Decolonising public health policies: Rightfully giving effect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ knowledges and cultures of ways of being, knowing and doing in public health policies

Abstract

This thesis details how the current health system consistently fails to incorporate Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing. Using the Intervention Level Framework and the 3Es (enact, embed, and enable), the thesis demonstrates the ongoing coloniality and systemic racism of Indigenous public health policymaking and health systems in Australia. The research cogently demonstrates the need for greater self-determination and control of Indigenous affairs by Indigenous people, the necessity of privileging Indigenous voices, and Indigenous control, direction, and co-design a public policy-making, and the requirement to disrupt, deconstruct and decolonise Western knowledges and cultures of ways of being knowing and doing in order to move beyond colonial imperialist traumatic approaches to Indigenous public health policy which continue to this day. The research provides identifiable and concrete leverage points in the system which can be used to transform those racialized rules and norms to achieve sustainable transformational systemic, organisational and individual change such as legislation, statutory bodies and government commitments underpinned by the need to overcome deep-seated resistance to changing status quo mindsets and beliefs in order to address Indigenous oppression and disadvantage and implement Indigenous culture once it has been incorporated into a public policy. The findings fundamentally call for a turning away from white possessive logics and willingness to deeply listen with an open heart and open mind in genuine partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people so as to decolonise and Indigenise health systems and policy-making, including non-Indigenous people and governments being held to account and relinquishing power and control over Indigenous affairs in favour of localised place-based community-led approaches based on relatedness, connectivity, respect, reciprocity, reverence and responsibility.