Cultural Safety: Historical Context and Modern Implications Essay

This essay delves into the critical concept of cultural safety, particularly within the context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia. It examines the historical injustices, specifically the forced removal of children, known as the Stolen Generations, and its profound sociological, psychological, and psychosocial consequences. The essay explores the government's response, including the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families and subsequent apology. It highlights the long-term effects of cultural dispossession on health, social identity, and mental well-being. Furthermore, it emphasizes the importance of reconciliation strategies, including effective communication, empathy, and the building of trust to address the needs of these communities. The essay concludes by underscoring the role of social workers, non-governmental organizations, and healthcare professionals in supporting the healing process and fostering cultural safety, with a focus on the crucial role of communication and behavioral strategies in achieving reconciliation and preserving cultural ties.

RUNNING HEAD: CULTURAL SAFETY
CULTURAL SAFETY
Name of Student
Name of University
Author note

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Cultural safety is an integral aspect of preserving the social and cultural identities and
the act of fostering the same is an important intervention within the sociological framework.
While cultural safety ensures protection of ancient and long existent culture, it also assures
protection of the culture’s core values, ethics and traditions. In some cases though, as seen in
the context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – the cultural safety is highly
hindered by legislative or socio economic or sociocultural actions taken the administrative
bodies in Australia. It was reported that, previously the children were abducted from their
Aboriginal families in order to break their communal, social and kinship ties this act of forced
dispossession left deep sociological, psychological and psychosocial impact on the aboriginal
community’s culture (Pauly et al., 2015). While emotional and behavioral impacts were
significant, as reported by various previous studies – this also lead to chaos and disruption in
the national harmony of the country (Taylor & Guerin, 2019). The essay is focused to
determine that various causes, short term and long term effect of the children dispossessions
and how the government, in the recent years has up the ante by apologizing to the aboriginal
people and has taken massive steps in bringing their disposed children home.
Attorney General devised the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families in the year of 1995. In about two years
only, the Inquiry obtained testimony from more than 500 Torres Strait Islander and
Aboriginal people across Australia and it also interviewed the indigenous cultural supporting
organizations using various written and verbal methods (Funston & Herring, 2016). The
inquiry incorporated the functionality of foster parents, representatives (national and state
level government employees), the church representatives, the non-governmental
organizations (Arney et al., 2015) the charity missionaries and the social activists in
community framework, in order to bring the abducted children home to their aboriginal
parents. They formulated a six eighty nine page final report which was presented on 26th of

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May, 1997 to the parliament and this report gave fifty six recommendations in order to
support the psychological healing and the reconciliation of Stolen Generations. The trauma
was reported to a mental transfer of heavy depression and sadness down the generations from
grandparents to parents to future progenies and this inquiry revealed strong psychosocial
consequences resulting from the family and kinship detachments. The report bought up or
rather surfaced various cases of violence that forcibly detached the aboriginal children from
their parents and this was seen as rather an inhuman act committed in the yester years.
The government as a result of this inquiry, formulated the sorry book campaign and
signified an apology for the loss suffered by these unfortunate families of community
residing people, on the National sorry day. As a respond to the inquiry, the government
apologized to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders people for all the previously
formulated regulations, legislations, rules and policies that led to forceful abduction of the
aboriginal children from their indigenous parents and consequent social disruption.
Aboriginal dispossession started around 1900 century and ended around 1960-1970 and in
this long run of decades where the Australian government, back in the day, forcibly abducted
the integral components of their culture – the children (Brown, 2018). The cultural
disposition amongst the aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people led to various health
related issues such as depression amongst the children and parents alike, social isolation,
disruptive behavioral issues and even physical breakdowns and complications. The
reconciliation strategies must focus on positive communication techniques and effective
relationship building with the aboriginal people. Empathic behavioral strategies with positive
behavioral attributes is regarded important in reconciling the disruption caused in their
community, sociologically.
The stolen generations mean the generations of children who were stolen from their
parents in the decades spanning between 1900s and the 1960s. The aboriginal culture suffered

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a lot since then until the reconciliation strategies were taken up by the Australian government
in the later half of the decade. The mental health issues included social identity, self-identity,
homesickness. Loss of identity and culture led to substance and alcohol abuse (Gracey, 2014)
plus increase in the number of social violence. In many cases of stolen generation, loss of
social connectedness (Smith et al., 2014) and self-determination (Martin & Finlayson, 2018)
resulted in poor physical health and depression along with dementia resulted. The various
communication strategies that can be used while reconciling and addressing the needs of the
community people are usage of colloquial language and showing respect to their culture and
value. Having a kind and respectful disposition greatly helps the cause. The behavioral
strategies must incorporate compassion, empathy and sense of social diversity along with
divergent thoughts and emotions. Building a trust worthy relation through kindness,
compassion, altruistic attitude with the aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people – is vital
to forge a functional relationship with these community living people. Having good empathic
relationships assist in delivering the service better.
This resulted in a cultural dispossession as the taking away of children from the
Aboriginal parents meant breakage of cultural ties, kinship and sociocultural strength from
their indigenous community framework. Hence it can be concluded saying that although the
inhuman acts formulated by the government in the yester years led to social and communal
disruption in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander community – there is still hope and
really compassionate apologizing campaigns has been started by the Australian government
in the last few decades. While the campaigns focus on healing the aboriginal people, socially,
mentally and physical due to the extensive loss suffered by them more than 5 decades – it is
also important that the duty social workers, the non-governmental organizations and the
indigenous institutions to support the functions and healthy living of aboriginal and Torres
Strait islander people. While psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health workers along with

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the medicine doctors and nurses need to be trained on behavioral strategies and
communication techniques and both the trainings has to be done and provided in a culturally
safe way. The overall reconciliation process depend on the aspects of bringing back their lost
children and uniting the cultural ties once again. The right communication strategies with
correct behavioral approaches is critical to address the same.

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References
Arney, F., Iannos, M., Chong, A., McDougall, S., & Parkinson, S. (2015). Enhancing the
implementation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement
Principle. Child Family Community Australia, Australian Institute of Family
Studies, 34.
Brown, A. (2018). Building better systems of care for Indigenous Australians with chronic
disease.
Funston, L., & Herring, S. (2016). When will the stolen generations end?: A qualitative
critical exploration of contemporary'child protection'practices in Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander communities. Sexual Abuse in Australia and New Zealand, 7(1),
51.
Gracey, M. (2014). Why closing the Aboriginal health gap is so elusive. Internal medicine
journal, 44(11), 1141-1143.
Martin, D. F., & Finlayson, J. (2018). Linking accountability and self-determination in
Aboriginal organisations.
Pauly, B. B., McCall, J., Browne, A. J., Parker, J., & Mollison, A. (2015). Toward cultural
safety. Advances in Nursing Science, 38(2), 121-135.
Smith, J. L., Cech, E., Metz, A., Huntoon, M., & Moyer, C. (2014). Giving back or giving up:
Native American student experiences in science and engineering. Cultural Diversity
and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 20(3), 413.
Taylor, K., & Guerin, P. (2019). Health care and Indigenous Australians: cultural safety in
practice. Macmillan International Higher Education.

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