WS2121: Reflection on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Issues

This report presents a student's reflection on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, focusing on the documentary "The Tall Man" and preparing for community service on Palm Island. The student expresses outrage at the injustices faced by Indigenous Australians and highlights the importance of understanding the history of Palm Island, the impact of racism, and the need for empathy and cultural sensitivity. The report emphasizes the need to become acquainted with Aboriginal customs, traditions, and Christian values to effectively engage with the community. It discusses the challenges faced by Palm Island residents, including unemployment and the legacy of racism. The student plans to deploy skills like empathy and compassion while acknowledging the history of oppression to better serve the community.

Running head: REFLECTION ON ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDERS
Reflection on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1REFLECTION ON ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDERS
Table of Contents
1. Personal Opinion after Watching, “The Tall Man”............................................................2
2. Preparing to Work with the Community Living in Palm Island – A Reflection................3
2.1. Background – About Life on Palm Island...................................................................3
2.2. Skills and Frameworks to be deployed for Working with the Indigenous Australian
People on Palm Island............................................................................................................4
2.2.1. Reading up on the History of Palm Island and becoming informed about the Local
People 4
2.2.2. Becoming Aware of Essential Christian Values and Tenets...................................5
2.2.3. Deploying Skills like Empathy and Compassion....................................................5
2.2.4. Becoming Acquainted with Aboriginal Customs, Culture and Tradition...............6
2.2.5. Being aware of the Oppressive History of Cultural Racism....................................6
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................8

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Assessment 2 Part 2
1. Personal Opinion after Watching, “The Tall Man”
To watch the documentary film, “The Tall Man” as directed by Tony Krawitz is
something that turned out to be a very enlightening experience for me. The documentary
covers all the events which occurred on Palm Island following the death of a native
Australian man in police custody on the 19th of November in 2004.The local indigenous man
who suffered severe blows at the hands of the white police officers and who died as a result
of his injuries was of the name of Cameron Doomadge (Hooper, 2009). What I personally
liked a lot about this documentary film was how true it remained to the book of the same
name by Chloe Hooper. The director made no attempt to fabricate information or duplicate
information and portrayed the events that took place in real life and just as it was portrayed in
the book by Chloe Hooper in the most accurate ways possible. I was especially impressed by
the vividness and accuracy of the details that the documentary covered in order to give
viewers an idea of the extent of the atrocities that had taken place against Cameron
Doomadge by the white Australian police officers. It brought tears to my eyes to see the facts
unfold right before my very eyes, and to learn about how persistently Boe, lawyer tried to
ensure some kind of justice for the dead man. The sheer arrogance of white police officers
towards black and aboriginal people living in Australia is also something that was covered
quite well in the documentary film, in my opinion. What I felt after watching this
documentary movie is outrage, really, at the kind of injustice that aboriginal or native people
in Australia have suffered at the hands of white people, especially white people entrusted
with law and order duties while becoming much more informed at the same time of the
activism that has been and continues to be carried out by members of civil society to ensure

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that aboriginal people do not remain marginalized or oppressed as much as they were in the
past (Bennett et al., 2011).
2. Preparing to Work with the Community Living in Palm Island – A Reflection
2.1. Background – About Life on Palm Island
Palm Island is a stunning island in the Pacific, that served as a home for the aboriginal
people of Australia, many of whom were sent there forcefully in 1918 by white Australians,
in order to live in with the white missionaries in Palm Island and be victims of a subtle and
genteel form of apartheid in the name of being reformed or civilized (Hooper, 2006). The
aboriginal people who lived on Palm Island came from different parts Australia, they spoke
different languages and they followed different customs. At presently there are many as four
thousand people living on Palm Island (Best, 2018). Those residing on Palm Island are often
referred to as BwgColman, People meaning that they are one people but that they belong to
many tribes (Boman, 2016).What this term really acknowledges is the fact that the Palm
Islanders are people who share a common history and who hail from as many as forty
different clans. Palm Island is faced with a number of challenges today. Jobs are few in
number and most of the residents in Palm Island suffer from unemployment. The school
truancy rates on the island are very bad and while alcohol consumption is banned on the
island, an incident known as sly grogging is known to take place there quite frequently,
meaning that alcohol gets smuggled illegally into the island (Franklin, 2016). This is largely
due to the fact that Palm Island is neglected by mainstream Australian administration
(Bessarab, 2000).

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2.2. Skills and Frameworks to be deployed for Working with the
Indigenous Australian People on Palm Island
2.2.1. Reading up on the History of Palm Island and becoming informed
about the Local People especially the Impact of Racism on Aboriginal
People.
Working with the people living on Palm Island, that is, the aboriginal people of Palm
Island is not going to be an easy experience for me since I have not really interacted with
native Australians too much, but I am certainly excited at the prospect of being able to do so.
I believe that the first thing that I need to know and I need to prepare, in order to be able to
perform community service in a place like Palm Island is to familiarize myself with the
history of the island. I have to be well informed before I go ahead and start interacting with
the locals in the island and performing community service. I am aware of the fact the people
living on Palm Island are people who share a history of oppression namely racism and that I
need to be sensitive to their specific cultural needs and traits before I engage in any sort of
communication with them. I am also aware of the fact that people on Palm Island are
apprehensive of those who visit there from mainland Australia, viewing us with animosity
and hostility for the most part, primarily because they have been forced to remain on the
margins of Australian history, political and social life because of the racist attitudes of white
people in Australia. In order to acquire such sensitivity, I have to first read up as much as I
can about Palm Island. I have already read the book, The Tall Man, by Chloe Hooper and
have even watched the documentary made by Tony Krawitz on this book, and I must say I
have been very impressed by both. While the book and the documentary film have informed
me a lot about the cultural oppression that people in Palm Island are subjected to by white
Australians and how acts of violence are readily carried out against them by white people,
including the law and order authorities, there is still a lot more that I need to read up on

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regarding the history of Palm Island and the people who were forcefully made to go and live
there in order to be able to arrive at an understanding of the type of sensitive approach that I
need to deploy to perform community service on Palm Island with the care, compassion and
empathy that is desired. Such a bird’s eye view framework will be adopted as it will help me
to gain a broader perspective of the landscape that I will be working in as a social worker
alongside, families, individuals and groups who form a part of the aboriginal community
(Bessarab, 2000).
2.2.2. Becoming Aware of Essential Christian Values and Tenets
I know that the aboriginal people who were made to go and live on Palm Island in 1918
with the white Australian missionaries were proselytized by the missionaries (Lovett, 2017).
As a result, most of the people, if not all of the people living on Palm Island today, are
Christians and devout ones at that (Calma & Priday, 2011). Since I am not too religious
myself and also hold different religious beliefs, I feel that I need to gain an understanding of
Christian values and find out more about the Christian faith than what I already do, in order
to be able to relate well with the local people on Palm Island. Religion is more often than not,
a common topic of conversation among people in unfamiliar places who are not known to
each other. Talking about the tenets of Christianity and the joy and the privilege of being a
Christian is a way I believe, that I can break the ice with the local people on Palm Island and
get them to trust and open up to me more readily. Performing community service essentially
implies helping marginalized and oppressed people to lead a better life. This is something
that I can better do on Palm Island if I have a good idea about Christianity as a religion, its
basic values and sayings and what it requires a person to do in order to be accepted by God.

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2.2.3. Deploying Skills like Empathy and Compassion
Empathy and compassion are skills that I definitely need to deploy in order to perform
community service in the best possible way on Palm Island. People who have suffered
atrocities and who have seen their family members suffer atrocities will require others to be
empathetic of their situation instead of sympathetic. I need to be compassionate in the way I
talk to the locals, the way I inquire about their life on Palm Island and I need to be sensitized
to the fact that they don’t trust people from mainland Australia easily and that they may not
be welcoming of my efforts to perform community service initially. It will take me a lot of
maturity, sensitivity and compassion to give the locals on the island the impression that I am
there to help them and that I do not mean them any harm.
2.2.4. Becoming Acquainted with Aboriginal Customs, Culture and Tradition
In order to relate well to the local people on Palm Island and perform community service
over here in an effective manner, I need to become acquainted well enough with aboriginal
customs and traditions so that there is more that I can talk about when I engage with them.
Aboriginal foods, eating styles and cultural traditions are things that I need to really
familiarize myself with so that the locals I speak to or deal with when performing community
service are people who understand that I respect them and their traditions and am not there to
abuse or disrespect them. I need to learn how aboriginals perceive their own customs and
traditions like yarning for instance, if I am to gain an understanding on how to relate to them
(Priest et al., 2011).
2.2.5. Being aware of the Oppressive History of Cultural Racism
Finally, the oppressive history of cultural racism in Australia is something that I definitely
have to be fully conscious of when dealing with the aboriginal people on Palm Island at the
time of rendition of community service. People on Palm Island have been victims of racism

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ever since the first aboriginals were sent to Palm Island in the year of 1918 (Watson, 2018).
I understand that such a history of oppression is likely to fill the people on the island today
with a lot of hostility and antagonism when they see people from mainland Australia over
there especially given the high rates of school truancy and unemployment that are prevailing
on the island today (Savage & Gair, 2014). I have to be aware of this history of racism and
treat whoever I speak to on Palm Island with as much respect and dignity as possible in order
to get them to understand that I am not an enemy and that I have arrived on the island with
good intentions. I also have to be careful to perform by duties pertaining to community
service in a way that it comes across as a compassionate act of charity rather than a favor that
I am doing to the islanders (Bennett et al, 2011). This approach of empathy will be a more
dignified way to approach social work with aboriginal people and it will be more well
accepted by them, which in turn will boost my work in the long run.
Conclusion
Thus, performing community service on Palm Island is an experience that I am
definitely looking forward to, given how moved I am already after reading, “The Tall Man”,
by Chloe Hooper and watching the documentary on the same. I need to make sure that I
acquire all the skills and strategies that I needed to carry out community service on the island
with the greatest degree of compassion, understanding and empathy possible.

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References
Best, O. (2018). Training the ‘natives’ as nurses in Australia: so what went wrong?.
In Colonial caring. Manchester University Press.
Boman, E. (2016). Death and Life on Palm Island. LiNQ (Literature in North
Queensland), 35(1).
Franklin, J. (2016). Catholic missions to Aboriginal Australia: an evaluation of their overall
effect. Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society, 37(1), 45.
Hooper, C. (2006). The tall man:[Inside Palm Island's heart of darkness.]. Monthly, The, (Mar
2006), 34.
Hooper, C. (2009). The tall man: Death and life on Palm Island. Random House.
Lovett, R. (2017). A 2 history of health services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people. Yatdjuligin: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nursing and Midwifery
Care, 28.
Watson, J. (2018). A century of activism and heartache: The troubled history of palm
island. Griffith REVIEW, (60), 220.
Bennett, B., Zubrzycki, J., & Bacon, V. (2011). What do we know? The experiences of social
workers working alongside Aboriginal people. Australian social work, 64(1), 20-37.
Calma, T., & Priday, E. (2011). Putting Indigenous human rights into social work practice.
Australian Social Work 64(2). 147 – 155.
Bessarab, D. (2000). Working with Aboriginal Families - A Cultural Approach. In Issues
Facing Aboriginal Families (3rd ed., pp. 79 - 80).

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Savage, D., & Gair, S. (2014). Hearing and Understanding the Past in order to Strengthen the
Future. In A. Francis, V. Pulla, M. Clark, E. Mariscal & I. Ponnuswami, Advancing
social work in mental health through strengths based practice.
Priest, N., Paradies, Y., Gunthorpe, W., Cairney, S., and Sayers, S. (2011). Racism as a
determinant of social and emotional wellbeing for Aboriginal Australian youth.
Medical Journal of Australia, Vol. 194, No. 10, pp. 456-550.