“Sit­ting around a camp­fire south of Agadir in Moroc­co one night some­one asked me what life was like for Indige­nous Aus­tralians. I was nine­teen and I said some­thing inane like ​‘Life is good for all Aus­tralians. We come from the land of milk and hon­ey.’ When I got back to Aus­tralia I promised myself I would find the answer to that ques­tion. The truth was, I had no idea.”

“In 1975 I trav­elled up North from Ade­laide on the Stu­art High­way and then turned left to see Ulu­ru. It was here I met my first Indige­nous Aus­tralian. I had been in the coun­try since I was five years old and, although I may have met indige­nous peo­ple before, no-one ever ​‘owned up’ in our con­ver­sa­tions. This man was dif­fer­ent, he sat in the sand with the head of an axe in his hand carv­ing a boomerang out of hard Cen­tral Aus­tralian wood. He wore a red head­band and his hair stood out above it. He looked as ancient as the rocks around him. There was a boy with him and when I tried to talk to this busy man, the boy told me that he spoke no Eng­lish. I was amazed that there were oth­er lan­guages in Aus­tralia that I did­n’t know about. After shar­ing my sand­wich and some milk with the young boy I made the deci­sion that I want­ed to work with these peo­ple. It took me four years to get accept­ed into a nurs­ing school in Bairns­dale, Vic­to­ria, where I did Enrolled Nurs­ing, and anoth­er 10 years to get my degree and my first post­ing in an Abo­rig­i­nal com­mu­ni­ty, Jiga­long, in the Pil­bara region of West­ern Aus­tralia. And that’s where I am sit­ting writ­ing this now, almost 30 years lat­er, hav­ing come and gone over three decades.

“I still don’t have the answer to that ques­tion posed back in Moroc­co. We have bet­ter poli­cies, bet­ter build­ings, bet­ter train­ing, bet­ter cars, bet­ter refer­ral path­ways, bet­ter sup­port, bet­ter fund­ing than when I start­ed nurs­ing all those years ago — but we don’t real­ly have bet­ter health out­comes in many areas. Chil­dren are health­i­er, but still lag behind oth­er Aus­tralians. The bur­den of chron­ic dis­ease is still huge but truth is until we get the trau­ma of coloni­sa­tion healed and we are walk­ing side by side with com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers assist­ing them in self care and the achieve­ment of their own life goals we are play­ing with num­bers that only we understand.”

“We are talk­ing about peo­ple born in the desert. Peo­ple still walk­ing around now with sto­ries of when they were chil­dren, sto­ries of peo­ple being fed salt so they would lead the cat­tle­men to water­holes. Sto­ries still in liv­ing memory.

“The Mar­du are an amaz­ing peo­ple. They don’t car­ry a lot of bitterness.”

After his first one-year stint in Jiga­long in 1991 – 92, Stephen returned in 2016 – 17, and again 18 months ago. ​“When I first came out here, we used to take folk out bush and col­lect wood, they’d take us to water­holes,” he says. ​“It was a real­ly nice rela­tion­ship and my aim was to build trust to pro­vide the best health care.”

Times have changed – and not for the bet­ter, says Stephen. ​“The busi­ness mod­el has shift­ed, it’s become an ​‘Abo­rig­i­nal indus­try’. Rela­tion­ships are put to the background.

Stephen, who has added post grad­u­ate qual­i­fi­ca­tions in men­tal health and child care to his skills, claims he has stopped study­ing – but he’s still adding to the long list of CRANAplus and oth­er cours­es he’s attend­ed and par­tic­i­pat­ed in. It was that impres­sive list that saw him being made a Fel­low of CRANAplus 10 years ago. 

Stephen fears that the dom­i­nant soci­ety is too arro­gant to bend for changes to hap­pen soon. ​“In every coun­try that’s been colonised, it’s been cap­i­tal­ism work­ing at its best. Steal­ing the land and resources of the Indige­nous peo­ple and using it to make the colonis­ers rich. And we love it to this day, because we are part of the dom­i­nant culture.”

But there still lies that ques­tion. ​“How do we heal the trau­ma of Ter­ra Nul­lius, and all the oth­er poli­cies and inter­ven­tions that have caused such deep and hurt­ful wounds on the Abo­rig­i­nal Nation and its peo­ples?” he asks. ​“I don’t feel it is my place to have answers. Show com­pas­sion, love, engage­ment and a will­ing­ness to stop and under­stand and reach out an uplift­ing hand of nation­al inclu­sion, is real­ly all I can say.”