With love, respect and humility,

I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land I reside in, the Wodi Wodi people

of Dharawal Country and the Gadigal people of Eora Country.

I acknowledge the continued connection to culture and ongoing care of Country,

which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples have preserved for thousands of years.

I would also like to extend my solidarity to those across the globe resisting colonisation.

Sovereignty was never ceded.

Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

Critically Reflective Essay By Evie Jones

Good health is the right of all Australians.

The Western medical world has sold us a story that if everyone were to exercise regularly, eat the right foods and manage stress, a lifetime of good health will be secured. However, this

narrative falls short when we consider the state of Aboriginal 1health in Australia. How is it that in one of the wealthiest nations on Earth, Aboriginal peoples still die eight years earlier

than non-Indigenous Australians? How is it that they carry a burden of disease 2.4 times greater, and remain disproportionately affected by preventable, endemic diseases of poverty

(Carson et al., 2007; Sherwood, 2013)? These statistics have barely shifted, despite decades of health policies and ambitious targets. While health should be recognised as a fundamental

human right, the stark disparities between Aboriginal and non-Indigenous Australian health outcomes reveal that this right remains unrealised for Aboriginal peoples. This disparity is

not coincidental but represents the ongoing consequences of colonisation, a process not just of the past, but the present through evolved genocidal infrastructure embedded within

contemporary Australian society.

I approach this essay as a non-Indigenous feminist and anti-racist, living on stolen Dharawal lands. As I continue developing my studies, I carry the responsibility to challenge systems

that perpetuate inequality while supporting Aboriginal-led solutions. This means using my privilege not as a buffer for personal comfort, but as a platform for amplifying Aboriginal

voices and demanding systemic change. The fight for Aboriginal health equity is ultimately a fight for the kind of society we want to be - one that genuinely ensures good health as the

right of all Australians, not merely the privileged few. It is important to acknowledge, as described by Tuhiwai Smith (2022, p. 42), that research is “colonising” and imposes

superiority and dominant worldviews over colonised peoples. As such, acknowledging that research is not impartial, and as a non-Indigenous author, I carry experiences and privileges

that influence my perspectives. Thus, I have sought to undertake a decolonial methodology that privileges the perspectives and epistemologies of the colonised to facilitate respectful

engagement within the ‘third space’ (Nakata, 2007; Smith, 2022).

Understandings of health are not universally shared nor neutral. As asserted by Brady (1996), colonisation fundamentally transformed Western biomedical paradigms, which directly

opposed Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Freud’s psychoanalysis offers an insightful framework for understanding Western thought. Freud’s understandings of Western health,

according to Fors (2021), often position mental health as an individual problem or disease that needs to be fixed within hierarchical patient-doctor relationships characterised by power

imbalances, where the focus becomes "how can one function better in society" rather than addressing broader social and cultural contexts. This individualistic approach aligns with what

Graham (1999, p. 106) describes the Western ideal of the "conscious isolate" - an autonomous individual who observes the world from a position of detachment rather than engaging

relationally with it. Graham (1999, p. 109) explains that “acting as though one were an independent being diminishes both spirituality and emotional connection”, leading to the alienation

that manifests in Western medicine's reductionist treatment of symptoms as isolated phenomena. This contrasts sharply with Aboriginal understandings of health and wellbeing, which

are grounded in holistic interconnectedness and shared responsibility. Graham’s "Land is the Law" (1999, p. 105) captures how Country functions not merely as a backdrop to human

existence but as a living, sacred entity that is the source of meaning, law, and health itself. This explains that when land becomes sick, all beings connected to that land, including people,

suffer. However, colonial imposition within the medical world has meant that understandings of health are placed within a hierarchical pedagogy. This only dismisses Aboriginal understandings

and practises as oppositional or “alternative”, rather than recognising them as equally valid. Breaking down this dichotomy and placing Aboriginal understandings of health as both

complementary and as valuable to Western thought is the first of many steps in achieving “good health” for all truly.

The disparities in the health of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples are rooted in the past and ongoing structures of colonisation. Colonisation as a “structure” rather than an isolated

“event” as asserted by Wolfe (1999, p. 2), has imposed an institutionalised oppression through “deliberate and calculated” strategies, seeking to “displace and distance the people from their

land and resources” (Sinclair, 2019, p. 50). Justification for European occupation was claimed under the doctrine of terra nullius, which Sherwood describes as essential in constructing

Aboriginal peoples as “inferior and problematic,” sustaining the concept that a superior race had the right to settle on land portrayed as vacant and unworked. This violent dispossession

severed Aboriginal peoples' foundational connection to Country, which was essential to wellbeing. It resulted in the restriction of access to food sources and medicines, leading to malnutrition

and increased susceptibility to introduced diseases like smallpox and tuberculosis that decimated populations.

The subsequent protectionist policies that followed only intensified this health crisis through systematic control and deliberate neglect. Protection boards forced Aboriginal peoples onto reserves

while restricting movement, employment, and nutrition. The government refused Aboriginal wages, thus necessitating widespread poverty, ultimately starving communities of essential resources

(Griffiths, 2016). In many instances, Raeburn et al. (2020) reveal that Aboriginal people suspected of contracting venereal disease were forced to walk in chains to relocate to isolated

“lock hospitals" (Raeburn et al., 2020, p. 617), where they were left to die. Yet, colonial health systems justified this ill health as natural and inevitable, justifying grossly inadequate medical care and deliberate neglect.

The assimilationist policies and the history of forcible removals of Aboriginal children were a demand to give up Aboriginal identity, as well as to give up the children who were the transmission line of that identity.

Aboriginal peoples were subject to intense surveillance and intrusion, in which standards of housing, cleanliness, nutrition and childcare were judged by the welfare state in ways

never experienced by non-Aboriginal Australians. Hanging over this was the threat of their children being removed to institutions or, more rarely, foster care, experienced as a wilful destruction

of family life. Under these policies, simply being Aboriginal entitles one to removal under the premise of neglect. In almost all instances, justification for these removals was that of a better

life and “benefits of better health” (Haebich, 2012, p.141) than what was afforded by the one their Aboriginal parents could provide them with. The irony was that many Stolen Generations victims, upon

being removed, were faced with “punitive control, neglectful treatment, and violation of body and spirit” (Haebich, 2012, p. 143) emerging from these government policies. Hundreds of children died in

this residential care due to neglect. While some of those who survived, alcohol became a form of self- medication, faced the threat of their own children being taken, and faced violence and incarceration

(Kidd, 2000, p. 61; Sherwood, 2013).

Following this, government approaches towards health disparities have remained reactive and have been experienced as “top-down approaches to self-determination”

(Sherwood, 2013, p.36) that denied genuine Aboriginal autonomy. While racial violence in the criminal justice system increased Indigenous incarceration rates and perpetuated social problems, including

family violence and alcohol misuse, demonstrating how “white solutions” (Sherwood, 2013, p. 35) continued to create new sources of harm rather than healing.

Racism continues to act as a pervasive social determinant to poor health today, inflicting psychological menticide and institutional exclusion. Research conducted by Priest et al.

(2013, p. 116) reveals that racial discrimination can hinder the “development and adjustment” of Aboriginal youth with lasting effects across their life course. Racism, as Gilmore asserts,

increases “vulnerability to premature death" (2007: 28). The embodied experience of racism’s health impacts can be complemented by Fanon’s description, where “consciousness

of the body is solely a negating activity” (Fanon, 1986, p. 110) – a dissociative state where individuals learn to hate their own bodies and existence. The constant hostile gaze forces

individuals to render themselves objects, creating profound mental health consequences for Aboriginal peoples. Structurally, racism operates through deliberate barriers to fundamental

health determinants, including adequate housing, meaningful employment, and quality education, while Aboriginal people continue to face systematic wage theft and exclusion

from economic participation that creates entrenched intergenerational disadvantage (Henry, 2004, p. 518). The realities of racism work as both a psychological stressor and a structural

barrier that creates multiple pathways through which discrimination translates into the comprehensive health inequalities affecting Aboriginal communities today.

“Good health for all” requires the decolonisation of health systems and embracing what Martin Nakata terms the "cultural interface" - a third space where Indigenous and Western

health knowledges can collaborate without hierarchy. As Nakata explains, this space reframes “how we all come to look at the world” (2007, p. 9), rejecting simplistic or oppositional

framings of Western and Indigenous understandings. Decolonised health spaces will thus acknowledge differing worldviews, where diverging understandings of health do not mean

superiority but rather honours of both systems to establish a complementary collaboration.

Furthermore, health policy must abandon deficit discourse that pathologises Aboriginal peoples and instead embrace strength-based approaches that celebrate genuine self-

determination. As Dawson et al. (2021) argue, "Closing the Gap" perpetuates "a rhetoric of inherent dysfunction, where Aboriginal individuals and communities are produced as

incapable of self-management" (p. 525), neglecting the influence of racism, discrimination, and lack of culturally appropriate services on health outcomes. Future practice must

acknowledge that Aboriginal peoples have demonstrated remarkable resilience and inventiveness in surviving systems designed to eliminate them. Thus, strength-based

frameworks reject this deficit thinking and instead foreground connection to Country, cultural practice, and kinship relationships as fundamental health interventions. Policy must become

relational, grounded in sovereignty, and shaped by Indigenous leadership rather than functioning as a corrective mechanism, recognising that Aboriginal communities possess

inherent strengths and capabilities that have enabled survival through centuries of colonial oppression.

Therefore, to truly live up to the promise of “good health”, a basic human right, there needs to be a serious engagement with the discomfort of acknowledging our complicity in systems

that continue to harm Aboriginal peoples. The health disparities facing Aboriginal peoples are not inevitable consequences of cultural difference but products of systematic exclusion

and ongoing colonisation. A sustained commitment to decolonisation, truth-telling, and community-controlled solutions will create conditions where all Australians can access their

right to health and wellbeing.