Aboriginal Comedy, Condoms & Surfboards
Hello July!
How did we get here so quickly?
NAIDOC
We would like to begin this month’s blog by Acknowledging NAIDOC week.
NAIDOC.org.au perfectly captures what NAIDOC week means.
“National NAIDOC Week celebrations are held across Australia in the first week of July each year (Sunday to Sunday), to celebrate and recognise the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. NAIDOC Week is an opportunity for all Australians to learn about First Nations cultures and histories and participate in celebrations of the oldest, continuous living cultures on earth. You can support and get to know your local Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander communities through activities and events held across the country”.
For our Elders
This year’s theme is “For our Elders” and what a fitting theme it is. Caddyshack pay our respects to Elders past and present and thank you for all you do within our communities passing on culture to current and future generations.
Across every generation, Elders have played, and continue to play, an important role and hold a prominent place in our communities and families. They are cultural knowledge holders, trailblazers, nurturers, advocates, teachers, survivors, leaders, hard workers and our loved ones.
Take Blaktion
In the spirit of NAIDOC and celebrating successful Aboriginal-led programs, we would like to introduce or re-introduce you to Take Blaktion.
Take Blaktion is NSW Health’s flagship sexual health promotion program for Aboriginal people.
The Take Blaktion program uses comedy sketch videos featuring high-profile Aboriginal ambassadors to engage Aboriginal young people with culturally appropriate sexual health messaging. Comedy has a long history within Aboriginal media and Take Blaktion leverages uniquely Aboriginal humour to circumvent shame associated with sexual health.
Take Blaktion is a great resource for individual’s, communities, families and workers too.
The webpage has quizzes, factsheets and funny comedy video clips which address many sexual and reproductive health themes such as condom use, knowing signs and symptoms of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), how STI’s are treated and managed and what it’s like going for a sexual health screen.
Take Blaktion has had a long-standing partnership with many Aboriginal comedians, who act as ambassadors to the program.
You may recognise several of these comedians, as celebrities off ABC’s Black Comedy series. Household names such as;
Steven Oliver,
Dalara Williams,
Bjorn Stewart,
Andy Saunders,
Dale Woodbridge-Brown and
Megan Wilding
Just to name just a few who have been ambassadors over the years, delivering all the cooee ups around sexual and reproductive health.
This year’s campaign has all new ambassadors, who will be revealed when the campaign launches later in 2023.
In line with the NSW Sexually Transmissible Infections (STI) Strategy, Take Blaktion aims to
“Promote a safe sex culture and implement prevention programs that are culturally appropriate for Aboriginal people to increase consistent condom use and health seeking behaviours.”
This is important as nationally, Aboriginal people experience rates of STIs at 2.5 x higher rates than their non-Indigenous peers and in particular experience higher rates of chlamydia, gonorrhoea and syphilis.
These STIs are preventable with correct condom use, therefore condom supply, education and empowerment need to be incorporated into community-based health promotion programs and initiatives.
Comedy with a message
In 2009 the comedy musical film “Bran Nue Dae” hit our screens, following Willie (played by Rocky McKenzie) and his journey into young adulthood, what it means to travel away and find yourself back home again.
Not 5 mins into the movie we find ourselves tow tapping to the upbeat song about condoms and frangers, whilst later in the film we are introduced by Deborah Mailman’s character Roxanne to the “condom tree”.
This movie showed how we can raise the importance of condom use in community and in fact, many communities are known to have boxes of condoms attached to a well know tree for people to access and use as a health promotion activity.
Scroll through these images to check out real life condom tree images.
STI Testing
Increased STI testing is another important consideration when curbing the rates of STIs in community. Testing needs to be accessible, culturally appropriate and offered as part of a 715 health check through Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services (ACCHs) as well as mainstream services. Sexual health is part of our holistic health and therefore STI screening should be offered routinely (STI screening is suggested once every 6-12 months for someone who is sexually active) but also opportunistically when individual’s present with other health needs.
Indigenous Surfboard
To further celebrate NAIDOC and to spread messages about staying strong and healthy and the importance of condom use and regular sexual health check ups to protect against STIs, Caddyshack project are once again hosting our Surfboard competition.
The stunning board, designed by local artist Zachary Bennett-Brook from Saltwater Dreamtime which we launched at Koonawarra NAIDOC. You can enter the draw FREE to win the board which will be drawn on 1st December 2023 in recognition of World AIDS Day.
Check out this year's board as well as previous boards and enter to win!