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Janine Mohamed with HESTA’ s Neil Saxton. Photo: HESTA
Know our stories
A unique collaboration aims to record and celebrate the stories of Indigenous nurses in Australia.
Janine Mohamed interviewed by Dallas Bastian
It’ s really important that our stories are told by our people. So much of Australia’ s history is told through a non‐Indigenous lens.”
Janine Mohamed, chief executive of the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives( CATSINaM), shared this vision following the announcement of a collaboration between her organisation and HESTA that aims to shine a light on the history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nurses in Australia.
HESTA launched its Innovate Reconciliation Action Plan( RAP) at the recent CATSINaM conference. Under the plan, the two organisations will work together to help record and celebrate the stories of Indigenous nurses.
Mohamed said the collaboration will help tell the stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nurses from their own perspective and highlight their contribution to health equity.
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“ Their stories need to be elevated so that we can know and have pride in them,” she said.
HESTA chief executive Debby Blakey said committing to this action is the superannuation fund’ s way of recognising the contributions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nurses past and present to Australia’ s healthcare system.
“ By collaborating with associations like CATSINaM to record and share their stories we hope to help acknowledge the barriers they may have overcome, while raising awareness of the pivotal role they continue to play in achieving health equality in Australia,” Blakey said.
Innovate RAP also includes a pledge to support the development of Indigenous nurse leaders in recognition of the vital role they play in achieving health equality between Indigenous people and the wider Australian community.
Nursing Review spoke with Mohamed about the importance of sharing the stories of Australia’ s Indigenous nurses and to learn more about the contribution they have made and continue to make to the health sector.
NR: Why did the CATSINaM feel it was important to be involved in this initiative? JM: That’ s how we began our relationship with HESTA – through their Reconciliation
Action Plan, the entry level. One of CATSINaM’ s board members, Ben Gorrie, actually became involved in the Reconciliation Action Plan of HESTA.
What we want to see with the RAP, particularly now that HESTA’ s on the next level, is that these documents actually become living documents so that they’ re not just sitting on a shelf and gathering dust, but they are actually living, breathing documents.
For us, in this space, it’ s about HESTA taking leadership really within the superannuation space and really doing this innovative work.
For us, all of this type of work is making sure that organisations, corporate and business are doing this work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and not to us.
What I mean by that is doing it in partnership, that we are a part of the design, development and delivery of these types of programs, and that there are no assumptions made.
If we have organisations doing these things without Aboriginal communities, or without Aboriginal input, then usually by the time they hit the ground they aren’ t actually what the community needs.
So it’ s fantastic that this legacy building, as I like to call it, is actually happening with us at CATSINaM.