First Week of Class: Australia Edition
August 6–10
Monday afternoon I headed to my first class, Indigenous Health, in Building 14. Classes are different in Australia. All classes have at least two parts, lecture, and tutorial. Lecture is offered at one time and every student signed up for that class should try to attend. It is a law that every lecture be recorded and posted online for students to access at any time. For this reason, lecture attendance isn’t the best, however, it allows for people with difficult schedules, whether that be due to work, children, etc. to get a university degree. The second part of a typical university class in Australia is tutorial. Tutorials are offered at different times throughout the week and sometimes even offered online. It breaks up the population of the class into smaller groups where students do work relating to the lecture to get more in depth. This also provides students with a chance to ask more detailed questions than allowed for in lecture. It is kind of like a remediation period. It is not required that tutorial be recorded, and since tutorial only works with a handful of students at a time, attendance is usually taken and required. Tutorials are not always taught by the professor, but all of my tutorials are taught by the professor/unit convener.
My Indigenous Health class has 470 students enrolled. Our first lecture had the best attendance, (which is usually how it goes) with probably 250–300 students present. The unit convener for this class is a white, non-Indigenous Australian nurse and midwife named Holly. Holly organized the course and wove together a team of five Indigenous Australians to teach the course. Our first lecture was given by University of Canberra’s Chancellor, Dr. Tom Calma. Dr. Calma is “the first Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander man to become Chancellor of an Australian university.” He is an elder of the Kungarakan tribe and a member of the Iwaidja tribe, a Social Justice Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights commission, and the 2016 recipient of the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Flag Award.

Dr. Calma delivered a detailed lecture on health disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations in Australia, shared some insight as to why the disparities exist, and even provided information on how to eradicate the disparities. Aboriginal people have a lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality rate, and higher disability rate than that of the non-Indigenous Australian population. These are just a few of the health concerns Indigenous people face and is not even the tip of the iceberg of the injustice they have faced and continue to face. Barriers Indigenous people face to accessing health care are major contributors to the different health outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. These barriers include (but are not limited to) geography, language, and culture. Since the settlement of British convicts and eventual invasion of Europeans, Indigenous Australians who were not killed were pushed inward to central Australia. Central Australia is the Outback. Resources are scarce and so is medical care. Indigenous Australia was once made up of over 250 native languages, none of which the Europeans spoke or bothered to learn. Instead, Europeans put their energy into wiping out Indigenous people and their language. That being said, there are still Indigenous people who speak their native language and translation is sometimes needed for them to communicate effectively. Finally, parts of Indigenous culture that were not stolen and rewritten by Europeans are foreign to non-Indigenous Australians. For example, Indigenous people do not usually speak unless invited to and, oftentimes, if they do not understand something, they may not express it verbally. Avoidance of eye-contact is considered respectful while eye-contact is confronting. Indigenous culture is collectivist, while European culture is individualist. Indigenous people’s inclusion of family and community in decisions is valued much more than in European culture. The list goes on and on. Leaving their culture, family, and home to receive care in a foreign place, with an unclear language, with confronting body language and practices is intimidating and not conducive to healing. Additionally, Indigenous Australians, often find it difficult to trust health care systems and the Australian government. From 1883–1970, thousands of Indigenous children were removed from their families to be placed in white homes in efforts by the Australian government to erase Indigenous culture. When Aboriginal mothers gave birth in hospitals, most never took their baby home as it was policy to immediately rehome Aboriginal children. The consequences and policies of “The Stolen Generation” carry on today as more than 17,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were living in out-of-home care in 2017. The trauma Indigenous populations have endured and continue to endure provides ample reason for them to not seek professional medical care. Dr. Calma is a founding member of Close the Gap, a public health initiative led and developed by Aboriginal people that aims to close the gap in health care and health outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in one generation. Rather than funding this initiative and giving it the help it needs, the Australian government responded by creating their own initiative called “Closing the Gap,” with a different set of goals that does not include the input of Indigenous Australians.
Needless to say, as someone with no background in Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander education, I learned a lot in one lecture, and I continue to through every assignment, tutorial, and lecture. This class has revealed the ugly history of Australia and I must say, Australia has broken my heart. How humans can treat one another the way that they do? Did I mention that there were concentration camps all over Australia for Indigenous people? Why is there so much hate in the world and this country? Why is it still so prevalent and pouring consequences on innocent people? While Australia has broken my heart, it has also forced me to take a more critical look at America and how we have treated our own Indigenous population, Native Americans, and I will be honest, it is not much better. America also breaks my heart. We live in a fallen world. Australia does give me some hope though, as Australians are actively working to end these policies through mandatory education on the history of their treatment of Indigenous populations, Welcome to Country, and raising of Indigenous voices, which is more than America is doing. My Indigenous Health class is giving me the unique opportunity to learn Australia’s history from people who experienced it first hand and people who are doing big things to make Australia a more equitable place. It is an honor to learn from such intelligent, resilient, selfless people. Indigenous Health preparing me to be a much more culturally sensitive health care provider in the future. For our very first assignment, we had to complete a training course on how to appropriately interact with Indigenous populations in health care. As someone who values other cultures and has been working in a health care environment for years, I thought it would be a piece of cake. Boy, was I wrong. While I may never work with an Indigenous person in my life, if nothing else, I learned that I have a very Western approach to health care and that is not the only “right” way to interact with patients. As Mama would say, “There is more than one way to skin a cat.”
Indigenous Health was my only class that Monday. Tuesday, I had Science and Innovation, which I later dropped. Wednesday, I had Indigenous Health tutorial, Thursday I had Public Health lecture and tutorial, and Friday I had Health Psychology. I have a love-hate relationship with my Public Health class. I love that it makes me think. I hate that we don’t usually don’t come up with perfect answers to public health crises and the answers we do come up with would take a long time to implement. My Health Psychology class is really good and directly applicable to my career goals in the future. As an aspiring Prosthetist-Orthotist, having a good understanding of why people feel, speak, and act, the way they do in a health care setting will be tremendously important to my success as CPO. I have seen (and will continue to see) the trauma amputees go through after losing a limb, their varied responses to reaching a goal for the first time, and everything in between. Health Psychology is teaching me to identify and address core issues that impact a person’s adherence to their health care plan. Each course is both engaging and challenging in its own way.