Editorialsinfrastructure, strengthening community-controlled health services, educating Indigenous people in the art and science of western health care for their own local adaptation and application -these papers give hope to the sagging spirit. All is not doom and gloom. Public health research workers are out there, working with Indigenous communities, giving public health and research a better name, and most importantly, lifting some of the heavy fallen beams of illness and injury off the lives and limbs of our Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders.
Planning
Traven LeaAustralian National University; Australian Capital Territory Indigenous health is often described and determined by an array of words, models, concepts, principles, practices, notions, themes and philosophies which usually have unrealistic time frames or lack cultural understanding. As a result, most are seen by the Indigenous Australians they are meant to assist as being 'a white way of doing things' rather than as relevant and effective. The rhetoric which continues with this discourse often means nothing more to us as Indigenous Australians than does the paternalistic concept of 'we will fix your health'. Nevertheless, this discourse and these time frames are used time and time again to determine or to describe our health status.If the health (and well-being) of Indigenous Australians is to improve at all, then the Indigenous perspective needs to be heardespecially at all levels of the bureaucratic hierarchy -and, perhaps as importantly, we need to be given the resources with which we can go about 'fixing our own health'.As an alternative to the 'we will fix your health' philosophy, we -as practitioners in our own right -can demonstrate examples of where our own health interventions are working. These interventions are similar to those which are also being used successfully by other Indigenous peoples around the world. They work to build an infrastructure which supports programs, services, and education and training opportunities, all of which have been developed, implemented and evaluated by Indigenous people themselves and which go a long way towards an Indigenous person's notion of holistic health and well-being.If, when asked to give our opinion (as we were in this instance) on where our health will be by the year 2000, we voice our cynicism and concern, we often are judged as being negative and wanting 'special treatment' or labelled as being "hard to get along with'.On the other hand, the non-Indigenous Australians with whom we have worked closely in the mainstream for a number of years now have begun to understand 'an Aboriginal way of doing things'. They have begun to listen to our perspective, they have been able to set much more realistic time frames, they realise that we have a number of bosses besides them (most importantly, our communities and our elders) and they have been able to provide many resources with which to build an infrastructure which has been shown to be working. The provided resources have been more than ju...
