“Aboriginal medical services have proved the longevity of Aboriginal people, so we need the bigger spread and more Aboriginal medical services probably in the next 5-10 years.
We probably need another 100 to 150 Aboriginal medical services throughout the whole country, in cities and remote communities as well, so we’ll be pressuring Ken to make available more funds for the establishment of Aboriginal Medical Services.”
Sol Bellear AM, Chair of the Aboriginal Medical Service in Redfern
“It’s absolutely critical, we need people who understand our health and wellbeing and some of the important illnesses Aboriginal people get that say their non-Aboriginal counterparts don’t,
We have every confidence in Minister Wyatt, he has the experiences, the necessary qualifications, and the contacts and understanding, particularly with his expertise and knowledge having worked in Indigenous health in his past career.
He also knows a lot of leaders around the country and he knows where to get the correct information if he requires it, and we’re certainly willing, ready and able to help him if he requires it and calls upon us.”
AMSANT’S Executive Officer, John Paterson, explained it’s extremely important the minister for Indigenous Health is Indigenous.
The Aboriginal Medical Service in Redfern and the Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance of the Northern Territory are pleased to have Ken Wyatt as the new Minister for Aged Care and Indigenous Health, but have called for improvement.
Ken Wyatt was appointed yesterday as the Minister for Aged Care and Indigenous Health after a cabinet reshuffle brought about by the resignation of Susan Ley.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says Mr Wyatt’s previous experience as a bureaucrat within the Indigenous Health area makes him an ideal appointment to role.
Sol Bellear AM, Chair of the Aboriginal Medical Service in Redfern, acknowledged Minister Wyatt’s long commitment to Indigenous health, but also recognised there is always room for improvement.
These comments from the Indigenous medical community have not been lost on the first ever Indigenous Federal Minister, who has already called for a new approach to addressing the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Mr Wyatt says it will take a whole of government approach to create lasting change.
Mr Wyatt told the ABC:
“There’s this construct around Aboriginal health that is based on Aboriginal Community-controlled health services and organisations and specific programs that have been funded by the Commonwealth.
But if we’re truly serious, then what we should be doing is saying, ‘alright, how does the health sector, including all the ACCHOs then tackle this issue collectively to make sure that 800 thousand Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in this country have their health conditions improved?… the levels of, and prevalence rates of certain illnesses, tackled in a way that sees a reduction?”
AMSANT Lending a helping hand
AMSANT has been working on creating programs that tackle mental health issues, with a particular focus on intergenerational trauma.
Mr Paterson said he wants to meet with the minister as soon as possible, to present AMSANT’s research and get government support to start implementing the programs.
“We’ve done enough research, now it’s about implementation and action and that’s where we want to encourage governments,” he said.
“We have two experienced psychologists, one Indigenous psychologist, that have been working and looking at all different models overseas and internationally and we believe there are a couple of models that could be implemented in our Aboriginal communities here in our nation,” he said.
“There’s plenty of data and plenty of information, all we require is a willingness of governments and ministers to put the appropriate resources in that area.”
He added that tackling intergenerational trauma in communities could start to change the face of First Nations health entirely.
“You’ll see an increase in children’s attendance at school, their confidence, their general health and wellbeing, and you’ll see people having the confidence to approach issues that they may have been reserved or hesitant about in the past,” The Executive Officer said.
“This underlying trauma and stress that families have experienced because of whatever reasons you know – government policy back in the day, the stolen generation, the removal of kids, you know some families have never ever had some of those experiences treated,” he continued.
“And you can see it being played out now so we really need to focus and invest in some wrap around programs and the right counsellors and psychologists for those families and individuals that are experiencing this intergenerational trauma and stress.
“There is a way forward here and there is a process that can help tackle the underlying issues that many of us still face.”
Paterson said he also wants to talk to Minister Wyatt about ensuring specialist services are available in the NT, that Aboriginal Australians stop dying years earlier than their non-Aboriginal counterparts, and that preventative programs are implemented to tackle chronic diseases.
Imagine watching a film that tells the truth about the terrible injustices committed over 225 years against your people, a film that reveals how Europeans, and the governments that have run our country, have raped, killed and stolen from your people for their own benefit.
Now imagine how it feels when the people who benefited most from those rapes, those killings and that theft – the people in whose name the oppression was done – turn away in disgust when someone seeks to expose it.”
Adam Goodes is the Australian of the Year and plays AFL for the Sydney Swans.: “It takes courage to tell the truth, no matter how unpopular those truths may be.” Photo: Rohan Thomson
“Put simply, reconciliation hasn’t worked in Australia because as a nation, we continue to refuse to face up to our real past. Just as you cannot have reconciliation without justice, you can’t have justice without truth”
Sol Bellear reviewing the movie Utopia (see below ) Sol is the chairman of the Aboriginal Medical Service, Redfern and a long-time Aboriginal activist.
Hostility to John Pilger’s film a denial of nation’s brutal past-Adam Goodes
For the last few weeks, I’ve seen a film bring together Aboriginal people all over Australia. The buzz around Utopia – a documentary by John Pilger – has been unprecedented. Some 4000 people attended the open-air premiere in Redfern last month – both indigenous and non-indigenous Australians – and yet little appeared in the media about an event that the people of Redfern say was a ”first”. This silence has since been broken by a couple of commentators whose aggression seemed a cover for their hostility to the truth about Aboriginal people.
When I watched Utopia for the first time, I was moved to tears. Three times. This film has reminded me that the great advantages I enjoy today – as a footballer and Australian of the Year – are a direct result of the struggles and sacrifices of the Aboriginal people who came before me.
Utopia honours these people, so I think the very least I can do is honour Utopia and the people who appeared in it and made it.
It takes courage to tell the truth, no matter how unpopular those truths may be. But it also takes courage to face up to our past.
That process starts with understanding our very dark past, a brutal history of dispossession, theft and slaughter. For that reason, I urge the many fair-minded Australians who seek genuine prosperity and equality for my people to find the courage to open their hearts and their minds and watch Utopia.
Imagine watching a film that tells the truth about the terrible injustices committed over 225 years against your people, a film that reveals how Europeans, and the governments that have run our country, have raped, killed and stolen from your people for their own benefit.
Now imagine how it feels when the people who benefited most from those rapes, those killings and that theft – the people in whose name the oppression was done – turn away in disgust when someone seeks to expose it.
Frankly, as a proud Adnyamathanha man, I find the silence about Utopia in mainstream Australia disturbing and hurtful. As an Australian, I find it embarrassing. I also see an irony, for Utopia is about telling the story of this silence.
Some say the film doesn’t tell the ”good stories” out of Aboriginal Australia. That’s the part I find most offensive.
Utopia is bursting at the seams with stories of Aboriginal people who have achieved incredible things in the face of extreme adversity. Stories of people like Arthur Murray, an Aboriginal man from Wee Waa, and his wife, Leila, who fought for several decades for the truth over the death in police custody of their son Eddie.
Their quiet, dignified determination helped spark the 1987 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, a landmark inquiry that still plagues governments today.
Even before that, Murray led a historic strike of cotton workers and forced employers to provide better wages and conditions for Aboriginal workers. How is this achievement negative?
The film also features Rosalie Kunoth-Monks, a strong Aboriginal woman who proudly speaks of truth and a long overdue treaty.
The work of Robert and Selina Eggington is also profiled in Utopia. After the suicide of their son, Robert and Selina created a healing centre in Perth called Dumbartung. Its aim is to stop the deaths and provide an outlet for the never-ending grief of so many Aboriginal families.
I reject any suggestion that by telling those stories, that by honouring these lives, Pilger has ”focused on the negative”. Their achievements may not fit the mainstream idea of ”success” but they inspire me and other Aboriginal people because they’re shared stories. They are our courageous, unrecognised resistance.
Nana Fejo, another strong Aboriginal woman, appears in Utopia. She tells of her forced removal as a child. It’s a heart-wrenching story and yet she speaks with a graciousness and generosity of spirit that should inspire all Australians.
Like Fejo, my mother was a member of the stolen generations. My family has been touched by suicide, like the Eggingtons. My family and my people talk of truth and treaty, just like Kunoth-Monks does. My family has been denied our culture, language and kinship systems, like all the Aboriginal people who feature in Utopia. This extraordinary film tells the unpleasant truth. It should be required viewing for every Australian.
Utopia brought back were not pleasant, and large sections of the film simply made me angry
Sol is the chairman of the Aboriginal Medical Service, Redfern and a long-time Aboriginal activist
It’s the new mantra in Aboriginal affairs: get your kids to school.
Prime Ministers Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd were fond of saying it. So too is Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
While I don’t accept that education alone, or rather a lack of access to it, explains the desperate poverty in
But if it’s good enough for blackfellas, then it should also be good enough for whitefellas.
Mainstream Australia has long lacked a real education about Aboriginal people, about our shared history, and this nation’s brutal past.
Fortunately, there’s a simple way in – an opportunity to get a “punter’s guide” to the truth about the treatment of Aboriginal Australians.
John Pilger’s latest film, Utopia – a 110-minute feature length documentary more than two years in the making – should be required viewing for all Australians, in particular lawmakers.
I watched the film recently and it brought back many memories for me. Admittedly, a few of them were pleasant. The spirit of my people has always helped to sustain and inspire me, and watching old warriors such as Vince Forrester, Bob Randall and Rosie Kunoth-Monks, for me at least, took the edge off some of the hard truths in Utopia.
But many of the memories Utopia brought back were not pleasant, and large sections of the film simply made me angry.
During the 1970s, I travelled the nation with Fred Hollows. We travelled across Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory, treating Aboriginal men, women and children for trachoma and other eye diseases, problems which still plague remote Aboriginal communities today.
The Australia I saw in Utopia this week is the same Australia I saw with Hollows.
Very little has changed on the ground.
Attitudes in non-Aboriginal Australia, it seems, have not evolved much either.
In one part of the film, Pilger is taken on a tour of Rottnest Island by a local Aboriginal elder, Noel Nannup. But it’s not the tour tourists get – despite “Rotto’s” history as a brutal concentration camp, today it is a resort and luxury spa, with virtually all traces of its past erased.
The stories around deaths in custody; around an Aboriginal elder being cooked, literally, in the back of a prison van; around government and media deceit that led to the Northern Territory intervention; all made for infuriating viewing.
But for me, Pilger’s interview with the former indigenous health minister, Warren Snowdon, and the responses of white people on Australia Day who were asked why they thought Aboriginal people didn’t celebrate January 26, were the real nuggets in the film.
For Snowdon’s part, he was grilled about why, after 23 years in office, his constituents were still among the sickest and poorest on earth. Snowdon’s seething, bombastic response was to label the question “puerile”.
And then there were the vox pops from mainstream Australians on January 26, 2013. People were asked why they thought Aboriginal people didn’t celebrate the date. Most seemed to have no idea that was even the case, and others were just openly hostile.
To me, it’s these attitudes of indifference, and sometimes outrage when challenged, that are the real elephants in the room for this country.
The denial of our history, and our collective refusal to accept the truths of our past are the biggest hurdles to Aboriginal advancement.
I hope that people who see Utopia will have their consciences pricked. Those who do might feel embarrassed or ashamed. But I hope that’s not the only reaction. I hope, above all else, Utopia starts a long overdue national conversation.
We can’t just sweep aside the truths in Utopia because they’re uncomfortable. And we can’t let conservative commentators make it all about the film-maker rather than the film, which is what often happens with Pilger’s work.
I’m bracing myself for the inevitable focus on Pilger’s “style” and his “bias”. So before it comes, let me give you one assurance: You’d be hard-pressed to find many Aboriginal people with whom Utopia won’t resonate strongly.
The reason why is simple: what John Pilger and his co-director Alan Lowery have produced is a substantial work of truth, one which provides answers to many of the questions Australians have been too afraid to ask.
Why is this happening? Why were there no reparations to the stolen generations? Why do Aboriginal people still live in such grinding poverty? If, as Snowdon concedes in the film, the NT intervention was “wrong-headed” and “stupid”, why did he continue and extend it under the Rudd and Gillard governments?
The most pressing question from my perspective is why has reconciliation in this country failed?
Pilger touches on this in his closing remarks. He makes the point that until Aboriginal people are delivered justice, there can never be reconciliation.
I agree strongly. But I would add that the path to justice begins with the truth.
That’s a reality that nations such as Canada and South Africa recognised many years ago, when they established their respective Truth and Reconciliation Commissions.
Put simply, reconciliation hasn’t worked in Australia because as a nation, we continue to refuse to face up to our real past. Just as you cannot have reconciliation without justice, you can’t have justice without truth.
Through Utopia, Pilger sheds some light on those truths. It’s likely to be very uncomfortable viewing for many Australians, and it will inevitably cause pain.
But you’ll find the overwhelming majority of Aboriginal people are prepared to watch Utopia, and feel the hurt all over again.
The real question is how many non-Aboriginal Australians have the courage to watch this film, educate themselves a little, and feel the hurt for the first time?
* Sol Bellear is the chairman of the Aboriginal Medical Service, Redfern and a long-time Aboriginal activist.
The importance of our NACCHO member Aboriginal community controlled health services (ACCHS) is not fully recognised by governments.
The economic benefits of ACCHS has not been recognised at all.
We provide employment, income and a range of broader community benefits that mainstream health services and mainstream labour markets do not. ACCHS need more financial support from government, to provide not only quality health and wellbeing services to communities, but jobs, income and broader community economic benefits.
A good way of demonstrating how economically valuable ACCHS are is to showcase our success at a national summit.
Warning – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are warned that this document contains names and images of deceased people.
Five eminent Indigenous Australians are being honoured by Australia Post in a new stamp issue. There are five domestic base-rate (60c) stamps featuring Shirley Smith AM, Neville Bonner AO, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Eddie “Koiki” Mabo and Charles Perkins AO.
Since European settlement, many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians have fought to make Australia a more just and equitable society. This stamp issue honours five of these exceptional individuals who tirelessly campaigned for the rights of Indigenous people.
Australia Post Managing Director and CEO Ahmed Fahour said Australia Post has a long standing commitment to improving the social and economic wellbeing of Indigenous Australians.
“We trust this stamp issue will remind all Australians of the significant contribution made by these important Indigenous Australians,” said Mr Fahour.
Shirley Smith AM (1921-98), also known as “Mum Shirl”, was born on Erambie Mission, Cowra, New South Wales. She was a member of the Wiradjuri nation and was a committed activist for the justice and welfare of Aboriginal Australians. She was a founding member of several important organisations including the Aboriginal Legal Service and the Aboriginal Medical Service in the Sydney suburb of Redfern. Shirley received many awards for her work, and was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) and a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).
Neville Bonner AO(1922-99) was born on Ukerebagh Island on the Tweed River, New South Wales. In 1971 he became the first Aboriginal person to sit in the Commonwealth of Australia parliament. He also became the first Indigenous Australian to be elected to the parliament by popular vote. An elder of the Jagera people, Neville Bonner continued to be a strong advocate for Indigenous rights until his death in 1999.
Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker) (1920-93) was a descendant of the Noonuccal people of Minjerribah, North Stradbroke Island, Queensland. Oodgeroo was a poet, political activist, artist, educator and environmentalist. In 1962, she was instrumental in advocating for citizenship rights for Indigenous people. Oodgeroo received numerous awards in recognition of a lifetime commitment to Indigenous peoples and her outstanding contributions to Australian literature. She was awarded three honorary doctorates by universities within Australia.
Eddie “Koiki” Mabo (1936-92) was born in the Meriam community of Las on Mer, known as Murray Island, in the Torres Strait, Queensland. In 1982 Eddie challenged land ownership laws in the High Court of Australia and won. The notion of terra nullius (land belonging to no one) was expelled from Australian law paving the way for the Native Title Act 1993 (Cwlth). In 1992, Eddie was posthumously awarded the Australian Human Rights Medal by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. This year is the 20th anniversary of the Native Title Act.
Charles Perkins AO (1936-2000) was born at the Alice Springs Telegraph Station Aboriginal Reserve in the Northern Territory. His parents were Arrernte and Kalkadoon people. In 1965 Perkins led the Freedom Rides, exposing racial discrimination throughout country NSW. From 1984 until 1988 he was Secretary of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, the first Aboriginal Australian to attain such a position in the bureaucracy. In his post-public service life Perkins played key roles on the boards of Aboriginal arts, sport and media organisations. He was a member of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), serving as Deputy Chairman from 1994 to 1995, and was also a member of the Arrernte Council of Central Australia.
The stamps were designed by Lynette Traynor of the Australia Post Design Studio.
Products associated with this stamp issue include a first day cover, stamp pack, set of five maxicards, prestige booklet, gutter strip of 10 x 60c stamps with design and a roll of 200 x 60c self-adhesive stamps.
The Indigenous Leaders stamp issue is available from 9 July 2013 at participating Australia Post retail outlets, via mail order on 1800 331 794 and online while stocks last.
