Background: Education for health literacy of Australian Aboriginal people living remotely is challenging as their languages and worldviews are quite different from English language and Western worldviews. Becoming health literate depends on receiving comprehensible information in a culturally acceptable manner. Methods: The study objective was to facilitate oral health literacy through community education about scabies and strongyloidiasis, including their transmission and control, preceding an ivermectin mass drug administration (MDA) for these diseases. A discovery education approach where health concepts are connected to cultural knowledge in the local language was used. Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators worked collaboratively to produce an in-depth flip-chart of the relevant stories in the local language and to share them with clan elders and 27% of the population. Results: The community health education was well received. Feedback indicated that the stories were being discussed in the community and that the mode of transmission of strongyloidiasis was understood. Two-thirds of the population participated in the MDA. This study documents the principles and practice of a method of making important Western health knowledge comprehensible to Aboriginal people. This method would be applicable wherever language and culture of the people differ from language and culture of health professionals.
This chapter explores the extraordinary growth in political leadership over the past 30 years among Indigenous women from a remote community. It is representative of a wider Australian phenomenon: the intense participation in democratic affairs by Indigenous women. These are two women from among many more: there are others who are participating at a similar level in this and other communities in the Northern Territory and elsewhere within Australia. Guthadjaka and Garŋgulkpuy are two Yolngu women leaders from Elcho Island in the Northern Territory, a small island 500 km northeast of Darwin. Geographically isolated, they occupy a difficult space in leadership and democratic action due to their position between two worlds: the Yolngu world and the mainstream Australian world. They have to remain true to their connections to clan and country while working with the wider political and intellectual worlds within Australia and overseas. Jackie Huggins explains that for an Indigenous leader, '[l]eadership means that you need to respect differences of views and start from where people are atnot where you would want them to be. The trick is to listen, listen, listen, and then act.' 4 Both Guthadjaka and Garŋgulkpuy refer frequently with their elders, raising each individual issue before a consensus is reached. They speak for the community, not themselves. Their leadership is different in the ways that Amanda Sinclair identifies as less ego-driven, more spiritual, with different sources of power and responsibility. 5 Ego is often set aside to respect others and their relationships. The work of Guthadjaka and Garŋgulkpuy as community leaders involves extraordinary intellectual and spiritual demands.
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