Smoking Among Indigenous People

Running head: SMOKING AMONG INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
SMOKING AMONG INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:
Introduction:

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SMOKING AMONG INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
Indigenous people comprises of about 2.8 % of the population in the
nation. Smoking as well as tobacco use is found to be quite high among
this cohort accounting for about 39% of the population in the cohort being
regular smokers in the year 2014-2015 (Gould et al., 2016). This was
found to be quite high in comparison to that of the non-Indigenous people
where about 14.5% of the people had been found to be regular smokers.
Males are more likely than the females to smoke as compared to about
42% to that 36% respectively and people in the remote areas accounting
for higher percentage of smokers than those in the non-remote areas.
However, over the years, different articles have expressed this health
concern of the Indigenous people in varied ways (Sitas et al., 2018). While
the positive and neutral approaches of the representation of this issue had
been noticed in many articles, many articles have shown cultural
biasness, stigmatisation as well as prejudices by the authors against the
culture. This assignment would select three articles on this smoking issue
and would analyse their approaches towards the health concern in a
detailed manner.
Discussion:
Article 1:
An important article that focused on the increased number of
indigenous people being affected by the high smoking addiction was
published on December 2 in the year 2018 under the banner of the Voa
news. Phil Mercher had undertaken an exclusive amount of research in
order to explore the factors that had contributed to the increased smoking
rate among the Indigenous people. He had stated that one-third of the
Indigenous people are smokers and he had interviewed stalwarts to note
their perceptions about the smoking rate in the people. One of his
interviewee namely professor Renee Bittoun who is actually a tobacco
treatment specialist had been of the opinion that indeed a number of
factor play an important role in health gap of the indigenous people like
inadequate housing, high rates of poverty, and alcohol and drug abuse
but smoking actually results in immense damage. He had also undertaken

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SMOKING AMONG INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
and in-depth research and analysis about the comments made by Dr.
Raymond Lovett who is the epidemiologist at the Australian National
University. He had been of the opinion that increased smoking rate might
be because of the part of colonisation. He stated that tobacco acted as
the de facto currency and was even used extensively in the state or
church run missions where Indigenous people had been sent for
conversions into Christianity. Wright (2017) been of the opinion that
Europeans indeed used tobacco as an alluring object for the Indigenous
people as they desired for it. The colonisers used to provide them tobacco
in huge amount for buying labours. Moreover, they infused it in the form
of ration spreading its use among the Indigenous people extensively
(Gould et al. 2015). They thought that this practice would make them
accept the modern way of settling and picking up western culture and
ethics but they failed as this clashed with the world views of the
Indigenous people. However, within this time, the habit and addiction had
become widespread (Tremain et al., 2016). Thereby, this article can state
that the author had indeed researched extensively to find out the factor
and represent to readers about the cause of high prevalence of smoking
among Indigenous people. In that sense, it can be stated that the author
had tried to undertake a neutral approach representing facts as well as
the programs that had been developed in the nation for the Indigenous
people. However, there is a different angle to it, which can be considered
to be negative.
However, it seems that author appears to harbour biasness or
prejudices about the smoking prevalence among the Indigenous people.
While discussing about the high smoking rate among Indigenous people,
he talked about Simone Jordan who is an aboriginal leaders and involved
in establishing centre in Sydney to help the Indigenous people give up
smoking cigarettes. However, it can be found that there was an
insensitive way or representing that although the leader is doing lots to
help in the cause, he is himself a smoker. This was represented as “About
a third of aboriginal adults smoke, including Simone Jordan, an
aboriginal leader involved in setting up a centre in Sydney....”. This shows