Examining the Aboriginal Issue in the Context of Australian Culture

This essay reflects on the unique position of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities within Australian culture, noting that while they are legally entitled to equal rights, they consistently face numerous challenges. Issues such as health disparities (including higher rates of cancer, diabetes, and heart diseases), unemployment, violence against women, high crime rates, and psychological imbalance are prominent. Racism is identified as a significant factor contributing to these problems. Despite these issues, the Australian government has undertaken several initiatives to improve the condition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people through campaigns and social communication, leading to positive outcomes such as decreased intoxication rates and improvements in education and health awareness. The health service industry has also played a crucial role in recruiting from the Aboriginal community, further enhancing health awareness.

Running head: AUSTRALIAN CULTURE AND ABORIGINAL ISSUE
Australian Culture and Aboriginal Issue
Name of the university
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Author note

1AUSTRALIAN CULTURE AND ABORIGINAL ISSUE
This paper aims to reflect on Australian culture and aboriginal issues across the
country. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have a separate yet unique place
in Australia just as native population of the country. According to Dudgeon et al. (2014),
Australian people feel strong connection with their cultural and lingual background and they
are very conscious about conserving environment. People contribute for uniform economic
development and proud of their cultural identity as well. According to the law of the country,
aboriginal people share equal rights just as the natives. Although, several amendments have
been made in the sectors of aboriginal rights, yet this community is consistently maintaining
a helpless position within Australian society. There are numerous issues with this community,
which are coming in front increasingly with the progression of time.
In 2011, as per the census report, aboriginal communities consist of almost 3% of the
total population living in Australia. Most of them lives in cities and there are people who are
leading life in distant places without cities’ comfort as well. They have different culture,
language and appearance as compared with original inhabitant of the country. There is no
particular reason why Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community receives continuous
physical and emotional violence from the natives mostly. It has been observed, after a detail
reading of Herring et al. (2013), people from this community suffer more with diseases like
cancer, diabetes, both the respiratory and heart diseases. Unemployment issue is prominent
here among them. Aboriginal women face more physical and sexual violence as compared to
the native Australian women. Crime rate is equally higher with the rate of psychological
imbalance among indigenous adult population. As argued by Fforde et al. (2013), they are
victim of racism as well. Numerous evidences can be identified as far as racism against the
aboriginal community is concerned in Australia.
Acknowledging the contribution of indigenous community in the economy, culture,
language and many more sectors across country and considering their human rights,

2AUSTRALIAN CULTURE AND ABORIGINAL ISSUE
government has taken several initiatives to improve the condition of Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander people. As described in Kingsley et al. (2013), with the help of campaigns,
both the direct and indirect social communication, mass awareness have been increased,
which is reflecting a positive result. Rate of intoxication has decreased along with that an
improvement has been noticed in education attainment and health condition. Health service
industry has worked as major recruiter of aboriginal community, which has directly
influenced the health awareness among this community.

3AUSTRALIAN CULTURE AND ABORIGINAL ISSUE
References
Dudgeon, W., Wright, M., Paradies, Y., Garvey, D. and Walker, I., 2014. Aboriginal social,
cultural and historical contexts. In Working together: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
mental health and wellbeing principles and practice (pp. 3-24). Commonwealth Department
of Health.
Fforde, C., Bamblett, L., Lovett, R., Gorringe, S. and Fogarty, B., 2013. Discourse, deficit
and identity: Aboriginality, the race paradigm and the language of representation in
contemporary Australia. Media International Australia, 149(1), pp.162-173.
Herring, S., Spangaro, J., Lauw, M. and McNamara, L., 2013. The intersection of trauma,
racism, and cultural competence in effective work with aboriginal people: Waiting for
trust. Australian Social Work, 66(1), pp.104-117.
Kingsley, J., Townsend, M., Henderson-Wilson, C. and Bolam, B., 2013. Developing an
exploratory framework linking Australian Aboriginal peoples’ connection to country and
concepts of wellbeing. International journal of environmental research and public
health, 10(2), pp.678-698.