Impact of Historical, Social and Political Processes on the health of Indigenous people in Australia
In Australia, indigenous comprise at least 2.4% of the overall country’s population, though they are the first ones to whom Australia actually belongs to, but still they are the poorest and underprivileged people in the Australian society (Paradies, et. al. (2008). The indigenous people of Australia were regarded as the second citizen of Australia after the landing of Europeans in 1788. As stated by Gardiner-Garden (1998), there’s a history of social alienation, population reduction, economic exploitation and ill-treatment that is linked with the indigenous people of Australia. To help the aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders the government did formed a separate department named (NHMRC), National Health and Medical Research Council to help the indigenous people. To be able to do so, the department came up with a strategic road map through which proper policies and practices can be implemented. However, due to the social, political and historical processes it is very unfortunate that the Indigenous and Torres Strait Islanders health is impacted. This literature endeavors to study the impact of social, political and historical processes on the health of indigenous people of Australia.
The reality of the fact is that indigenous and non-indigenous people have almost the same common issues, however indigenous people are the ones who are likely to suffer more mainly because of the dominating modern western culture. The size of indigenous communities is comparatively small as compare to other western societies, and as for this reason they don’t get to have their say in many things. As stated by Gracey and King, (2009), many natives were disposed of their lands, rituals and were radically discriminated as well on many fronts. They were politically and economically abused by the western settlers, who took over the land of the indigenous people.
There’s no doubt that it is because of severe exploitation of the indigenous people and inequality on various fronts, along with poor hygiene that have had a major negative impact on the emotional health and as well as physical health. Though the traditional people led more of an organic lifestyle and were never exposed to various microorganism diseases such as small pox, measles, which was brought in by the western settlers (Campbell, 2002). It is because of such exposure to various diseases and not treating the affected ones properly led to high mortality rates in the aboriginals (Gracey, 1999; Currie and Brewster, 2001).
The social life of the indigenous people was not good at all in so many ways, they were denied to the common health and medical services that were available to the other members of the public. There is clear evidence that due to lack of proper hygiene and overcrowded living conditions of the indigenous people are the key determinants of their ill health and various diseases. Many people believe that it is reverse trend of urbanization that many Australian Aboriginals suffer from health issues such as obesity, low physical activity and alcohol use (Gracey, 2007).
Another explanation of the fact that Health issues that the indigenous people have to face is mainly because of the fact that either they are unwilling or have no will to be educated on the disease and infection control (Vos, et. al., 2009). Culture differences and the communication disparity that exist are often considered as the major factors behind the low health literacy among the Aboriginals. According to Singleton and Krause (2009), health practitioners often find it hard and difficult to communicate the important health messages with the indigenous people of Australia and at times the advised proposed to them are often taken as culturally inappropriate. Another important aspect that needs to be taken into consideration is the fact that male aboriginals are likely to be employed or have higher chance of employment as compare to female aboriginals.
