Cultural Competency: History & Culture of Indigenous Australians

This essay explores the history and culture of Indigenous Australians in the context of developing cultural competence. It begins by defining cultural competence and the author's current stage of cultural knowledge. The essay then delves into the history of Indigenous Australians, noting their presence for over 65,000 years and the impact of British colonization. It touches upon Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, their spiritual connection to the land, and their traditional way of life. The essay also discusses contemporary Australian history, including milestones like land rights and citizenship. The author acknowledges their limited knowledge and expresses a need for further study to overcome cultural incompetence, highlighting the importance of understanding the origins of Indigenous people and the reasons behind Australian colonization. The essay concludes with a list of references used to gather information.

Running head: HISTORY AND CULTURE OF INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN
CONCEPT OF CULTURE COMPETENCY: HISTORY AND CULTURE OF INDIGENOUS
AUSTRALIAN
Name of Student:
Name of University:
Author’s Note:

1HISTORY AND CULTURE OF INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN
Cultural competence is regarded as the attitude and behavior of people they show towards
other fellow who is culturally diverged from them (Loftin et al.,2013). People can be of different
cultural background, having various language, beliefs, thoughts and ethnicity (Topcu & Eroglu,
2017). Thus, cultural competence is treated as skill of working professionally with people no
matter from where they belong. Many health sector and professions in field of human service are
ongoing to include the activity of cultural competence in their work and starts to give training to
worker to become culturally competent.
I believe that becoming culturally competent is not a matter of one-day class. For this one
have to go with the flow, as developing an attitude of culturally competent is an ongoing process
(Isaacson, 2014). I place myself at stage of cultural knowledge where I know about different
sorts of culture present and how this can play a role in molding shape of health behavior. I am
not an incompetent person however; I need to go with the course to become culturally proficient.
I have to understand the effect of cultural behavior, its social application in health care and
practice.
I do not have a deep knowledge about the indigenous people of Australia. Though I am
accustomed with some of the facts about their culture and history. I knew that they came into
existence some 65000 year ago (Malaspinas et al., 2016). However, I am not aware about
origination of first man who came in southern continent. Before British colonization, it was
believed that Australia was populated with over 750,000 indigenous people (Hollinsworth,
2016). Regarding culture of indigenous Australia, they have two type of culture- Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander (Fowler, 2013). They have spiritual believe and love concerning their land.
They were in music, arts and love hunting, thus they follow a tribal life. I did not have any
confirmed idea about the contemporary history of Australia. Some people say that in the year

2HISTORY AND CULTURE OF INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN
1836 they got their scared right for their land (Tan, 2016) In 1948, all Australian got their
citizenship, which included aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (Tobler et al.,2017).
I have studied about the contemporary history and culture of Australia during my higher
educations. I used to study about this in blog and online articles. My grandfather also used to
recite stories about different intercultural concept related to indigenous people.
In Australia western culture is followed. They love music, dance and partying. However,
I did not know that this western culture was brought by First Fleet in 1788 (Rigney, 2017). They
were immigrant from Europe and Asia. People of Australia got right to vote in the year 1962
where indigenous people also got the privilege to vote as normal citizen (Turner, 2014).
My understanding regarding the culture and history of Australia is limited. I do not know
the exact origination of indigenous people and what made their culture so diverged. I also lack
knowledge about the main reason behind colonization of Australia by British. I need to study
more about the same as this can lead to abolish cultural incompetency in complete.

3HISTORY AND CULTURE OF INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN
Reference
Fowler, A. (2013). Electoral and policy consequences of voter turnout: Evidence from
compulsory voting in Australia.
Hollinsworth, D. (2013). Decolonizing indigenous disability in Australia. Disability &
Society, 28(5), 601-615.
Isaacson, M. (2014). Clarifying concepts: Cultural humility or competency. Journal of
Professional Nursing, 30(3), 251-258.
Loftin, C., Hartin, V., Branson, M., & Reyes, H. (2013). Measures of cultural competence in
nurses: An integrative review. The Scientific World Journal, 2013.
Malaspinas, A. S., Westaway, M. C., Muller, C., Sousa, V. C., Lao, O., Alves, I., ... & Heupink,
T. H. (2016). A genomic history of Aboriginal Australia. Nature, 538(7624), 207.
Rigney, L. I. (2017). Indigenist research and aboriginal Australia. In Indigenous Peoples'
Wisdom and Power (pp. 61-77). Routledge.
Tan, P., & Jackson, S. (2013). Impossible Dreaming–does Australia’s water law and policy fulfil
indigenous aspirations. Environment and Planning Law Journal, 30(2), 132-149.
Tobler, R., Rohrlach, A., Soubrier, J., Bover, P., Llamas, B., Tuke, J., ... & O’Loughlin, I.
(2017). Aboriginal mitogenomes reveal 50,000 years of regionalism in
Australia. Nature, 544(7649), 180.
Topcu, U. C., & Eroglu, U. (2017). A Review on Intercultural Communication Competence for
Business Research.

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Turner, B. S. (2014). Australia: the debate about hegemonic culture. Dominant Ideologies (RLE
Social Theory), 158.