The Council of Deans of Nursing and Midwifery ANZ  apologises for “the harms and injustices done to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nurses and midwives, their families and their communities”

“While there is widespread acceptance of our nation’s history and agreement that the wrongs of the past should never be repeated, for nursing and midwifery, there still needs to be truth telling, historical acceptance, acknowledgement of professional and institutional racism,” council chair Karen Strickland (Edith Cowan U) told the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nursing and Midwives last Friday.

“We must recognise the role of nurses and midwives since colonisation, through the influence of successive punitive government policies that led to nurses and midwives acting as agent of the government, contributing to the harms and trauma of Indigenous peoples,” she said.

The formal apology is supported by a commitment “to improve student outcomes, and increase the success of academic careers paths of First Nations colleagues who are currently underrepresented in academia.”