A risky business? Health and physical activity from the perspectives of urban Australian Indigenous young people

Abstract

Being Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander in contemporary Australia is often discursively constructed in health literature as equating with risks of many kinds. This article explores the ways in which a group of urban Australian Indigenous young people perceive, navigate and articulate the so-called ‘risks' pertaining to issues surrounding their health and physical activity. Eight girls and six boys aged 11–13 years were recruited from an urban school in a major Australian city. Each young person was interviewed up to eight times, using multi-modal tools, over two and a half years, to explore the ways in which they engaged with discourses about health, risk and physical activity. Data were analysed both thematically and through a process of critical discourse analysis. The young people in this study did not perceive themselves as ‘at-risk’ of ill-health despite the recognition of ‘unhealthy’ choices or a family history of chronic illness. They appeared to negotiate risk based on both their knowledge of public health messages and their trust in themselves and those around them. The young people's narratives offer an alternate view to the pathologised, statistical ‘stories’ often representing Indigenous Australians in scientific and popular literature and the media.