The CMPH GIDE Racial Justice Working Group led by Dr Leila Morsy recently held a Discussion Panel featuring members of the College who talked about the ways in which they and their teams are proactively addressing & educating about racism and microaggressions in our place of study/work. The session was chaired by Prof Anna Ziersch and involved panelists Dr Jayanthi Jayakaran, Dr Yee Lian Chew, A/Professors Tamara Mackean, Andrew Vakulin and James Smith along with Prof Kim Hemsley. The speakers identified simple activities for individuals, groups and the broader College and University to undertake such as:
- including the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander name of the land that your Flinders campus occupies, or where work is done in manuscripts and grant submissions
- purposefully learning about and addressing the health inequities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in your teaching or research
- learning and using the proper pronunciation of people’s names
- advertising roles in ways that purposefully let applicants know that you welcome people with diverse backgrounds to apply.
- including a ‘One minute for Diversity’ slide at the beginning of each team meeting to invite discussion about equity and diversity
- plan team building and educational activities e.g., visit Living Kaurna Cultural Centre at Warriparringa
- check out the various forms of special paid leave available to us at Flinders that support attendance/participation of you/your team members in culturally important events
- create groups of ‘imperfect allies’ who meet to reflect on identifying and addressing racism
- learn about and recognise cultural load for your colleagues and students
- be aware of the racism some of your students will likely face in placements as well as staff on work trips and get ahead of that by discussing cultural safety with hosts in advance
The session was beamed across the Flinders footprint, but if you missed it, here’s a link to the recording.
The GIDE Team challenge you to identify and incorporate one (or more!) of the strategies into your work/study this week!