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Allow me to share with you my views on two key issues that I believe will help to favourably shape the future destiny for Aboriginal people living in remote communities. In this field we(white fellas) are learning all the time.
I started in 1997 looking after the pharmaceutical supplies for the 6,000 people who lived across 23 communities to the East and West of the town of Katherine in the Northern Territory.
When I left there eight months later I thought if people took their medicines they would live longer.
How wrong I was.
And what a contrast to the views I now hold having obtained an understanding of the social determinants that impact so severely on the lives of these people.
The state of poverty being experienced is such that it is a continual struggle day by day to simply survive so any ideas of time spent thinking about the future is simply not there.
For those who come to Darwin it is usually for medical treatment. If it is renal dialysis, as is the case for some 200 persons at any one time, the family comes too and begins a continual round of Centrelink, bank, housing, ID through Births Deaths and Marriages, Medicare and the dozen other agencies that go towards the social capital of a developed society.
I look forward to comments or support for what I call my two key elements to a future better life for all.
