Talking b[l]ack to the whiteness of nursing: utilising cultural safety as a decolonising framework for nursing

Talking b[l]ack to the whiteness of nursing: utilising cultural safety as a decolonising framework for nursing

First Nations nurses certainly within Australia occupy a contested space within the profession of nursing. As a burgeoning profession within Australia in the 1890s, nursing was part of the confines of the colonially informed endeavour that was meant to save and civilise the natives across the colonies, not train them as nurses. Therefore, writing historical accounts of Indigenous Australian nurses and midwives is challenging, partly because they are largely excluded from the historical record, and partly because of the normalised technique used to frame history in Australia. Much historical discussion fails to account for Australia's racialised biases and produces (race) obstructionist histories and what is offered, is littered with racism experienced by First Nation nurses. The shift of nursing training into the tertiary sector largely in the 1990s proved favourable for First Nation nurses, primarily because power was taken out of the hands of hospital-based matrons and directors of nursing. Tertiary education offered new opportunities for First Nation people as it aligned with a move in the tertiary sector to dramatically increase the number of First Nation students. However, racism is still identified as an issue that First Nation student nurses still report on as the everyday experience. In 2022 the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Accreditation Council mandated that Cultural Safety be integrated into all nursing curricula. Based upon the work of a collective of Māori nurses but primarily led by Māori nurse, theorist and Educator Irihapeti Ramsden, this paper discusses how the framework of Cultural Safety can be utilised within nursing education as a transformational reform for understanding the historical construction of racism within nursing and speaks b[l]ack to racism as experienced not only by First Nations students but also First Nations Educators.

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