Mavis Golds, Aboriginal health coordinator for the Northern Rivers Area Health Service, NSW, spoke to Katherine Breen Kurucsev about her childhood and offers some suggestions on how to improve health services to Aboriginals.

Mavis Golds was 20 years of age in 1967 when Aboriginal people were granted citizenship of their country and given the right to vote. She still remembers her father's intense excitement when he came home bearing the momentous news.

As a girl, Mavis had wondered why they could not vote and about many other odd things that separated her people from the mainstream; things like having to sit apart from her white school friends in the cinema; not being allowed to play with her white friends after school; her father's white workmates bringing him his beer outside the hotel, because he wasn't allowed in.

However, she and her other childhood friends didn't stress too much on these things. They were all too busy growing up. It was the way things were.

Former Australian governments had decided Aboriginal people were a dying race, Mavis said. As a result of this, they enacted a policy to place them on Aboriginal missions or reserves to take care of them.

To illustrate some of the differences in the lives of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people growing up in this century, Mavis compared her family's history to her husband's.

Her grandmother, Violet Harrison, was born on Cummeragunga Aboriginal Reserve in 1906. On the reserves, Aborigines were provided for by missionaries. They could no longer practise their traditional way of life, neither hunting and gathering, nor their traditional and spiritual laws.

A couple of years after Violet's birth, Marg Golds, Mavis's mother-in-law, was born in England.

At the age of 13, Violet was moved to Coronderk Reserve because of a government policy decision. She went to work as a maid, where she received no salary, just her keep. She also was required to have a permit to come and go from the reserve.

At the age of 13, Marg emigrated to Australia with her family where she led a normal teenage life.

Violet was again moved when she was 16 - this time to Lake Tyres Reserve. She married at 18 and had 13 children, one of whom is still alive.

At around the same age, Marg married and had four children, all of whom are still alive.

Mavis's late father, Eric, was born in Lake Tyres. He was taken away from the reserve at 13 years of age and used as cheap labour under assimilation policies, which took away those Aboriginal people of lighter colour.

Mavis's sister-in-law, Jasmin, was born in Melbourne in the same year as her father. She had a good education and later worked as a secretary.

Back in Cummeragunga, Mavis's mother, Olive Smith, was born. She was educated to Grade II level. She married when she was 17.

In the same year, another sister-in-law, Elaine, was born. She finished her education.

When Mavis was two years of age, her paternal grandmother took her and her mother away and hid them when Mavis's removal from her family was threatened.

Every step of the way, Mavis said, other people controlled the lives of Aboriginal families. Every step of the way, her husband's family controlled their own family environment and made their life's choices for themselves.

Mavis believes those differences in lifestyle and control have resulted in many of the health problems experienced by Aboriginal people today.

"We are still trying to deal with the past and cope with the future. History still affects us today in social and mental problems," she said.

Many Aboriginal communities have major problems with alcohol, high unemployment rates and educational standards way below the mainstream. She said the life expectancy of Aboriginal people was 54 years as opposed to 76 years in the wider community.

One of the things Mavis considers important is for the mainstream service providers to recognise the significance of history and culture to Aboriginal people, and to be sensitive to sometimes different needs and different perspectives. She says we need to look at strategies that do and do not work.

Some of the recommendations Mavis puts forward include:

• The need to employ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in hospitals. This would help to break down many barriers. Aboriginal people would use the services more, as has been shown in other places where this policy has been implemented.

• Asking patients to identify their Aboriginality for statistical and cultural purposes - most do not mind.

• Arranging on-going cultural awareness programs for staff. These help health workers understand how many Aborigines' current health problems are related to their history.

• Displaying culturally sensitive posters and pamphlets to create a more friendly environment.

At the end of the day, reconciliation between the indigenous population of this country and the rest of the population will benefit everyone. Mavis knows the difficulties her people face, but is upbeat about the future, saying she thinks it will be her children's generation that will implement a lot of changes.