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Ways of Seeing: Changing Directions in the Health of Indigenous Populations

University of Queensland, Cairns

Nearly a decade ago (1988) Australians celebrated the bicentennial of British settlement in New South Wales. Indigenous Australians, despite their small numbers, were prominent at that time - not, however, in celebration, but protest. Rather than joining the self-congratulatory activities of the mainstream, they drew attention to the continuing disadvantage of indigenous populations, bleakly emphasized at that time by the emerging findings of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1991). That report documented profound social disadvantage and its physical and emotional consequences. Few of those findings were new then and, sadly, little has changed since. Australians are now trying to digest the findings of another major investigation, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (1997). Perhaps the cumulative weight of reports and recommendations will ultimately tell. In this article changing non-indigenous constructions of Aboriginal Australians over the last half-century and the volatile contemporary political arena are explored. Using the concept of social capital, the consequences of colonization for indigenous societies is explored. The implications of this analysis for a public health approach to addressing problems of indigenous social and emotional well-being in Australia are presented, with reflection on the roles of mental health clinicians.

Key Words: Aboriginal • Australia • indigenous • mental health • social capital

Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Vol. 3, No. 4, 519-530 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/1359104598034004


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