Health

As we make our way into 2025, Australia has been battling multiple climate change driven disasters. Bhiamie Williamson writes, Indigenous people bear the brunt of damage to our lands, amidst governments and the general population turning a blind eye to climate change affecting all of us.

Sissy Austin, a long time runner, writer and activist, has launched the Take Back the Track movement, a call for women and gender diverse people to demand the right to run in safety. Sissy writes of her journey to establish the movement, and while also navigating the currents of healing; the low tides, high tides and all the swell and waves in between.

Children as young as 10 can be jailed, and this is a symptom of a systemic failure that criminalises Aboriginal children and makes them more vulnerable to an unfair justice system. But in this recent discourse on teenagers’ interactions with social media, children are seen as impressionable, in need of protection, and too young to understand the potential harm of their actions. Shawna Pope writes, why is there such a stark difference in how Australia views kids, based on their race?

In 2024, twelve Aboriginal people have died in custody across New South Wales, Lindsay McCabe writes, this underscores a troubling rise in deaths and the ongoing failure to prevent them, despite decades of calls for change.

When I go to Emergency, no matter if I’m in so much pain I can’t even stand straight, I always dress up. In the summer, I put on a lovely dress to sit in the hospital waiting rooms for hours on end, head resting on my mum’s lap, tears dripping onto the dirty white linoleum floor.

Life – Black life – does not stop once the article is written and the words are published.

Dr Eugenia Flynn writes about the health system and it's lack of ability to see our [Mob] lives and deaths as anything other than numbers.

Australia needs to decolonise its mental health system and empower more Indigenous psychologists.

Indigenous maternal and neonatal outcomes are disappointing, given that Australia prides itself on the delivery of safe clinical maternity care. Indigenous women are disproportionality disadvantaged when it comes to culturally safe maternity care, and often experience racism when accessing mainstream services, which forms distrust and disengagement in mainstream maternity services.

Type 2 Diabetes is a significant issue in Aboriginal communities. Ray Kelly shares his experience and what work is being done to support our community health.

Our distrust of the healthcare system is justified and it is no surprise that many of us are skeptical of the medical industry. Similarly, knowing the history of the ways our bodies have been abused and used, I know that still, the vaccine is the best way I can keep my family and community safe.

There is almost no research that is privileging the voices of Aboriginal women and communities in neonatal care

The truth is that racism – and the desire for genocide – underpinned the historic child removals by social workers throughout the Stolen Generations. It’s an uncomfortable truth, but I’m not pandering to anyone’s sensibilities here. Racism still exists in social work today.

Many Indigenous Australians who have limited control over the challenges ahead are watching with anticipation as to how the government will use their systems and powers to protect the vulnerable from an influx of COVID-19

All Australians deserve readily accessible and affordable specialist guided exercise medicine for both prevention and management of chronic disease. This is even more pertinent for those at highest risk such as our Indigenous population living remotely.

The most vulnerable in society – the elderly, unwell and Indigenous – will be hit hardest. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples the impact of Covid-19 will be compounded by years of neglect and a failure to address the social determinants of health.

The problem with inquiries is they do little to inform us about suicide prevention. Coroners aren’t psychologists, nor do they understand Indigenous culture well.

So with the international spread of COVID-19 and the World Health Organisation declaring it an international pandemic, it is only natural that mob are feeling the anxiety along with the rest of the world.