The
world's oldest continent is a product of the Dreamtime when the ancients known
as the First Peoples travelled across the great southern land of Bandaiyan, creating
and naming as they went. The Dreaming, as it is known, is the origin of
spiritual values and reverence for country (kuntri).
There were many different Indigenous groups in Australia,
perhaps 600 of them, each with its own individual culture, beliefs and
language. These cultures overlapped and evolved over time.
The Rainbow Serpent (known as Ngalyod by the Gunwinggu and Borlung by the Miali) is a
major Ancestral being for Aboriginal people across Australia. The Ancestral beings formed the song lines
that cross the continent from north to south and east to west.
One version of the Dreaming story is:
The whole world was asleep. Everything
was quiet, nothing moved, nothing grew. The animals slept under the earth. One
day the rainbow snake woke up and crawled to the surface of the earth. She
pushed everything aside that was in her way. She wandered through the whole country
and when she was tired she coiled up and slept. So she left her tracks. After
she had been everywhere she went back and called the frogs. When they came out
their tubby stomachs were full of water. The rainbow snake tickled them and the
frogs laughed. The water poured out of their mouths and filled the tracks of
the rainbow snake. That's how rivers and lakes were created. Then grass and
trees began to grow and the earth filled with life.
The respective relationships with the land of Indigenous
and non-Indigenous Australians are epitomized in a line from a Paul Kelly song
(those of you who can remember back as far as my first BLOG will remember him)
in which the non-Indigenous line is ‘this
land is mine’ and the Indigenous line is ‘this land is me’.
The complex and diverse Indigenous cultures of Australia
are the oldest living cultural history in the world, going back at least 50,000 years, perhaps
65,000 years (by comparison Ireland has been populated for just 9,000 years).
At the time of first European contact, it is estimated that around 750,000
people lived in Australia.
You can imagine what the introduction of British
colonists – and them being sailors and convicts - did to this ancient, rich,
beautiful and fragile pattern!
The ‘First Fleet’,
comprising eleven ships, sailed into Botany Bay and Sydney bringing with them around
780 British convicts. This was on January 26, 1788, now celebrated as Australia
Day, but labeled ‘Invasion Day’ by Indigenous colleagues with whom I have
worked who see this landing as no cause for celebration. Two more convict fleets
arrived shortly after.
This settlement brought with it all manner of destruction
for the Indigenous peoples not least of which was a wave of Old World epidemic diseases.
Smallpox alone quickly killed more than 50% of the Aboriginal population, who
lacked immunity. Then followed the appropriation of native land and water
resources. The combination of disease,
loss of land, social and cultural disruption and violence reduced the
Aboriginal population by an estimated 90% within 12 years of white settlement.
This story is replicated elsewhere in the world.
Mythology also told how the lands and lives of the Arctic Inuit
were created and nurtured. The environment and animals of the Arctic and the
adventures of the hunt created visions of spirits and fantastic creatures and the aurora borealis, or northern lights, might conjure images of family and friends visiting
from the hereafter.
Alternatively the
Lights might be invisible giants or the souls of animals.
The Inuit practiced a form of shamanism based on animist principles. They believed that all things
had a form of spirit, including humans, and that to some extent these spirits
could be influenced by supernatural entities that could be appeased when one
required some animal or inanimate thing to act in a certain way.
European arrival in Inuit
lands shattered this delicate system of beliefs so closely in tune with nature and
caused widespread death through new diseases introduced by whalers and
explorers, and enormous social disruptions.
The imposition of western
laws, in Canada for example through the RCMC, and a moral code decreed by
missionaries wore down the culture and social fabric leaving the traditional
supports in tatters.
European religions were introduced
and conversion to them forced interfering with the traditional ancestral
worship breaking down cultural understandings. Then, of course the Native
Peoples’ lands were appropriated – and this appropriation resisted.
You can see the pattern here, and
these are but a few examples of what has been repeated over thousands of years;
our actions cause the emergence of minority groups who then inevitably become
disadvantaged in numerous respects.
These ignominious beginnings have
had a sustaining legacy.
As a group, Indigenous Australians have one of
the lowest life expectancy rates in the nation. Today
that life expectancy is on average 10 years less than for non-Indigenous
Australians. A large part of this is due to chronic diseases such as
cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, chronic respiratory disease and
chronic kidney disease. Many of these have common
risk factors, including smoking, poor nutrition and lack of exercise. On
returning from a visit to ‘outback’ Indigenous communities in the 1990s the
then president of the College of Surgeons and I, as CEO, reported to a College
Council meeting that whilst our developing countries outreach programme was
leading to improvements in healthcare quality in those countries we had largely
ignored an almost identical problem amongst
our own Indigenous peoples.
Life expectancy figures for the
Inuit population are complicated by the spread of Inuit peoples across a number
of Arctic countries. However studies of life expectancy of Canadian Inuit
peoples suggest it is 10 to 15 years less than for non-Inuit Canadians.
Native Americans’ life expectancy
ranges from 66 to 81 depending on whether you happen to live in South Dakota or
California (which itself raises questions) and, while averaging is fraught, if
one averages, American Indians spend four years less on this planet than do
other Americans.
Isolated and minority groups,
whether indigenous minorities or ethnic minorities or economic minorities or
social minorities are almost without exception worse off when it comes to quality
of life and quality of health care. For instance, in the USA, the Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality (AHRQ) reports that:
· African
Americans received worse care than White
Americans for about 40% of measures.
· Asians
received worse care than White Americans for about 20% of measures.
· Hispanics received worse care than non-Hispanic
Whites for about 60% of core measures.
· Poor people received worse care than high
income people for about 80% of core measures.
In Ireland a particular unequal minority of concern are
‘the Travelling People’ (an lucht siúil
or Pavee). Very little is known about the origin of
the travellers. They may be descendants of people in Irish history who had been
evicted from their lands; they may be descendants of travelling tradesmen, such
as tinsmiths; or are they may be descendants of travelling bards.
That minority groups are with us and always will be is inescapable;
but that the quality of healthcare that many of these groups receive is poorer
than the rest of the population should not be an inevitability.
ISQua has a clearly articulated set of objectives to enhance
health care safety and quality in low and middle income countries. We believe this
will have the effect of improving outcomes for the populations, including
minorities, in those countries. ISQua’s overall mission will also lead to
benefits for minorities as the effect of improvements filter through societies
in general. ISQua has also made its intentions clear in focussing on minority
groups in particular as one of its recent conference tracks directed to this
theme attests. As we build our interest in this problem and search for possible
solutions we would be assisted by your input and invite you to offer it.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
The following sources where used in compiling this
document.
Australian Museum Online: www.dreamtime.net.au
Australian Government Culture and Recreation Portal: www.culture.gov.au
Webster Online: www.webster.com
National Museum of Australia: www.nma.gov.au
Publication No. AHRQ 11-0005-3-EF April 2011
Statistics Canada Health Reports
kullilaart.com.au
No comments:
Post a Comment