Moving Forward Together in Aboriginal Women's Health: - Theses ...

Moving Forward TogetherJanet Kellysystem tends to focus on illness and health as the absence of disease. Abiomedical understanding of health and ill health, focusing on the treatment ofbody parts with physical or chemical cures, became popular in the RenaissancePeriod and remains dominant in Western health systems today. The Cartesianview that the body and mind are separate and unrelated led to a belief thatpeople’s mental and emotional health was unrelated to physical illness (Capra1985). Contemporary western concepts of health and well-being include amodified understanding of biomedicine that focuses on physical health andillness, with consideration of social and psychological factors that may have animpact. This provides some increased, but not focused, understanding of theongoing impact of individual and collective colonisation experiences on theheath and well being of Aboriginal women and their families (Atkinson 2002).From an Indigenous perspective, biomedicine can be seen to be entrenchedwithin a specific socio-political framework that privileges Western malebiomedical knowledge over other forms of knowledge such as spiritual,cultural, feminine, personal and intuitive knowledge. This dominant view ofill-health as being physical and treatable has led to a situation where ‘beinghealthy’ has become an important aspect of being a ‘good citizen’, and illhealth is synonymous with being an economic and societal burden. Thoseexperiencing ill health for a range of environmental and socioeconomic factors,a position that many Aboriginal women find themselves in, are then blamed forbeing in that position (Baum 2008). If unchallenged, these beliefs associatedwith blame can negatively impact on the way health care is provided. Whencoupled with discriminating and colonising practices, health care becomeseven more unfriendly and exclusionary.Primary health careAs discussed in the Chapter One, Aboriginal health documents such as theNational Strategic Framework for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health2003-2013 (2004) advocate for partnership approaches and comprehensiveprimary health care. The Close the Gap Campaign (Oxfam Australia 2007) andHuman Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (Calma 2005) recognisethe impact of poorer access to the social determinants of health on the health67