My Rural Story | Week One | Jacinta Elston

they’ll make up the large proportion of people that you’ll see and care for.

really important, when you go to these places, to be open to learning about that history and to hear it and understand it. The second thing I think people need to understand, or have some reflection about for themselves, is racism. I think we’ve reached a point in our country where racism is becoming a bigger and bigger issue. We saw through the Adam Goodes saga the impact that this is having on society. You can’t go to a barbeque and have a conversation about things like Aboriginal people without there being comments made. It’s really important when you go to places to be open to learning about that history and to hear it and understand it. Where do you stand on those comments when they come up? A good place to start would be to have a look at Stan Grant’s recent speech and racism IQ seminar series that was held at Sydney University at the end of 2015. He makes some really useful points about how we as Australian’s all embrace our history together. And I guess the last thing is that people do need to be willing to ask for help when they get stuck. When they’re feeling lost or isolated. In rural communities there’s a lot of connection and connectedness, if you feel you’re

What advice would you give to students going on a rural or remote placement? The fist thing I would advise is that they need to really understand the history of the community that they’re going to. Students need to understand what has happened to the Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people in this country as a whole since settlement. Policies and government processes, the acts of genocide that happened and impacted on people in the communities. Things that have happened at a global or national level. There’s also been things that have happened in communities they’re going to be working in that people have a memory of, people still have connections to, and I think that it’s ‘I think we’ve reached a point in our country where racism is becoming a bigger and bigger issue. We saw through the Adam Goodes saga the impact that this is having on society.’

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