A Sick, Sad, Sinking Feeling

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Aboriginal, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Peoples, Australia, bureaucracy, genocide, Indigenous Australians, Indigenous People, Institutional racism, nationalism, policy, Public health, racism

Learning about some subjects in Australian public health is pretty confronting. In particular the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

• The relative risk to health if you’re indigenous compared with non-indigenous is not reducing. The gap is not closing, no matter what the government would like to say.
• When you match by disease condition, indigenous people get 40-60% of what non-indigenous people get.
• There are a lot of bullshit policy and “plans” around with no definable actual plans, money or measurable outcomes attached to them. Content-free policy indeed.
• Let’s not get started on the institutional racism, intentional genocide, discrimination that are ongoing
• Oh and then there is the bullying, discrimination and internal sabotage that happens in Australian institutions in general if you try to change something or complain about something.

Overall, this is very depressing. Just the lack of progress. Things can definitely be done. There are multiple studies that show huge benefits from simple interventions. But these things need funding, community consultation and a sensible approach. Things which are completely lacking in Australia.

People like me are slowly making a difference but seeing as we’re starting these changes in 2013, it will take at least a generation for the institutional culture to change enough to be dynamic and less bitchy. We can make incremental changes, and some of these things do snowball into big effects on the community, but for the most part we actually need a change from the top. Or a big, earth shattering disruptive event that forces things to change, the way that the invention of the printing press, the discovery of relativity and the end of apartheid in South Africa did.

I swing from feeling energetic and positive to feeling despondent and depressed and angry.

I have some plans, but I’m scared it will be hitting my head against a brick wall. I need help with all of this.

Australian Propaganda Against Indigenous People

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Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Peoples, Australia, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Education, Health, Indigenous Australians, media, mental health, nationalism, propaganda, Public health, racism, social welfare, Stolen Generation, substance abuse

Television and newspapers and radio and magazines in Australia are full of the most amazing horseshit when it comes to certain topics.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, but particularly Aboriginal people are portrayed in the media as stupid, lazy, drunk, violent druggies with a sense of entitlement. They are shown as a class of destitute no-hopers whose main ambition in life is to sniff petrol on the dole while resisting all attempts of Australians to bring in the comforts of civilisation. They are shown as savages who choose to be the bottom of the heap and who can’t be trusted to make decisions and were better off being taken away from their parents. Oh, and of course they have extra rights compared with more deserving Aussie battlers. Ungrateful sods.

Just like a lot of the political commentary in Australia, this is a lie.

The Stolen Generation actually happened, sheeple. Children were taken away from their own parents and often abused by their new families or treated as servants. No surprises then that PTSD, depression, anxiety, substance abuse are major problems. That’s right, due to the mass child abuse and cultural genocide that White Australia proudly perpetrated and continue to perpetrate. In the name of saving them from themselves.

How is the current “intervention” anything different? They’ve taken away indigenous representation (ATSIC etc) and instead continue to take people’s money and quarantine it and take their children away. The propaganda supports this abominable “cause” in exactly the same way they did the first Stolen Generation. Or worse, ignores it, making everyone think it’s stopped and everything is hunky dory.

Of course there are poor people and people with drinking problems. But when you age adjust, Indigenous people have the same high rate of heavy drinking as the general population – 15%. Yes, this is a problem. And yes there are communities where this is especially true. However the scale of the problem is vastly exaggerated. And if 15% is a national tragedy then it’s a national tragedy for the entire nation, not just for “the abos“.

Indigenous people are dying of diabetes, heart disease, strokes, vascular disease, kidney failure and suffering from mental illness. 25% of them don’t even have access to a hospital for crying out loud. Healthcare, education, money and fresh food are essentially being withheld from the population that needs it most. The excuse is that they “don’t want” services or “refuse to have people come in” or supposedly attack and destroy things. Has anyone asked Indigenous people if they want health, education, fresh food and running water? Funnily enough, they do want services and most of them trust their doctors. Perhaps once again we are being lied to? Hmmm.

Is it any surprise that they’re angry? I’m also angry!

Both major parties in Australia lack honesty. Their own government department, the Australian Bureau of Statistics has created a wealth of data that disproves a great deal of what they mindlessly parrot. Data that they are more than aware of and is clearly ignored.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are used as a political football while being slowly killed off.