Really proper dangerous one: Aboriginal responses to the first wave of COVID-19 in the Kimberley

Really proper dangerous one: Aboriginal responses to the first wave of COVID-19 in the Kimberley Report

Nulungu Reports 3

• Author(s): Thorburn, Kathryn, Golson, Kate, Ridley, Catherine, Angus, Rosanna, Marshall, Melissa
• Tertiary Author(s): The University of Notre Dame
• Published: 2022

Link to resource Report broken link

Abstract: We know that the effects of a pandemic are as much social, economic and cultural as they are health-related and clinical. Documenting the societal impact in a region such as the Kimberley, and with a focus on Aboriginal people, requires a different kind of lens from a medical one, and needs to account for a socio-economic and political landscape that is radically different from much of Australia. Our research focus, driven as it was by early conversations and meetings with Aboriginal people across the region in September and October 2020, was to look for, and document, the extent of Aboriginal action, the ways in which Aboriginal families, communities and organisations were able to respond to the first wave of COVID-19, and how these responses were supported by, or hampered by, government interventions. The findings below do not summarise the research detail; rather they summarise high level policy-relevant insights that the team gained through the process of pulling together the detail contained in the case studies. Some of our insights go beyond the events of 2020, and draw on longer term trends in the region, trends which impacted on the effectiveness of government interventions to the first wave of COVID-19. Others reinforce what Aboriginal people have been saying in the Kimberley since the 1980s about the need for serious and considered investment of time and resources into a regional governance structure to enable proper and respectful articulation between government agencies, and the interests and values of the Aboriginal people of the region.

• Urls: https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=nulungu_reports