It affects everything: A national study exploring racism and wellbeing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples

Abstract

Purpose: Racism is an enduring legacy of colonisation that is deeply embedded in Australian systems, structures and daily life. While Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ experiences of racism have been well documented, efforts to address its structural root causes and its impacts on wellbeing have been inadequate and inconsistent. This study aimed to examine the pathways through which racism impacts the wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults in so-called Australia. Methods: An Indigenous-led secondary analysis was conducted using reflexive thematic analysis of transcripts from 45 yarning circles and six individual yarns with 359 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults, originally collected as part of the What Matters 2Adults study. The original study focused on identifying what supports wellbeing; however, discussions of racism emerged repeatedly and unprompted in participants’ yarns. A reflexive thematic approach was used to identify and explore how racism emerged in participants’ stories of what supports or disrupts their wellbeing. Main findings: Racism was found to deeply permeate participants’ lives across six interrelated pathways: threatening cultural survival; undermining kinship systems; denigrating systems of power and justice; perpetuating harmful stereotypes; inflicting health harms; and challenging self-determination and sovereignty. Principal conclusions: These findings expose the complex and wide-reaching ways that racism infiltrates the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples – undermining wellbeing not only in everyday life, but across generations. They demonstrate that racism operates through systemic and colonial pathways that must be recognised, disrupted and dismantled. This study adds to mounting calls for urgent, structural action to eradicate racism in all its forms in Australia.