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One of the significant characteristics of Australian Indigenous worldviews is a specific relationship to land or ‘country’. Aboriginal people say, “The country needs its people. Healthy country means healthy people”. Discuss in relation to social and emotional wellbeing Indigenous Australians greet one another with familiar questions of identity and relationship:

‘Where your country? Who your mob?’ This essay will return to the past and discuss the

impact of colonisation on the health and wellbeing of the First Australians. Commentary by

researchers and secondary evidence from case studies undertaken with Indigenous Australian

partners determines that land, spirituality and social emotional wellbeing are interconnected.

Furthermore, biophilia notions are introduced supporting the intimate interdependent

relationships between nature and humans and its connection to wellbeing. Arguments that

‘country needs its people’ and ‘healthy country means healthy people’ will be explored in

present and historical context of wellbeing and determinants of health in particular racism

and land. The essay explores the ideology that caring for, and living on country if managed

with autonomy would provide health benefits; not excluding social, cultural, environmental

and economic benefits to Indigenous Australians.

Racism has been identified as a determinant in its own right. Racism is a result of colonialism

as it is essential that the colonisers believe in the inferiority of the colonised in order to justify

taking their resources - specifically land. By the eighteenth century the definition of race had

become affiliated with physical characteristics like skin colour and facial features rather than

nationality. The political significance of racism now lies in its capacity to make differences

and inequalities seem natural. Aristotle’s doctrine of the ‘natural slave’ assumed that one part

of mankind is set aside by nature to be slaves in the service of masters (Hanke 1970, p. 99).

The early distortion and suppression of Australian Indigenous History and anthropological

studies, now known as ‘scientific racism’, supported the European notions that ‘natives’ were

inferior. This justified British control and dominance (Lorimar 1978, p. 14). In England

‘Blacks’ became identified with labouring tasks and the lower social order. This was due to

the rise of an indigenous racial ideology linked to imperial expansion (Myers 1996, p. 3).

With the evolution of this ideology it follows that Captain Cook’s arrival in 1770 precipitated

a series of events leading to the colonisation of Australia. Every aspect of administration and

policy of the invader involved taking control of the land (Rowley 1972, p. 124). Upon

colonising Australia the British applied the legal doctrine of ‘terra nullius’- the concept that a

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country is deserted and uninhabited. This denied the existence of Aboriginal rights of

ownership to the land and commenced the domination and dehumanisation of Indigenous

Australians. During colonisation Aboriginals were shot, clubbed to death and poisoned. “Men

were herded together into a great depression … shot and … covered with earth and grass,

whilst women and children fled from the area in terror …” (Wallace, P & Wallace N 1977, p.

22). The dispossession and the atrocities which had been perpetrated against them in the

name of expansion, the Church, and the Crown; and the methods used to subdue and conquer

contributed to the dominant world view of ‘terra nullius’. The economic need and capitalist

mentality of the invader and the ‘hunting and gathering’ social, political and cultural systems

of Australian Aborigines were in opposition which caused the deterioration of health and a

thriving economic society.

Furthermore, missionaries condemned the unfamiliar culture and spiritual rituals declaring

them heathen, barbaric, immoral and offences to God (Eckermann 1995, pp. 3-6 11). This

thinking aided and abetted the invaders and contributed to cultural dislocation, dispossession,

assimilation, dependency, social disadvantage, and removal from traditional lands. Even

though the Church may have believed that as a Protector they were preventing death,

starvation and murder, the massacres of Australian Aborigines occurred as the stock

multiplied and the stations were rapidly extended.

Laws were created to systematically exclude Indigenous Australians from the emerging

nation rendering them invisible. An indefinite ‘wardship’ and minority status naturalised the

role and power of the dominant group by representing their race and culture as the norm (Tatz

1995, p. 19). Australian Aborigines’ progression was from ‘native’ to inmate. They were now

displaced from their traditional hunting grounds and placed in a restrained and controlled

environment and away from the dominant social group (Rowley 1972, p. 13). The Act of

Parliament (The Aborigines Protection and Restriction of the sale of Opium Act, 1897-1839),

which was instituted to govern Aboriginal people provided the blueprint for similar

legislation in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

This Act has been described as “[o]ne of the most repressive laws ever passed on an

Indigenous people by conquering Europeans” (Wellborn 1978, p. 91). Superintendents had

prison-like control over their charges which included the denial of permission to marry, the

censorship and withholding of mail, the right to sell or dispose of their property and to

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prohibit ceremonies and Dreamtime stories on the grounds that they were satanic and

considered detrimental to discipline. They incarcerated children placing them in dormitories

separating them from their culture and source of history (Genever 1998, pp. 5-6). Aborigines

survived on the fringes of the cash economy and learnt to be content with a diet of flour,

sugar, tea and beef (Bandler & Fox 1983, p. 18).

Dependence is a colonial phenomenon generated by systematic exploitation and institutional

racism. Upon dispossession, ‘the traditional economy of the ancestors was ruptured and they

were dragged into the colonial economy for purposes of exploitation’ (Pearson 2000, p. 140).

Rapid depopulation was an outcome of economic dispossession. Many Australian Aboriginal

peoples died from diseases, the effects of starvation, and deliberate strategies such as arsenic

in flour (Bandler & Fox 1983, p. 157) and poison in the water holes (Wallace P & Wallace N

1977, p. 22). The use of tobacco and other forms of dependency had the effect of reducing the

‘noble savage’ to an object of ridicule (Rowley 1972, p. 17).

In stark contrast, the land is part of the very being of Indigenous lifestyle and spirituality, and

central to Indigenous social relationships. Dodson (1988, p.1) writes they are all

interconnected with the ‘dreaming paths’. In 1982, ‘Body, Land and Spirit: Health and

Healing in Aboriginal Society’ edited by Reid merged anthropological and medical

perspectives to call for a holistic approach to Aboriginal health recognising spirituality as

central to this holism. The essence of holism, as it is used in Indigenous Australian health

discourse, refers to the interconnectedness of life’s dimensions (in McEwan & Tsey et al.

2009, p. 14). Edwards (1998) argues that traditional Indigenous Australian communities were

permeated by complex sets of spiritual values - a holistic sense of oneness and

interdependence; reverence for land and ‘country’. Furthermore he writes ‘country’ is a

source of identity for Indigenous Australians who have asserted their claim to ownership of

the land on the basis that the same spiritual forces which brought them into being also shaped

the land and still inhabit it. Thus the land still embodies the sacredness of the Dreaming

events (Edwards 1998, p. 19). Zubrick et al. (2010, p. 85) in ‘Working Together: Aboriginal

and Torres Strait Islander Mental Health and Wellbeing Principles and Practice’ quotes

Dodson (1977):

To understand our law, our culture and our relationship to the physical

and spiritual world, you must begin with land. Everything about

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Aboriginal society is inextricably woven with, and connected to, land.

Culture is the land, the land and spirituality of Aboriginal people, our

cultural beliefs or reason for existence is the land… Removed from our

lands, we are literally removed from ourselves

For Indigenous Australians, ‘caring for country’ expresses the sacredness of land. The

sacred knowledge, wisdom, and moral truth of ‘The Dreaming’ permeates the entire

‘beingness’ of Aboriginal life (Humes 2004, p. 237). The intimate relationship with the land

is expressed by Rose (1996, p. 7) who highlights that ‘country’ is often talked about in the

same way that a person may be talked about which encapsulates how important country is to

Indigenous culture.

‘Country is multi-dimensional – it consists of people, animals, plants,

Dreamings; underground, earth, soils, minerals and waters, air… People

talk about country in the same way that they would talk about a person:

they speak to country, sing to country, visit country, worry about country,

feel sorry for country, and long for country. People say that country

knows, hears, smells, takes notice, takes care, is sorry or happy.’

Indigenous Australians maintain a strong belief that continued association with and caring for

ancestral lands is a key determinant of health. Garnett and Sithole’s (2007) argument is that in

order to improve Indigenous health, programs must seek to address issues such as mastery and

control, social integration and cohesion; and governance. It is argued that these issues are tied

to Indigenous relationships with country (in Ganesharajah 2009, p. 15). Individual

engagement with 'country' provides opportunities for physical activity and improved diet as

well as boosting individual autonomy and self-esteem (Burgess et al. pp. 117-22). In 1995 the

‘Getting Strength from Country: report of the Outstation Impact Project’ found that

Aboriginal perceptions of health were holistic and closely linked with country, in particular

the ability to be free on country (in Ganesharajah 2009, p. 8). Burgess et al. writes ‘for

Indigenous people the land is wild or sick if not managed by its people…The land needs

human engagement’ (Burgess et al. in Ganesharajah 2009, p. 8).

Kellert (1993, pp. 133-3) explores the notion that the human need for land and nature is linked

not just to the material exploration of the environment but also to influence of the natural

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world on our emotional, cognitive, aesthetic, and even spiritual development. The biophilia

notion asserts that much of the human search for a coherent and fulfilling existence is

intimately dependent upon our relationship to nature. The mental and physical appreciation

associated with this heightened awareness and contact with nature may be among the most

ancient motive forces in the human relationship to the natural world (kellert 1993, p. 131-3).

Artist, Senimelia Kingsburra expresses this in her art work ‘Spiritual Connection’,

All the animals and plants in the painting are about our spiritual

connection - when you tap into spirituality you feel connected to

everything….The white outlines around everything represent all the

spiritual connections on the earth, between the earth, flora and fauna…

The water in the pond represents the choices in life - to live in a toxic

pond or in a cool inviting clear pond. Water has a ripple effect - for me, I

see negative thoughts as having a ripple effect that leads to toxic water.

When you have positive thoughts they ripple too and the effect is like

living in a calm inviting pool of water. The ripples represent growth…

(Kingsburra in McEwan & Tsey et al. 2009, p. vii)

McEwan and Tsey et al. (2009, p. 4) argue that social and emotional wellbeing has its genesis

in mental health policy but approaches mental health from a socio-historical perspective,

responding to Indigenous Australian understandings of health as involving an inextricable

relationship between physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing. Ganesharajah (2009, p. 3) also

argues that health is a measure of wellbeing, so therefore the social determinants of health are

also important factors for wellbeing. Furthermore, ‘[t]he Social and Emotional Well Being

Framework’ for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mental Health and Social Emotional

Wellbeing is based on principles, and the first one recognises the critical importance of land

to Indigenous wellbeing:

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health is viewed in a holistic

context, that encompasses mental health and physical, cultural and

spiritual health. Land is central to wellbeing. Crucially, it must be

understood that when the harmony of these interrelations is disrupted,

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ill health will persist.

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Charlesworth (2005, pp. 1-27) explores the idea that Indigenous Australians are ‘geosophical’

or earth-centred and not ‘theosophical’ or God-centred. Therefore, the earth or country is

believed to be impregnated with the power of the Ancestral Spirits. The relationship between

Aboriginal people, spirituality and land can be further explained to some extent firstly by

Tambiah (1990) who discusses Levy-Bruhl’s identification of two modes of human thought -

the causal and the participatory – as two ‘orderings of reality’. Both modes of thought are

simultaneously available to all humans but are linked to and enacted in different contexts of

communication and “practice”. Within this schema, population health represents the causal

mode of thought. The Participatory mode of thought is represented as occurring ‘when

persons, animals, places and natural phenomena are in a relation of contact, nearness or

proximity and in which this relation of contact is then translated into one of existential

immediacy with shared infinities’. The participatory mode of thought emphasises holism and

connectedness and situates human life in a network of socially constituted invisible forces

that gives it meaning (Tambiah 1990 in Dein 2005, p. 540). Secondly, the biophilia notion

powerfully asserts that much of the human search for a coherent and fulfilling experience is

intimately dependent upon our relationship to nature (Kellert 1993, pp. 42-43).

Racism has been associated with poor self-assessed health status, psychological distress,

substance use and attempted suicide among Indigenous Australians. Burgess et al. noted that

Aboriginal people living in towns often voice feelings of powerlessness (in Ganesharajah

2009, p. 12). Research undertaken by McEwan and Tsey et al. (2009) with community

partners of Yarrabah identify the effects of trans-generational trauma of displaced peoples.

Yarrabah, an Indigenous community in far north Queensland experienced a series of suicides

that traumatised many families and grieved the community. Hunter et al. (2001) locates

Yarrabah in the historical context that involved the forced co-location of disparate Aboriginal

groups under government assimilation policies (in McEwan & Tsey et al. 2009, p. 4).

Community members of Yarrabah and partners in research, Baird, Mick-Ramsamy and Percy

(1998, p. 8) explain that Yarrabah can be considered a ‘stolen generation community with the

consequential intergenerational and unresolved grief and trauma’ (in McEwan & Tsey et al.

2009, p. 4).

Devitt et al. argue that the problems in Indigenous health are the result of the current and

continuing dispossession of Indigenous people (in Ganesharajah 2009, p. 18). The destructive

invasion and dispossession that occurred around Sydney in the 1780s and in Brisbane in the

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1820s did not really begin in much of Cape York until the 1870s. A report written in 1896 to

the Queensland Parliament estimated that over half the Aboriginal population of Cape York

Peninsula had still never been in contact with Europeans (Genever 1998, p. 9). Another one

hundred years forward and Pearson (2000, p. 136) writes:

…people die more than twenty years earlier, on average, than other

Australians; Indigenous people’s health is by far the worst of any group

in the Australian community; people suffer from diseases that other

Australians do not have…Indigenous Australians are over-represented in

the juvenile justice system, criminal justice system, and the jails; and

there is more violence amongst our people than in other communities in

Australia.

After the 1967 Referendum Indigenous Australians were forced into the increasingly artificial

economy of the former missions. The impact of the equal wage decision meant Aboriginal

labour lost their place in the pastoral economy (Pearson 2000, p. 141). Pearson’s (2000)

analysis of passive welfare is that it has caused some of the worst social disasters the world

has known (p. 155). Following on the heels of welfare payments to Indigenous Australians

was the right to consume alcohol. Genever’s (1998) ‘Survey of Attitudes to Domestic

Violence in Cape York Aboriginal Communities’ provides historical context. The

introduction of the Aboriginal Act in 1971 gave communities the right to sell liquor. The

Queensland Government encouraged drinking in communities as a means of revenue raising

(Gevener 1998, p. 12). To say the Government gave with one hand and took back with the

other cannot be denied.

A 1997 study undertaken by Gladman et al. showed that Aboriginal people from Cape York

were being admitted to hospital at several times the Queensland average and that assault,

including domestic violence was the principle cause of external injury amounting to 42.8% of

all wounds requiring treatment (in Genever 1998, p. 10). Genever (1998) accepts that many

of the assaults being perpetrated in Aboriginal communities, often in association with alcohol

and other drugs, are undeniably influenced by the appalling conditions created by

colonisation and marginalisation (in Genever 1998, p. 12). Criminologist Paul Wilson (1998,

p. 1) reports these communities, ‘being among the most violent on earth, have their

foundations cemented in conflict’ (in Genever 1998, pp. 2 5). Pearson (2000) writes not only

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is the per capita consumption of alcohol in Cape York Peninsula the highest in the world but

Indigenous Australians living in Cape York Peninsula are now totally dependent on passive

welfare (Pearson 2000, pp. 136-9).

From invasion to present the dominant worldviews and western values continue to affect and

compete with Indigenous Australians’ worldviews. As self-management and social justice

echoes through the corridors of Governments, new words have risen from the ashes of post

colonialism: ‘lateral violence’; and ‘Indigenous governance’. Lateral violence is a product of

a complex mix of historical, cultural and social dynamics and a direct result of oppression. It

occurs when people who are victims of a situation of dominance, turn on each other rather

than confront the system that oppresses them (Social Justice Report 2011, p. 54). The other

relates to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ self-determination and participation

in decision-making (p. 24). In the context of ‘closing the gap’ we should pause to consider

the losses and whether the gap relating to poor health is indeed ‘closing’. The loss of

language, the loss of traditional homelands and inability to access ‘country’, decrease in

‘traditional subsistence economy’ (Pearson, 2000, p. 140) to a dependence on passive welfare

(p. 155), ‘stolen wages’, the erosion of social value, and the concern Foetal Alcohol Spectrum

Disorder is affecting children and young people’s ability to follow educational pathways are

ongoing issues.

The social determinants of health play a key role in the wellbeing of Indigenous Australians.

That is to say that racism as an often ‘hidden’ determinant dominates even in the face of

social justice and human rights. The arguments that ‘country needs its people’ and ‘healthy

country means healthy people’ has been explored in the context of social and emotional

wellbeing and health. The capitalist ideology and dominant worldview has, and always will

be a driver as financially ailing governments’ continue to make decisions about expansion

and inappropriate land management use for reasons such as population growth or capitalist

ventures and investment. Clearly, this has not changed since colonisation. If emotional

wellbeing is to improve then Indigenous Australians must be able to participate at all levels

including the traditional subsistence economy and the market economy of white Australia. To

effect change across the building blocks of the Prime Minister’s Closing the Gap Report 2012

all levels require inclusivity and choice; autonomy, participation, ownership of solutions and

empowering strategies. This includes appropriate land and health management frameworks

with continued access to ‘country’.

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