Reflective Essay on Aboriginal Culture and Perception

Running head: NURSING ASSIGNMENT
NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

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REFLECTIVE ESSAY
This paper will reflect on how my attitude and perception had changed with the end of
this learning module. I will reflect on my thoughts feelings and emotions while participating in
this subject.
In my initial reflection, I had raised an issue as of why we are not being allowed to enter
certain areas of the Aboriginal population in Cairns, when I had never been judgemental about
the indigenous people, and have always accepted them. The question that hit my mind during
that time was, that Australia is now a free country and I was well aware of the colonization
history of Australia. Then why is this restriction, still there? Or why the tourists are not allowed
to enter certain Aboriginal sites. However, my perception had changed after I had explored the
subject more deeply and have learned, several new things about the Aboriginal culture and their
norms of life. I have learned about how the Aboriginals value their own culture and tradition and
how they have managed to keep everything still the same.
Several learning activities were there, throughout the module that took me close to the
Aboriginal culture. In our learning module we were required to watch and analyse three videos
that changed my perception about aboriginal culture and traditions.
History bytes are video resources that often acts as important resources for aboriginal
stories. Varieties of online resources are available online that can provide a clear information
about colonisation history of the Europeans in the land of the first people. Aboriginal
documentaries and short films have always brought people close to each other to share the past
and to clarify the seemingly incomprehensible in the creation or to instruct. It has to be said that,
powerful children should also make the students see the consequences that the action might

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have. In the digital classroom we were taught about 1967 Referendum. This Referendum had
been a landmark achievement for the aboriginal Australians as there had been an amendment in
two section of the constitution of Australia, which previously stated that indigenous people will
not be included in the counting of the total number of people in the common wealth (National
Library of Australia, 2019). The main element mentioned in the referendum were the right to
vote , citizenship’s rights, equal rights (Australians together, 2017).
This activity had been a great learning experience as it has helped us to understand the
Aboriginal culture and traditions, which might be quite different from others and we might feel
weird about this.
Another activity in our course module that has been useful for embedding the thought of
cultural acceptance, is to watch an aboriginal movie, Babakiuria. The film focusses on role
reversal, where the Aboriginal Australians who have colonised a fictitious country of
Babakiuria, that has been inhabited by the white natives. The film shows that how after long 200
years of aboriginal authority over the land, the white Australians had become a minority. Unlike
the real world, the Aboriginals have got the authority and all the White Australians had been
confined to a land named as ghettos (Babakeiuria, 2019). The film showed highlighted the
unfairness of the Australia’s past and the present policies of the aboriginals.
Another important activity that helped to change my conception about the Aboriginals, is
a TED talk show, where Chimada Ngozi Adichie had been the speaker, who was a writer and
started writing since the age of seven (Ngozi Adichie, 2019) . She was spontaneous in saying
how the stories are stereotyped, which explained about white children who ate apples and only
talked about the fine weather. This cannot be the example of an ideal story as most of them are
not based on real lives, where the black aboriginals did not eat apples or never talked about how