AMA National Conference 2010 - Ross Ingram Memorial Essay Prize
A Victorian writer, researcher and playwright has won this year’s Ross Ingram Memorial Essay Competition for her essay – Healing our communities, healing ourselves – in which she reflects upon her life and her work and how it equipped her to work as an Aboriginal Research Officer looking into the social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal children.
Jane Harrison is a descendant of the Muruwari people of New South Wales, from the area around Bourke and Brewarrina. She grew up in the Victorian Dandenongs with her mother and sister.
Healing our communities, healing ourselves was published in the 16 May 2010 edition of the Medical Journal of Australia.
Currently the Aboriginal Child Rearing Stories Project Officer at the Secretariat of Aboriginal and Islander Child Care, a peak body representing the interests of Aboriginal and Islander children and their families, Jane, a mother of two daughters, has written award-winning plays, most notably Stolen and Rainbow’s End, and written an episode of the popular SBS series, The Circuit.
In her winning essay, Jane says her writing helps her to make sense of her world and her experiences, and to learn more about the history of Aboriginal people before and after colonisation.
“It is a privilege and a responsibility in equal measure,” she writes.
“I believe in the work I do, that it makes a difference in the world, and that, in doing it, I am contributing to something bigger than myself.”
The $5,000 prize is donated by the Australasian Medical Publishing Company, publisher of the MJA.
The essay competition is open to Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people who are undertaking work, study or research in Indigenous Health.
The competition was named in memory of Dr Ross Ingram, a young Wiradjuri GP who worked in Leeton NSW until his premature death from heart disease in 2003.
Ross Ingram typified the plight of so many Indigenous Australians – while seeking to improve the health of his people, he fell victim to the very forces he was working against.
28 May 2010
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