Indigenous Health Perspectives: Kyah Simon's Health Journey Report

This report provides a detailed analysis of the health journey of Kyah Pam Simon, an Indigenous Australian soccer player. It explores her personal experiences with health challenges, particularly those related to food insecurity stemming from her family's socioeconomic background. The report links Kyah's experiences to broader health issues prevalent among Indigenous Australians, such as respiratory diseases, mental health problems, and chronic conditions, often exacerbated by factors like income, employment, and discrimination. It examines the measures Kyah has taken to maintain a healthy lifestyle and discusses the impact of food insecurity on the individual, family, and the wider Indigenous community. The report references relevant literature to support its claims and provides a comprehensive overview of the health challenges and resilience within the Indigenous population.

Running head: HEALTH JOURNEY OF SIMOM PAM KYAH 1
Health Journey of Simon Pam Kyah
Name
Institutional Affiliation

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Source: Davies, (2018)

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The identified Australian Indigenous person in the public domain is Anaiwan woman and
Matilda’s star, Kyah Pam Simon. Kyah was borne in the year 1991 June 25. She is an Australian
professional soccer striker and playing for the Houston Dash in the NSWL. In the year 2011,
Kyah became the first-ever Indigenous Australian player to score a celebrated goal in the FIFA
World Cup. Kyah has played for Central Coast Mariners, Sydney FC, and Western Sydney
Wanderers in the Australian Women League and for the Boston Breakers in the American
National Women’s Soccer League.
Kyah grew up amongst her family of rugby players in the Quakers Hill NSW close to
Sydney, Australian. She started playing soccer for the Quakers Hill under-eights and fell in love
with football. Kyah, as, a youth, played for the Hills Brumbies prior to transferring to the Penrith
Nepean United. At 15, Kyah broke her leg just when she was about to earn a scholarship with the
NSW Institute of Sport. However, this never deterred Kyah from the pursuit of her dream. Kyah
subsequently debuted Australian Women’s national soccer team when she was 16 years, a year
after breaking her leg.
In the popular culture, Kyah was featured in 2013 in a one-hour long episode of the
Aussies Abroad of ESPN dubbed, “The Matildas” that profiled her alongside other three
Australian national team players including Samantha Kerr, Lisa De Vanna, and Caitlin Foord
alongside their respective experiences playing internationally. Kyah also became a subject of the
football documentary dubbed “No Apologies” authored by Ashley Morrison, the award-winning
filmmaker. This documentary narrates a story of 2 Aboriginal women footballers (Kyah and
Lydia Williams) alongside their path to the World Cup. Kyah also became the appeared in the
Australians FourFourTwo Magazine alongside a colleague.

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Kyah cites being the first Indigenous female or male to score at the senior World Cup
as her greatest achievement on the field and being a role model, inspiring youth to accomplish
their goals and chase their respective dreams as her greatest achievement of the pitch (n.d. 2014).
She cites being a successful businesswoman owning a business of her own as her goal outside
the football. Her favorite food or meal is a pear, goat cheese salad and walnut served with grilled
salmon. She also cites her favorite dessert as a warm chocolate brownie with ice cream.
Just like many other Indigenous Australians, Kyah went through health challenges and
difficulties as she came from a poor family with both struggling father and mother to put even
basic foods in the table. As she narrates about her mum and dad’s situation while growing. She
says that her mum, named Pam came from Anaiwan individuals. Her mum was born in Glen
Innes with 12 siblings with and sister who died of pneumonia (Simon, 2019). She narrates the
challenges of her mum’s mother or her Nan, Betty went through as she was taken away and
compelled to work as an Aboriginal made to show health challenges facing the Aboriginals. She
says that when Reg Poppy met her Nan, Poppy was disowned by his family because her Nan was
Indigenous and Reg was white making her Nan a shame to the Poppy’s family. This is because
Poppy’s where quite wealthy and solely offered her Nun and Poppy food and board in exchange
for work such as fencing and ring barking around their properties (Simon, 2019).
Her Nan and Poppy ultimately left their land and moved her mum and the siblings to
inner western Sydney called Erskineville which was owned by her Nan’s sister who treated their
family badly living in a single room and cooking in the same room (Simon, 2019). Moreover,
meals usually comprised of a single loaf of bread shard among her Nan, Poppy and all the kids.
Nan would make food in bulk and attempt to stretch what little they were having. She only had a
little portable gas stove as the cooking device (Simon, 2019). Money was an issue and Kyah’s

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mum never owned a new pair of shoes till she hit 14. Discrimination was ripe daily even after
Kyah’s mum’s family had moved into the housing commission home in Seven Hills and
subsequently to Macquarie Fields because of Indigenous heritage. Kyah is hurt as she says that
her mum sheltered them from most of such a chapter of her life (Simon, 2019).
From the narration by Kyah herself, the health issue is lack of food security amongst
the Indigenous population which so prevalent and affects their health and that of the entire local
community. The Indigenous people are discriminated against by the non-Indigenous population
as demonstrated above. Several Indigenous Australian experience poor health than non-
Indigenous Australian, usually dying at tender ages. The lack of food security is a health issue
that leads to other health problems.
The Indigenous Australians are more probably to have respiratory diseases, mental health
problems, cardiovascular diseases, chronic kidney diseases and diabetes due to lack of healthy
foods (Lawrence, Richards & Lyons, 2013). Moreover, there is a continued high occurrence of
some diseases and associated conditions which are presently virtually unknown in the non-
Indigenous population. These include trachoma and rheumatic heart diseases. The underlying
food insecurity cause in Indigenous Australians include socioeconomic factors like income and
employment, overcrowding, housing food costs, transport, cultural food values, food and
nutrition literacy, education and skills and knowledge.
Kyah has, however, undertaken serious measures to maintain a healthy lifestyle. She has
been a successful soccer player who does physical exercise and eats well to remain healthy. She
has only started her businesses to ensure that her family can afford healthy food. Moreover, she
has vowed to fight the socioeconomic factors that lead to food insecurity and this is why despite
breaking her leg in 2015, she was never distracted from achieving her goal of being a successful

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player. This is why she will go down in history as the first Indigenous to score a goal in the
World Cup.
Lack of health food security amongst the Indigenous population negatively impacts Kyah
and family member’s lifestyle and the entire local community. For example, as we have observed
in Kyah’s narration, her family could not even afford to eat twice a day and her members of the
family had to survive on small meals. Sometimes, they were even discriminated to the extent that
they had to be given small foods in exchange for such work as fencing or ring-barking.
Generally, lack of food security affects the community by triggering hunger and alongside
anxiety linked to shortages of food in the short-term, and severe health consequences connected
to malnutrition in medium to long-run (Lee et al., 2016).
Young kids, pregnant, and breastfeeding women tend to specifically get vulnerable to the
short- and long-term food security effects. This significantly impacts on the growth of the
children, and physical and social as well as emotional development alongside learning potential
amongst Indigenous children (Coté, 2016). Indigenous Australians in remote areas are more
probably to experience food insecurity than their colleagues in non-remote areas. Nonetheless,
food insecurity is experienced in urban areas primarily due to lack of transport as well as public
transport quality.

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References
Coté, C. (2016). “Indigenizing” food sovereignty. Revitalizing indigenous food practices and ecological
knowledges in Canada and the United States. Humanities, 5(3), 57.
Davies, W. (2018). Australian Soccer Keen To Further Celebrate Indigenous Athletes' Contribution.
NITV, 1-2. https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2018/06/21/australian-soccer-keen-further-
celebrate-indigenous-athletes-contributions
Lawrence, G., Richards, C., & Lyons, K. (2013). Food security in Australia in an era of neoliberalism,
productivism and climate change. Journal of Rural Studies, 29, 30-39.
Lee, A., Rainow, S., Tregenza, J., Tregenza, L., Balmer, L., Bryce, S., ... & Schomburgk, D. (2016).
Nutrition in remote aboriginal communities: lessons from Mai Wiru and the Anangu
Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands. Australian and New Zealand journal of public
health, 40(S1), S81-S88.
n.d. (2014). Former Matildas star, Sarah Walsh caught up with Kyah Simon ahead of the Cyprus Cup.
My Football , 1-2. https://www.myfootball.com.au/news/matildas-profiles-kyah-simon
Simon, K. (2019). The things that were left unsaid. PlayersVoice, 1-3.
https://www.playersvoice.com.au/kyah-simon-things-that-were-left-unsaid/
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