The Impact of Colonization on First People Health

Running head: FIRST PEOPLE HEALTH
FIRST PEOPLE HEALTH
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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FIRST PEOPLE HEALTH
Figure: Concept map

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FIRST PEOPLE HEALTH
Introduction
First Peoples Health and Practice (3121MED) study gave me the insight about the extent
and the condition of the discrimination among the First Peoples and the non-Indigenous people
of Australia. However, the study helped me in the knowledge gathering about the concept in a
very nominal way as I did not have any idea about the factor prior to this study. On the basis of
this study I understood that the factor is the inequality among the public health facilities and the
primary cause of the factor is the imbalanced or poor socio-economic structure, low level of
education, rate of employment, lesser access to health care and the health literacy and belief. As
lesser knowledge about the concept I had not considered the factor of why Australia’s First
People that are the Indigenous population do not have the social advantage in comparison to the
non-Indigenous population. Until the knowledge about the concept of the history of the
colonisation among the Australian community I did not have the insight about the inequality in
health care providence. In the following essay I will highlight the factor of the colonisation
which I think play the crucial role in the First People Health. This factor will be comprised of the
public health policy, Intergenerational trauma, racism and systematic racism, inequality in health
care and white privilege. In addition with these factors I will incorporate the reflection and the
sociological influence in the framework of my professional practice in public health policies.
Define
The colonisation history of Australia and the implementation of the public health policies
showed that it resulted in an imbalanced mortality and morbidity rate and inequity in health care
process (Donkin, Goldblatt, Allen, Nathanson & Marmot, 2018). The mortality and morbidity

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FIRST PEOPLE HEALTH
rates are worse among the Australia’s First People than the non-Indigenous people. Health
inequality can be stated as the differences in health risk and the outcomes as the avoidable
inequalities. The inequity for the First People shows the average life expectancy which highlights
up to ten years lesser than the non-Indigenous people. The First People also show much higher
rates of chronic diseases than the non-Indigenous ones. This condition can be changed with the
development of evidence based public health policies which should be focused on the social and
economic resource development for the First People of Australia (Lee et al., 2018).
Public policies are the consideration of the governmental actions developed for the
consideration of the public problems. At 1770 the British settlement in the Australian continent
put the First People in a problematic position and the outsiders declared the land as the Terra
Nullius and presented themselves as the superior population and lawfully justified as well
(Hiscock, O’Connor, Balme & Maloney, 2016). Thus they take control of the land and posed as
the owner of the Australian land. The Segregation and Protection policy forced the First People
to live on missions, separate them from their families and communities, abandon their land,
language, culture and take up new foods, medicines, beliefs thus it was the situation which
forced them to up take completely foreign lifestyle (Bennett-Levy, Singer, DuBois & Hyde,
2017). Followed by which the Assimilation policy was forcibly placed over the children and they
are taken away from their families and named as the stolen generation that is the affected
generation in the process of these policies the intergeneration trauma occurred (Bennett,
Coghlan, Evan & Morse, 2018). All these factors affected not only the people of the community
in that generation also the trauma and loss carried out to the following generations. Hence, the
factor of the public policies engulfed the First People into the white Australia (Clarke, Swinburn
& Sacks, 2018).