IND/Indigenous Health and Indigenous History

Key Idea

Historical and inter-generational factors are highly important when it comes to understanding contemporary Indigenous health issues.

As we have discussed throughout Module 2, the history of colonisation has had a profound impact on Indigenous people and communities.  The frontier period of early colonisation saw the progressive dispossession of Aboriginal clans from their ancestral lands and subsequent loss of nutritional and medicinal resources. It also witnessed the introduction of new diseases. By 1890, many Aboriginal groups were bereft of their lands and forced to live on the fringes of the dominant society existing on inadequate rations of flour, tea and sugar and sometimes meat. Poverty was rife and infant mortality high. Aboriginal people became increasingly subject to government policies of confinement and control.

The legacies of these policies and Protection legislation are many and have resulted in reduced Aboriginal health and well being through:

• forced sedentary lifestyle (loss of land and right of freedom of movement)
• forced dietary changes (rations of low protein, high carbohydrate and sugar)
• poor housing and hygiene (overcrowded, lack of sanitation and inadequate water supplies and facilities)
• removal of children (psychological despair, grief, low self esteem, identity problems)
• continued breakdown of traditional Aboriginal social and cultural structures (removal of children, laws forbidding language and cultural maintenance, loss of Elders through diseases of poverty and despair)
• economic marginalisation (all employment and wages controlled by the Board; Aboriginal people received lower wages or no wages at all)
• marginalisation from education (discriminatory laws restricting access)

After the repeal of Protection policies, discriminatory restrictions on access to education, employment and medical services were theoretically lifted. However, by this time, poverty caused by forced dependency was entrenched. Infant mortality rates were greater than any third-world Asian or African country, and Aboriginal children were being increasing removed from their families under welfare policies. Aboriginal people generally remained marginalised on former reserves or in public housing on the edges of mainstream society and faced discrimination in employment.

Required Reading

In 1991, a landmark report was published that resulted from a Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. The Report is noteworthy for its findings and the recognition that the circumstances of Indigenous people today are the result of the actions and policies of history.

Johnston, E. (1991). Vol. 2 Chapter 10.1 ‘Why is History Relevant’, and chapter 10.4 'Frontier Period: Disease and Violence'. Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

Reflection

Here is a quote to consider:

The key…determinants of [Aboriginal] health status are found in the history of Aboriginal people and their current physical and social environments. Feelings of powerlessness, an inevitable consequence for many of two centuries of oppression, combined with poverty, health damaging physical environments, social disruption and poor diets combine to produce the poor health status of Aboriginal people today. (Royal Commission of Inquiry into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, National Report, 1991, volume 4, 228).

What impact do you think the history of colonisation might have on Indigenous health today?

Learning Activity

Investigating Indigenous Health

• From the Module text and/or the required reading Identify three statistics which you feel are particularly significant in relation to the state of Indigenous health today. Explain why you think these are significant.
• From the links to the UN Declarations (which we have previously looked at) identify one Human and one Indigenous Right that are linked to Indigenous health.