Introduction to Professional Indigenous Health Assignment: Deconstruction Exercise questions
1. Why is it that Aboriginal people who have 'mixed blood' are the ones who succeed in life?
2. Why are all Aboriginal people lazy bums?
3. Why don't Aboriginal people take an interest in their own health?
4. Can we really allow the process of decolonisation? And what are the implications for white Australia?
Deconstruct the question in order to demonstrate your understanding of the social determinants of Indigenous health. 'Deconstruction' is a process that involves unpacking something. In this case, the very question becomes the focus, rather than the answer. We are interested in assisting you to critique the worldviews, philosophical positions, understandings and assumptions underpinning particular responses to Indigenous health issues. A critical analysis of the question must build a cogent argument that examines the position from which the question was asked. The sociological, cultural studies and critical theory literatures might give you some guidance here. Overall, you are asked to demonstrate an understanding of how the question was formed, with particular regard to the factors that might lead to such framing of the question, as well as the question's relevance to Aboriginal health outcomes. Be sure to demonstrate a strong engagement with the weekly readings.
Some tips:
Many questions people ask about Aboriginal Australia reveal more about the person asking than the intended subject of enquiry. For example:
"If we come from Adam and Eve then where do black people come from?'
- Who is 'we'? Is this framing indicative of an 'us and them' position of 'inclusion - exclusion'?
- Is the (conscious or unconscious) worldview here related to a Christian-based socialisation process which sees Christianity as 'normal' and everything else as peripheral?
- This appears to be an 'othering' question. Who frames 'the other'? What assumptions are made?
- Can a case be made that this is a Eurocentric, ethnocentric, exclusionist position that perpetuates colonial notions of a 'God-given dominion'.
- '... black people' - Does this indicate a dismissal of diversity? Is there an assumed homogenous explanation for the origins of 'the other'?
- Could this question be classified as one that could only be framed by someone who is an unwitting beneficiary of a dominant hegemony (power/control/authority).
- Could 'Whiteness theory 'be employed to elucidate the invisible 'structured white privilege' inherent in such a question?
- Does this question reveal a lack of understanding as to how Christian stories arrived on these shores: "Your left hand holds a Bible while your right hand holds a gun" (Kev Carmody-'Thou Shalt Not Steal') ?
- What does this question reveal about the persistence of the 'christianising'/'civilising' project that gave invasion and colonisation 'moral' reinforcement?
1000 words
8 Harvard references.