Reviews of In Our Own Right

This is a book with a difference. It speaks to your heart! The voices of 23 Indigenous Australian nurses each telling their own story brought tears to my eyes, anger in my heart and hope in my soul. With great dignity and forgiveness these nurses recount their early lives, their experiences of inhumane and cruel behaviours of the white Australians against them and the barriers they had to overcome in their fight to achieve their dream to become nurses. What is very sad is the fact that much of this lack of compassion and racism was perpetrated by white Australian nurses. Professor Olga Kanitsaki writes in her foreword to the book: '[Their] courage, determination, resilience, persistence, dignity and ability to achieve what they have - against all odds, so graphically presented in this book - makes my soul tremble and ask "how?". How did they endure all the brutal indignities, violation and insults that they suffered? How did they remain focused? How did they come come to achieve what they did within such hostile and dismissive society?'.

In my view this book should be read by nurse educators worldwide and should be included as essential reading for students undertaking courses in racism, the history of the nursing profession, sociology, transcultural nursing and many more. But above all this book should be read by all nurses who want to be inspired!

Professor (I)Rena Papadopoulos
Head of Research Centre for Transcultural Studies in Health,
Chair, Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professions Research Team,
Chair, School Ethics Committee, School of Health and Social Sciences, Middlesex University,
10 Highgate Hill, London N19 5LW
Tel: 02084116626
Fax: 02084116106
www.mdx.ac.uk/www/rctsh/

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