Latest news with #Wakka-Murri
Sydney Morning Herald
27-05-2025
- Health
- Sydney Morning Herald
More than a chronicle of pain and failure, this fly-on-the-wall medical series gives hope
Our Medicine (series premiere) ★★★½ Actor and Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka-Murri woman Leah Purcell is the ideal narrator for this documentary series about First Nations health. Her voice is steady yet infused with dismay and quiet anger as she details a history of disease and neglect. And Our Medicine doesn't pull its punches about the severity of the situation. But it also aims to be more than a chronicle of pain and failure, focusing on positive initiatives driven by a range of Indigenous practitioners endeavouring to address a chronic societal failure. 'From the early days of colonisation, First Nations people in Australia have been locked in a catastrophic cycle of poor health outcomes,' Purcell's voiceover declares as the six-part series begins. 'Today, with a medical system in desperate need of reform, these are stories of change, of connection and of inspiration.' The production's format is familiar, even if the focus is not. It's shaped like many medical ob-doc series (think RPA, Emergency, Ambulance Australia, Paramedics). Patients arrive at a hospital or clinic, or are brought in by ambulance and the practitioners treating them – paramedics, nurses, doctors, health workers – are interviewed about what they're doing and why. This series also devotes attention to the value of traditional healing methods. In Western Australia, Sasha Greenhoff learns from her 'jajas' (grandmothers) about their methods, language, songs and stories at a cultural-healing event. 'We talk about intergenerational trauma as a huge thing that's in our lives,' she says. 'But there's not enough about intergenerational wealth. And what I've experienced here with my jajas, that's intergenerational wealth.' Cases treated by conventional medicine are given an illuminating context. In Cairns (Gimuy), when a man is brought in with machete wounds, Dr Tatum Bond explains that such injuries are not uncommon in the area as warring families have been forced on to the same land and tensions date back generations. In Darwin (Garamilla), Shaun Tatipata, founder of the country's only Indigenous eye care provider, conducts eye checks in remote communities. Associate Professor Kris Rallah-Baker, the country's only Indigenous eye surgeon, flies in to join the cataract clinics, performing multiple operations in a day. Aboriginal people over the age of 40 have six times the rate of blindness of other Australians and, in 94 per cent of cases, loss of sight is preventable or treatable. Such alarming statistics are woven through the series, persuasively attesting to the urgent need for reform.
The Age
27-05-2025
- Health
- The Age
More than a chronicle of pain and failure, this fly-on-the-wall medical series gives hope
Our Medicine (series premiere) ★★★½ Actor and Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka-Murri woman Leah Purcell is the ideal narrator for this documentary series about First Nations health. Her voice is steady yet infused with dismay and quiet anger as she details a history of disease and neglect. And Our Medicine doesn't pull its punches about the severity of the situation. But it also aims to be more than a chronicle of pain and failure, focusing on positive initiatives driven by a range of Indigenous practitioners endeavouring to address a chronic societal failure. 'From the early days of colonisation, First Nations people in Australia have been locked in a catastrophic cycle of poor health outcomes,' Purcell's voiceover declares as the six-part series begins. 'Today, with a medical system in desperate need of reform, these are stories of change, of connection and of inspiration.' The production's format is familiar, even if the focus is not. It's shaped like many medical ob-doc series (think RPA, Emergency, Ambulance Australia, Paramedics). Patients arrive at a hospital or clinic, or are brought in by ambulance and the practitioners treating them – paramedics, nurses, doctors, health workers – are interviewed about what they're doing and why. This series also devotes attention to the value of traditional healing methods. In Western Australia, Sasha Greenhoff learns from her 'jajas' (grandmothers) about their methods, language, songs and stories at a cultural-healing event. 'We talk about intergenerational trauma as a huge thing that's in our lives,' she says. 'But there's not enough about intergenerational wealth. And what I've experienced here with my jajas, that's intergenerational wealth.' Cases treated by conventional medicine are given an illuminating context. In Cairns (Gimuy), when a man is brought in with machete wounds, Dr Tatum Bond explains that such injuries are not uncommon in the area as warring families have been forced on to the same land and tensions date back generations. In Darwin (Garamilla), Shaun Tatipata, founder of the country's only Indigenous eye care provider, conducts eye checks in remote communities. Associate Professor Kris Rallah-Baker, the country's only Indigenous eye surgeon, flies in to join the cataract clinics, performing multiple operations in a day. Aboriginal people over the age of 40 have six times the rate of blindness of other Australians and, in 94 per cent of cases, loss of sight is preventable or treatable. Such alarming statistics are woven through the series, persuasively attesting to the urgent need for reform.
