12/06/2026
This week, our BWHC team joined our sister services from Fairfield, Cabramatta, and Liverpool to participate in NSW Health’s Respecting the Difference: Aboriginal Cultural Training.
The training provided an opportunity to deepen our understanding of Australia’s colonial history and the ongoing impacts this has had on the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It encouraged us to consider how tone and language can shape the way certain people and communities are perceived, while further challenging us to critically examine the beliefs, assumptions, and attitudes we internalised throughout our lives.
One of the most powerful messages from the training was the importance of reflexivity to “decolonise the mind”. If many of our beliefs and ways of thinking are learnt, then it is crucial to continually ask ourselves: What do I know? How do I know it? Who did I learn it from? By reflecting on these questions, we can better recognise our biases (whether unconscious or not), challenge inherited ways of thinking, and unlearn prevailing attitudes towards “difference”.
As Nelson Mandela says, “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
We are very grateful to have had this opportunity to learn, listen, and reflect, and invite everyone to spend time considering these questions:
1. What has been your interaction with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples?
2. What do people see when they look at you?
3. How do you see people based on what you have learnt?
4. What does “decolonising the mind” mean and how does it look like to you?
