Reflective Journals: Indigenous Cultures

Title: Part A Reflective Journals

Student Name: Hannah Warren Student ID Number: 17759577 Email Address: [e-mail] School/Department: Unit: Indigenous Cultures and Health INDH1000 Tutor Name: Due Date: Monday 30th March, 2015 by 11.55pm Declaration: I declare that this assignment is my own work and has not been submitted in any form for another unit, degree or diploma at any university or other institute of tertiary education.
Information derived from the published or unpublished work of others has been acknowledged in the text and a list of references is given. I warrant that any disks and/or computer files submitted as part of this assignment have been checked for viruses. Student Signature:

(2010) provides a definition of cultural vitality as the maintenance and continuation of cultural beliefs, practices and life ways. Maintaining cultural vitality often involves a struggle to maintain an identity while adapting to different and challenging environments (Eckerman et al., 2010). I believe that allowing someone to have a cultural identity, and therefore help to maintain cultural vitality, means understanding and accepting differences such as spiritual and religious views, customs and values. It also means however that we cannot see ourselves as having the right to decide what differences should be accepted and what should not. Aboriginal cultural vitality is not acknowledges adequately in Australia (Eckerman et al., 2010). Populations such as Africa, Asia, South America and Europe all have histories of colonisation of their countries and people, however it appears that other colonising populations have made stronger efforts to repair damage done to the indigenous communities (Taylor, 2010). One of the ways that people have done this is through treaties. I think this would be hard to do with the Aboriginal people as they are made of many different communities themselves, meaning that a treaty would have to account for all these differences. From the readings supplied, I have found that all populations that have been colonised seem to be worse off for it. Colonisation appears to always involve a more powerful population enforcing itself on another, which I believe accounts for what some may see as acceptance or understanding. I think that to truly allow cultural vitality in indigenous communities, these populations must be allowed to practice their ways freely, without impact from the non-Indigenous people. When I was in school, I was taught that Aboriginal people were now receiving equal rights in society, however I now see that this isn’t true. Equal rights involves more than rights on paper, it involves being allowed to fully express