IAHA Member Marayah Taylor on 2023 World Social Work Day – Respecting diversity through joint social action
My personal aligning with the theme of respecting diversity through joint social action is working and moving in a pattern alertness we have heard , seen an been a product of intergenerational trauma. Not just in Australia but all over the world we are now a significantly multicultural nation. Let us all come together, celebrate us “unity” and not carry this narrative. Let us be, and build the hybrid generation of proactive beings. Let us say we know you trauma and we resist you imposing on our future. We have had our elders of all nations join in small but powerful action to be where we are today. For that I pay gratitude regularly, for these actions have gifted me personally and my children the position I am in today. This position is a place of social mobility and the strongest component ever, a position to receive education, to advocate for my people or my neighbour, let the advocacy and unity grow from a place of gratitude. We have greater agencies/services and programs available to assist in difficult situations. Take hold of this and allow growth.
My name is Marayah Taylor I am a proud Aboriginal Pitta-Pitta Wangkamahdla ,Maltese woman born in Mount Isa and raised in Cloncurry in a culturally rich and diverse environment inclusive of Torres Strait Island culture intertwined with my own Aboriginality, As a young person, my family relocated to Townsville “the City” in order for family members to receive and access health care not available in our community, this is the foundation of my own lived experience of inequity of health services and the rippling obvious vulnerability and effect of disadvantage exacerbated by relocation to gain access to essential and specialised health services.
Often in the relocation our greater large health facilities fail to recognise the impacts of relocations, re-establishing routines and growing a new skill set of survival skill to navigate a new community and complex health system with already compromised health physically and mentally.
Social work for me personally combines my early years of learning with my current values and now my teaching of my own children. Social work is respecting one’s dignity and what matters to the individual, empowering the current generation and embedding strength, compassion and resilience for a greater sense of self in future generations.
