Indigenous Health & Education in Australia - Essay Example

Running Head: Indigenous Health & Education in Australia Indigenous Health & Education in Australia of the of the Indigenous Health & Education in Australia When there are lot of people having different cultures and societies in an area or country, mostly there is racism that leads to unfairness to specific ethnic groups. In Australia, from the year 1788 when European people came to Australia, the European discriminate the indigenous people, Aborigines. Until 1967 and in few states till 1980 the European trespassers drove Aboriginal people away from the land, and besides, they acquired lot of kids who were indigenous from the aboriginal families and obligated them to work at the farms of European. What European people have done to Aboriginal people is a genocide, which can be defined as a crime against humanity. As time went on, Australian people seemingly started to recognize Aboriginal peoples human rights. However, today, there still seems to be a lot of inequality to indigenous people in Australian society. This paper will examine the indigenous Aboriginal people in todays Australia in terms of health and medical systems, education and employment. In Australia, aboriginal are facing a crisis that is screaming for attention, yet no body seems to hear. Aboriginal peoples suffer everyday in a countless number of ways. Depression, anger, and grief have decimated harmonious communities and domestic violence, alcoholism, drugs and theft have moved in. But do not think that this is a new problem. Australia has buried its head in the sand or dragged its feet in the mud for years over truly addressing the situation with realistic solutions. It seems that our government has abandoned its pride in a society that has always valued egalitarianism, mateship and a fair go. Or is it more to the point that they have indeed abandoned the heart of their nationality, for how else could the indigenous peoples that have represented the essence of Australia for thousands of years be left to suffer still. And while Australia has made some superficial efforts, they mainly consist of throwing money at the problem and relegating it to a position that will not cause too much trouble for their prospects of re-election. However with the abolition of ATSIC and no efforts being made to reassemble another organisation, indigenous Australians have once again been shoved to the bottom of national importance, and left without a voice. In Australia the aboriginal people need a truly representative and accountable organisation that has ground level consultation and helps inspire the aboriginal people of Australia to take ownership of their destiny, and allows them the capacity to do so. Above all indigenous people need to make sure that Australia does not return to a paternalistic way with dealing with the situation. This has been proved a failure and would be proved a failure again, a failure that Australia cannot afford. It true that the aboriginal people have the ‘source of knowledge of their own needs, their learning process and the ways in which learning takes place and the most effective ways and environments in which learn’ (Sherwood & McConville, 1994). The first and probably the biggest point about inequality to Aboriginal people in Australia may be concerned with health and medical systems. First of all, a lot of Aboriginal people have been facing a serious lack of provision of water and sanitation, because most of them live in remote areas. Furthermore, this lack of provision of these services has resulted in many unnecessary deaths of indigenous people. In contrast to this, non-indigenous people do have certain provision of these services. Furthermore, in spite of the fact that many indigenous people have complained to Australian governments about this unfair situation, the responses have been made by ignoring them or by ambiguously saying to solve this in the near future. Concerning medical services, it is true for Aboriginal people that services are often not available. The reasons for this may include far distance between them and hospitals, limited hours of operations or insufficient trained practitioners. However, non-Aboriginal Australians have very sufficient services as well as very effective delivery of services. The fact that the inadequacy of these services continues despite many studies of the cases and a lot of complaints mean that Australian society has known these miserable conditions and also how to remedy them for a long time, but it simply has not acted. Already 80% of the aboriginal population are alcoholics, 47% are unemployed, they are twice as likely to be current smokers, and on every index fare far far worse than other Australians. Only 33% of aboriginal children complete their schooling compared to the national average of 77%. Health issues also plague their communities, with 15% of aboriginals do having running water and 34% of communities water supply falling below the standard set by the government. In 2000, 80% of the children in Australian who were affected by pneumonia were aboriginal. Four times as many Aboriginals suffer with diabetes. 61% of Indigenous people are classified as obese compared with 48% of non indigenous adults. The death rate for births of aboriginal women is double that of non indigenous women. For all age groups below 75 years the age specific death rate for persons identified as indigenous was at least double that for non indigenous peoples. The largest discrepancy being people between the ages of 35-45 years, they were found to be 5 times those of the total population of Australia. 43% of 10 to 17 year olds incarcerated in juvenile detention centres are aboriginal. As well as health and medical systems, inequality to indigenous people obviously exists in education. This inequality can firstly be seen by comparing the number of indigenous students and all students in Australia attending high schools. For example, in a study conducted by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADC), only 65.7 per cent of 15 year-old, 40.5 per cent of 16 year-old and 18.3 per cent of 17 year-old Aboriginal children attended high schools in 1986. In contrast to this, the number of all students in Australia attending high schools was much higher (90.1% of 15, 67% of 16 and 39.6% of 17 year-olds). There seems to be some factors for such these big differences, which may include insensitive teachers, unsuitable curricula, lack of parental involvement and most importantly, racism (Thomsom, 2003). Racism is most likely to contribute to the increase in the reluctance of indigenous children to attend high schools. Another study carried out by the National Review of Education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples was even more frustrating. It shows that in 1995, the retention rate of Aboriginal students was same as what it was for all Australian students more than 20 years ago. Finally, inequality to Aboriginal people in employment exists manifestly in todays Australian society. For instance, in 1981, in spite of the fact that Quantas, Australias national airline, had the total staff of as many as 13,000, only two Aborigines were employed. Furthermore, in the same year, no Aboriginal person was employed in any departments in Parliament House. Another study conducted in 1992 reports that only half chances of employment were given to Aboriginal women, compared to other women workers in Australia. As to income levels, Both Aboriginal men and women received much lower wages than non-Aboriginal Australians did. For example, in 1991, only 2.2% of indigenous people earned more than $35,000, whereas 11% of non-indigenous people earned more than this level. As one can see, these facts may clearly indicate that the support of Aboriginal employment in Australia is very weak and, as the reports above are all very recent, that inequality to Aboriginal people in employment manifestly exists in Australian society even today. This can be maid even worth by the fact that Aboriginal unemployment in 1992 had become four times what it was in 1986. It can be said for these reasons that although the Australian business community has considerably developed, the development seems to be only for non-indigenous Australians. In conclusion, inequality to Aboriginal people in health and medical systems, education and employment has precisely been examined in this essay. Firstly, Aboriginal people have been enduring very inadequate health and medical services. Even though lot of indigenous people has expired only because of their worst health conditions, the fact is that the Australian society has not playing his role sufficiently at all. Education systems add to discrimination towards indigenous Australians. There is lot of difference in the number of children who attend high school among the normal and Aboriginal people in Australia. Aboriginal people are also facing lot of problems in getting jobs. It is the responsibility of Australian government to remedy these issues, and it is to be understood by non aboriginal people that indigenous people are also human being and they must shows humanitarianism for them. References Eckermann, A. Dowd, T. Martin, M., (1992). Binan Goonj:Bridging Cultures in Aboriginal Health. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone Sherwood J and McConville K 1994. Otitis Media and Aboriginal Children: A Handbook for Teachers and Communities. Board of Studies NSW, Sydney. Thomsom, N. (2003). The Impact of Health on the Education of Aboriginal Children. Q. Beresford and G. Partington (Ed.), Reform and Resistance in Aboriginal Education: The Australian Experience. Read More