Aboriginals of Australia- Free-Samples for Students-Myassignment

Question: Why dont aboriginal people take interest in their own health? Answer: The suggestion that aboriginal people doesnt take interest on their own health will be discussed critically in this essay. The question will be explored ideologically on the basis of the colonial discursive practices which include factors like the privileges of the white people, the stereotypical assumptions and other factors. This essay aims to deconstruct the question and unearth the assumptions and the worlds perspective which resulted in the arising of these questions. Archaeologists believe that the Aboriginals first came to Australia around 45,000 years ago. Before the invasion the aboriginal people lived throughout Australia. History suggests that the British invaded the land. And the loss of their land had posed a devastating effect on the aboriginal people (Lester and Dussart 2014). Today they still face the racist attitude. It has been found that aboriginal children were removed from their parents and were given to the Australian white families in order to remove the traces of the Australian culture. It has been reported that the Aboriginal people have a high rate of infant mortality. Today most of the aboriginals live in the towns or the outskirts of the cities in horrible conditions (Freeman et al. 2014). All these factors let westerners to assume that the Aboriginals do not take care of their health, but do not look after the underlying cause. The western viewpoint is taken for granted as a standard for evaluating a particular culture. According to the western ideals, the actual truth lies within those with power. But this essay will critically try to analyze the authenticity of this question (Aspin et al. 2012). It is not true that the aboriginals do not interest in their own health. But there are certain reasons why aboriginal people do not get proper health support. Access barriers to the health care for the minority population can be stated as one of the reason. It has been reported that the Aboriginal patients focus heavily on the social cultures and relationships. The aboriginals of Australia face a lot of problems regarding the chronic diseases. The mainstream health institutes are challenged by the giving accessible health care and efficient health care services to the aboriginal people with the serious illnesses. Lack of cultural safety among the health services can give rise to patients avoiding contact which leaves the aboriginal people at late diagnosis of the serious illnesses (Durey et al. 2012). Researchers have found that the majority of the aboriginals consider their health being important, although many perceived their health as being average. Approximately half of the type of population was not happy with the food they consumed. The next factor that can be considered is the discrimination towards the aboriginal people when giving health care. Inequalities in health are due to the social inequalities. It can be considered as the social determinant of the healthy (Lester and Dussart 2014). Racism has been known to cause distrust among the aboriginals. Therefore they avoid the hospital based service or the services provided by the White Australians. They cannot rely on the type of care provided by the White Australians and therefore rely on the home based treatments that can lead to adverse conditions. This can be due to the lack of education, access to the capital resources, powerlessness, income, infrastructure, land and reconciliation (Lester and Dussart 2014). This leads to the avoidance of the screening and assessment, not present for the treatment, from the fear of being hospitalized. A survey found only a few visited the doctor due to the reasons like tooth ache. It was found that they used cigarette ash es for pain, used pliers or hands to remove the teeth and often a punch on the jaw by someone else. Majority of the population found it to be absolutely comfortable to visit s doctor as when required except for a few who mentioned about racism (Oliver. 2013). Some have reported that they prefer to visit an aboriginal doctor as they feel it comfortable to talk with them. The institutionalized racism found in the organizations causes a cultural clash between the aboriginals and the non-aboriginal health institutes. There are evidences that show that the Aboriginals of Australia do not have the same level of access to many heath care facilities like the other Australians, which adversely affects their outcomes in health (Kelaher, Ferdinand and Paradies. 2014). The bad health status along with the high mortality and the high morbidity rates indicates that they require a proper health care. Very few aboriginals reported that they have low esteem or apathetic views regarding their health (Freeman et al. 2014). The indigenous people also face a lot of barriers in accessing the healthcare, including the cultural and the language barriers, cost of services and the distance to services as it has been mentioned earlier that most of the aboriginals live in the outskirts of the towns (Burke et al. 2012). Due to language barriers and less education, most of the aboriginals are not well occupied. Most of them lead their life as laborers, some livestock grazing and mainly small farming, so it becomes very difficult for them to access the costly healthcare facilities (Aspin et al. 2012). The Aboriginals of Australia are underrepresented in graduate programs and the other heath related occupations. The proposed question indicates a western view of the other, which considers that the aboriginal cultures are inferior to them. Researchers have found that in many places the indigenous people were viewed as wild and child like (Kelaher, Ferdinand and Paradies. 2014). Till now their presence is considered as incongruous to some people. But it has to be remembered that when people do not feel valued, feels neglected, they develop a sense of distrust. The same occurs in case of the Aboriginals. As a result of all these factors they do not rely on the westernized health care and as a result faces health related issues. Thus it can be said that the notion that the Aboriginals do not care about their health is just the partial truth. Lack of education, high costing of healthcare, language barrier, distance, racism, lack of trust regarding the in aboriginal health care, all these factors contributed to the decreased level of health consciousness among the aboriginals of Australia. References Aspin, C., Brown, N., Jowsey, T., Yen, L. and Leeder, S., 2012. Strategic approaches to enhanced health service delivery for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with chronic illness: a qualitative study.BMC health services research,12(1), p.143. Bourke, L., Humphreys, J.S., Wakerman, J. and Taylor, J., 2012. Understanding rural and remote health: a framework for analysis in Australia.Health Place,18(3), pp.496-503. Durey, A., Thompson, S.C. and Wood, M., 2012. Time to bring down the twin towers in poor Aboriginal hospital care: addressing institutional racism and misunderstandings in communication.Internal medicine journal,42(1), pp.17-22. Durey, A., Wynaden, D., Thompson, S.C., Davidson, P.M., Bessarab, D. and Katzenellenbogen, J.M., 2012. Owning solutions: a collaborative model to improve quality in hospital care for Aboriginal Australians. Nursing inquiry,19(2), pp.144-152. Freeman, T., Edwards, T., Baum, F., Lawless, A., Jolley, G., Javanparast, S. and Francis, T., 2014. Cultural respect strategies in Australian Aboriginal primary health care services: beyond education and training of practitioners.Australian and New Zealand journal of public health,38(4), pp.355-361. Kelaher, M.A., Ferdinand, A.S. and Paradies, Y., 2014. Experiencing racism in health care: the mental health impacts for Victorian Aboriginal communities.The Medical journal of Australia,201(1), pp.44-47. Lester, A. and Dussart, F., 2014.Colonization and the origins of humanitarian governance: protecting Aborigines across the nineteenth-century British Empire. Cambridge University Press. Oliver, S.J., 2013. The role of traditional medicine practice in primary health care within Aboriginal Australia: a review of the literature.Journal of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine,9(1), p.46.