Australian psychologists apologise to Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders

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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience much higher rates of psychological distress, chronic disease and incarceration than other Australians. They manage many more stressors on a daily basis and, although suicide did not exist in their cultures prior to colonisation, it is now a tragically inflated statistic.  The fact that these disparities exist and are long standing in a first world nation is deplorable and unacceptable. The Australian Psychological Society has issued a formal apology to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, acknowledging psychology’s role in contributing to the erosion of culture and to their mistreatment.

 

APS President Professor Michael Kyrios said the apology was an important move in redressing past wrongs and ensuring the psychology profession collaborates and appropriately serves Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

 

“The apology is only one of many initiatives by the Australian Psychological Society to work together with Indigenous psychologists and communities to meet the social and emotional wellbeing and mental health needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.”

 

Professor Pat Dudgeon – a Fellow of the Society and Australia’s first Aboriginal psychologist – said, “This is a tremendous moment for Australian psychology. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and psychologists are delighted that the APS has taken this important step.”

 

The apology was made at the Australian Psychological Society Congress 2016 in Melbourne following a keynote address by Professor Dudgeon on an emerging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander psychology.

 


The complete text of the apology:

Apology to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People from the Australian Psychological Society

 

Disparities between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians and other Australians on a range of different factors are well documented. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience much higher rates of psychological distress, chronic disease, and incarceration than other Australians. They manage many more stressors on a daily basis and, although suicide did not exist in their cultures prior to colonisation it is now a tragically inflated statistic. The fact that these disparities exist and are long standing in a first world nation is deplorable and unacceptable.

 

As we understand these challenging issues in relation to wellbeing and health, it is very important that we tell the stories of the strengths and resilience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities.

 

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are the proud custodians of the longest surviving cultures on our planet. With this in mind, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ resilience and resourcefulness could make a significant and positive impact on Australian society should they have the opportunity to contribute routinely in their areas of expertise.

 

We, as psychologists, have not always listened carefully enough to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We have not always respected their skills, expertise, world views, and unique wisdom developed over thousands of years. Building on a concept initiated by Professor Alan Rosen, we sincerely and formally apologise to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians for:


◾Our use of diagnostic systems that do not honour cultural belief systems and world views;


◾The inappropriate use of assessment techniques and procedures that have conveyed misleading and inaccurate messages about the abilities and capacities of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people;


◾Conducting research that has benefitted the careers of researchers rather than improved the lives of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants;


◾Developing and applying treatments that have ignored Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander approaches to healing and that have, both implicitly and explicitly, dismissed the importance of culture in understanding and promoting social and emotional wellbeing; and,


◾Our silence and lack of advocacy on important policy matters such as the policy of forced removal which resulted in the Stolen Generations.

 

To demonstrate our genuine commitment to this apology, we intend to pursue a different way of working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that will be characterised by diligently:


◾Listening more and talking less;


◾Following more and steering less;

 

◾Advocating more and complying less;


◾Including more and ignoring less; and,


◾Collaborating more and commanding less.

 

Through our efforts, in concert and consultation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, we envisage a different future.

 

This will be a future where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people control what is important to them rather than having this controlled by others.

 

It will be a future in which there are greater numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander psychologists and more positions of decision making and responsibility held by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Ultimately, through our combined efforts, this will be a future where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people enjoy the same social and emotional wellbeing as other Australians.

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Many people in the audience, including Indigenous psychologists and students, cried as the address was delivered

'We only have 100 Indigenous psychologists' - "But now it's interesting that psychologists themselves are saying 'We don't feel culturally sensitive, please give us the information we require.'" - "No more silence about issues like the Stolen Generation or [the abuses at] Don Dale, or the issues we see on a daily basis."

 

Indigenous suicide in 2011 more than seven times Australia's average

The APS describes itself as is the largest professional organisation for psychologists in Australia, representing more than 22,000 members. A report released in June by the Medical Journal of Australia called for a Royal Commission and more innovative approaches to mental health in the Kimberley region, where Indigenous suicide was more than seven times Australia's average in 2011. The rates of deliberate self-harm were 10 times more frequent than those reported by international studies in 2014.

 

The First Indigenous psychologist calls it a “tremendous moment”

Psychology had been part of the “colonising process” in Australia that had “objectified, dehumanised and devalued those from culturally different groups, often enlisted to enact or justify practices of assimilation and oppression. Social Darwinism was used by early Australian psychologists to describe Indigenous Australians as a primitive race, which in turn drove a series of research projects to study the mind of “primitive man”. A psychological determinism that supported a racist agenda.

Yingiya Mark Guyulahttps://www.greenleft.org.au/content/treaty-candidate-takes-seat-nhulunbuy

Aboriginal candidate Yingiya Mark Guyula has won an upset in the seat of Nhulunbuy, toppling sitting member and deputy-chief-minister-to-be Lynne Walker by only eight votes after preferences and recounts on September 9.

 

Guyula delivered the Northern Territory Labor Party its only defeat in the August 28 election — it now holds a whopping 18 seats in the 25-seat parliament. The seat was previously seen a safe one for the popular Walker.

 

Guyula is a Yolngu man from Arnhem Land, the son of a crocodile hunter, who has been a teacher as part of the Yolngu studies program at Charles Darwin University. He teaches Yolngu culture and language and used the campaign to call for a treaty between Aboriginal people and the Australian government.

 

“My argument is for treaty,” Guyula told Guardian Australia on March 11. “Let us go. Let us go. Give us that space to go, think and develop a way that was there before.”

 

“We want our own sovereignty recognised. Recognise our power, recognise who we are, recognise that we were here before any law that came and ruled all over us.

 

“I believe we can work together if we can sit down and negotiate things, but it hasn’t happened … It’s been going on for 228 years now, when are you going to listen and sit down with us?”

 

Guyula has used his campaign to call for greater access to bilingual education, which was wound back by both Labor and CLP governments. The attacks on bilingual education, in regions of Australia where English is often a third or fourth language, immediately led to fewer Aboriginal children attending school.

 

Guyula also believes that recognising Yolngu law, in particular the still existing Yolngu assemblies, is essential to overcoming the vast disadvantage suffered by Aboriginal people in the NT.

 

Part of Guyula’s success came from demographic changes in the seat of Nhulunbuy.

 

The closure of the alumina refinery in May 2014 led to more than a thousand people leaving the township. A redistribution incorporated more of the remote Aboriginal communities into the electorate. In part, this is where the battleground was set, between the past of industry and the future of Aboriginal people who want more say in government.

 

But this was not just Yolngu voting for Yolngu; the CLP candidate Charlie Yunupingu was Yolngu and received only about 450 votes, compared with Guyula’s 1400.

 

Guyula’s vision of getting traditional Yolngu forms of government and law to work alongside white man’s law struck a chord, and it is a message he has been pushing for a long time.

 

The ALP incumbent Lynne Walker had held the seat since 2008. Walker has been replaced by Nicole Manison as deputy chief minister. As the initial recount was happening it seemed that Walker might challenge the result in court, but little has been said since Walker first aired the idea on September 7.

 

To challenge the result now would cost the ALP a lot in good will and their majority does not need this extra seat.

 

For the CLP, the election was a disaster; they lost all but two seats. Even Chief Minister Adam Giles lost his seat of Braitling to Labor candidate Dale Wakefield. Giles, who came to power in a leadership coup and then successfully beat a counter-coup a few months later, is now seeking a career in television.