechenkina, E., & Anderson, I. (2011). Background Paper on Indigenous Australian Higher Education: Trends. Initiatives and Policy Implications. DEEWR.

Tsey, K., Whiteside, M., Haswell?Elkins, M., Bainbridge, R., Cadet?James, Y., & Wilson, A. (2010). Empowerment and Indigenous Australian health: a synthesis of findings from Family Wellbeing formative research. Health & social care in the community, vol. 18, no. 2, pg: 169-179.

White, N. (2010). Indigenous Australian women’s leadership: Stayin’strong against the post?colonial tide. International Journal of Leadership in Education, vol.13, no. 1, pg: 7-25.