Instruments of Colonial Administration and White Saviorism: The Past and Present of Public Health

• Main Authors: Elliott, Lana m., Briese, Jennie, Duthie, Deb
• Other Authors: Ravulo, Jioji, Olcon, Katarzyna, Dune, Tinashe, Workman, Alex, Liamputtong, Pranee
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Springer 2023
• Subjects: First Nations
• Online Access: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/247981/

Public health's origins are inextricably linked to the field of hygiene and tropical medicine, and its role as a tool of imperialist expansion and control. These roots often remain underexamined by contemporary public health and global health research, policy, and practice. Further, the discipline’s skew towards positivist epidemiological and statistical forms of knowing often drown out local and more critical perspectives. Public health’s discomfort in interrogating intersectional power dynamics and failure to recognize, let alone reckon with, the colonial (and neo-colonial) causes of inequity challenges the field’s ethos in redistributing social wins and losses in a more equitable way. The public health profession in Australia and the health of Australian First Nations peoples demonstrates how Whiteness perpetuates negative repercussions across the field; evidenced in the continuous domination of Western biomedical practices that disguise cultural and historical contexts. Applying a critical Whiteness lens to exploring past and present public health practices seeks to examine how colonial legacies and Western biases that shape the discipline, risk further entrenching the very inequities it seeks to address. Insights from cultural safety offer public health research, policy, and practice a long overdue opportunity to reflect on the discipline’s past and rethink its future.