Honouring People and Culture: Grounding for Professional Practice with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People

Abstract

The need for ethical and culturally responsive practice in the caring professions is fundamental for ensuring the safety and well-being of all people within the community. In this article, the concept of honouring is explored as a core requirement for working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Within a world that appears to be moving away from progressive ideas that surround inclusion and acceptance, honouring people and their culture is ever more urgent. Honouring culture means that individuals look beyond their own cultural perspective to that of another and respectfully embrace diversity through the acceptance of alternative perspectives and values. Honouring culture is more than a practice label; it is expressed through action that demonstrates to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that not only are their voices heard, but they themselves are valued.

Introduction

Being able to work in meaningful ways with people from diverse cultural backgrounds has become a core value in most workplaces, especially for those working in the human services (Fine et al., 1990; Mateescu, 2017). In this context, cultural responsiveness is pivotal for providing high-quality public health care and education to ensure the well-being of some of the most vulnerable populations in societies around the world (Smith et al., 2022). There is now a wealth of literature on the topic of working with culturally diverse groups. Cultural responsiveness is now understood as a multifaceted concept that includes the components of cultural safety, cultural awareness, cultural humility, cultural competencies and cultural knowledge (Smith et al., 2022). Although the language used in the literature attempts to capture different, nuanced aspects of practice with culturally diverse groups, it is proposed that they all distil down into an essential element of respect for a person’s cultural worldview.

The purpose of this article is to explore what it means to respect people and, in so doing, add to the already existing dialogue about the spirit of cultural respect when working with diverse groups. To do this, the notion of honouring is explored. Honouring another person is not a practice or a label that one adopts; rather, it is a way of being and seeing the world that is expressed through feelings and actions. The idea of honouring is not dissimilar from Rogers’ famous notion of unconditional positive regard (Rogers, 1959); in that, it recalls the basics of accepting and valuing a person without judgement. Yet it also takes us further than a passive state of acceptance, because it also calls for the active recognition of another person’s experience of history, culture and injustice.

In the caring professions such as psychology, social work and nursing, the idea of honouring people is important for working with all people, regardless of cultural background (Muller, 2014). The authors of this article recognise the challenges involved for many workers in health and human services organisations, where workers are often subject to unrealistic demands on their time and energy, thus stripping them of their ability to empathise (Grootegoed & Smith, 2018). This article is not written as a prescription to solve a problem or a set of steps workers can take to become culturally sensitive. Rather, it is written in the hope that it can inspire dialogue around working with people from different cultural contexts and contribute towards a more culturally responsive workforce.

The focus here, however, is on working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia. In this practice context, there is an urgent and pressing need for people’s experience of the world to be honoured and valued. To begin, this article provides a background on the issues faced by many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia today, and then, it explores some of the existing literature surrounding cultural responsiveness in practice with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. In addition, this article addresses what it means to honour another’s experience of life and how this might relate to working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Implications for practice are then discussed.

Background

The rise of political populism and far-right ideologies in some countries suggests a growing social movement towards exclusivity and isolationism that threatens the foundations of progressive moves to promote the values aligned with diversity and inclusion. The dismantling of progressive practices that facilitate expressions of culture is taking place. In the United States, for example, the attack on so-called woke culture has resulted in the removal of progressive language in government documents (Shortis & Byrne, 2023; Yourish et al., 2025). Similarly, in Aotearoa New Zealand, the use of te reo Māori (the Māori language) in government departments and on public signage has been challenged by some on the conservative side of the political spectrum (Shaw, 2023). In Australia, during the later stages of the 2025 Australian federal election campaign, voices were raised to criticise the inclusion of Welcome to Country by Elders in significant community events (Marks et al., 2025). These examples, all of which are framed in the name of equity and justice for all people, serve as a stark reminder that respecting diversity is a contentious idea for many.

This zeitgeist runs much deeper than the ideological rejection of progressive efforts. It is, at the same time, overtly racist because of the way it aims to deny people the basic recognition of not just rights but also of their very existence. This was shamefully exemplified in Australia, and the year 2023 will be remembered as a watershed moment for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people whose numbers currently comprise less than 4% of the total national population (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2019). This group endured the pain of the wider Australian population’s rejection of a referendum that sought to enshrine a First People’s Voice to Parliament. One commentator predicted prior to the vote that a negative result would be ‘another in a long line of acts of dispossession and exclusion by settler Australia’ that could be perceived in Australia and overseas as having exposed ‘a dark streak of racism in Australia’s soul’ (Strangio, 2023).

One of the messages from the referendum result is that there is a continued adherence to what is arguably the myth of monoculturalism, likely borne out of a misguided and simplistic idea of egalitarianism: that we are all Australian and that is all that is important. Such a position constitutes another form of exclusion by refusing to recognise Indigenous culture within a society that hosts many cultures (McGlade, 2004). Nonetheless, irrespective of public opinion, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture has shown a remarkable ability to endure, survive and thrive through adversity, as is suggested by Dudgeon et al. (2014):

In recent decades there has been a strong renaissance of Aboriginal culture and forms of creative expression, and a reconnection and reclaiming of cultural life. Aboriginal culture has roots deep in the past. Australia’s Aboriginal and cultural traditions have a history and continuity unrivalled in the world. (p. 4)

This renaissance is typified in the resilience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people despite the setbacks that have confronted them since the early days of the settler-colonial era. Callaghan and Gordon (2022) note that this comes from taking ownership of one’s personal power through grassroots community initiatives. The many Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations (ACCHOs) that sprang up in the late 20th century were responding to concerns from the community that mainstream health services were not culturally safe or appropriate for the holistic health needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (Kendall & Barnett, 2015). Similarly, the Aboriginal Legal Service arose in response to the alarming rate of convictions and incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (Aboriginal Legal Service-Sydney Barani, n.d.). These acts of self-determination have also been accompanied by the remarkable resurgence of traditional languages, particularly in locations where these languages had been suppressed for generations. Within the first author’s Gamilaroi Nation of Northwest New South Wales, the 2021 census has recorded that 779 people speak the traditional language, a substantial increase on the 2016 census figure of 66 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2021). Clearly, these local initiatives are just some of the examples of how community, grassroots-led movements have sought to reclaim a place of honour for language and culture.

Cultural Humility in Professional Practice

The strength and resilience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have also resulted in the insistence that their ways of knowing are key to resolving the problems that persist within many of their communities, such as access to culturally safe health and community care services. Kehoe and Echols (1994) note that there is an urgent need to move away from Western Eurocentric education structures and to look to traditional cultures and knowledges for solutions to problems. For example, the work of Gee et al. (2014) offers a conceptual framework that enables practitioners to refrain from imposing Western assumptions onto Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and to work in ways that are respectful and culturally safe. The circle of social and emotional well-being shown in Figure 1 illustrates the connections that are crucial for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, as well as the social, historical, cultural and political determinants that can strengthen or weaken social and emotional well-being. When practitioners can recognise these connections, they are then able to provide services that are holistic.

Figure 1.

Model of social and emotional well-being.

Each part of the wheel is interconnected, and when any of those connections are broken, such as took place when children were removed during the time of the Stolen Generations or when traditional languages were forbidden, the model disintegrates. It clearly shows that when the inner connections are removed, the structure, depicted as a wheel, becomes weakened and may even collapse, resulting in personal trauma.

This idea of humility in professional practice, which Hook et al. (2013) call cultural humility, asks individuals to become other-oriented, stepping out of their own cultural perspective and genuinely entering into another’s cultural world by suspending any sense of personal superiority, worldview, values and beliefs. Cultural humility means that one does not know or have all the answers, but there is a willingness to learn from others in a spirit of genuine person-centred care (Lekas et al., 2020). For one to be culturally humble in the face of a different culture, one must first possess genuine knowledge of one’s own culture (Kelly, 2003). From this space, there must be an awareness that when observing other cultures, there is a strong likelihood that meaning will be determined through the lens of one’s own culture. This means stepping away from a perspective that positions one’s own culture as normative and even superior in comparison with other cultures.

Honouring People

The idea of cultural humility is analogous to the idea of what it means to honour a person. In Western culture, the idea of honouring has been known and understood for millennia, and although it can mean different things to different people, it provides us with a different way of articulating the qualities inherent in cultural humility. The act of honouring another person involves actively showing one’s respect, not just to a person but also to their culture, history and experience.

Honouring a person, and also regard for others, involves the act of listening and holding the space for people so their experience is valued and they feel heard. That people feel heard and valued is a core aspect of professional practice (Morley & Crawford, 2022). Writing from a Western perspective, Martin Buber (1958) expressed a kind of honouring within terms of a relationship that is I/thou, which is where one is present to the other person and genuinely encounters them without restraint. The I/thou relationship is about being open to unconditionally receiving the other person and what s/he has to say (Rogers, 1959). To make the idea of the I/thou relationship clearer, Buber contrasts the I/thou relationship with an I/it relationship, which is the kind of relationship where one maintains distance from the other person by objectifying them. Of course, professional practitioners will need to move in and out of the I/thou and I/it modes of interaction because it is simply not possible to maintain an I/thou way of being continuously, and there are times when distance and impartiality are necessary for best practice. The problem with the I/it mode of communicating is the way, from the Western point of view, it has come to be seen as the ‘right’ way to communicate in a professional context. In the name of upholding professionalism, distance, impartiality and objectivity have become the norm in many health and community care settings, but for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, this is often experienced as culturally insensitive. There are many theories of racism (Augoustinos, 2013). One explanation is that being disconnected from the experience of others can contribute to the act of dehumanising people and othering people who are different (Molla, 2024; Muller, 2023), thus stripping people of their selfhood and dignity. Honouring the person through the I/thou relationship removes the distance, even if only for a moment in time, and allows one to see the other person’s humanity. From this place, one can then ask what has happened, and this provides a starting point for opening dialogue that could lead to healing.

Discussion

The challenges facing those working in health and human services are many in environments that are often characterised as unreflexive and where workers are often time-poor. In this context, it is understandable that many workers cope by keeping their distance from the complex problems they encounter in their day-to-day work (Grootegoed & Smith, 2018). Regardless, the idea of honouring remains central to ensuring the delivery of culturally responsive and safe health and community services. While it is important for individual workers to find the space for honouring people, it is equally important that organisations resource and grow a culture of honouring within the workplace.

The idea of honouring moves away from a deficit-based approach to working with problems and encourages one to think of what can be done to work in ways that are strength-based and culturally sensitive. It moves towards the space of cultural humility that understands the culture of the other (Hook et al., 2013). For practitioners, this is known as cultural responsiveness, where they are called upon to no longer simply be competent but to continually respond on a personal level (Smith et al., 2022).

Honouring the person also involves honouring their story or narrative. It means that one is called upon to listen to people and to allow them to have a voice. Practitioners must take the time to listen to clients and to learn from them the many ways that they are connected to culture (Smith et al., 2026). Within this context, the outcome of the Voice Referendum was also a refusal to honour story and narrative, indicating that honouring is both a personal and a communal construct. The silencing of individual and collective voice is an act of violence and humiliation akin to what is experienced within situations of family violence, and the trauma from it must be regarded as similarly damaging. The challenge for practitioners within trauma-informed therapy (Atkinson, 2002; Herring et al., 2013) is to give a voice to Indigenous people whose voices have been silenced for generations. The honouring of voice and narrative is part of the process of healing for Indigenous people and is ultimately a process of community and nation-building. It includes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges and decolonises the structures and the institutions that have silenced and alienated them (Dudgeon & Walker, 2015).

The next step in honouring voice is for a process of truth-telling to take place. This process, which is also part of the healing for all people, allows the stories to be told of how colonisation, dispossession and ongoing disadvantage have impacted the social and emotional well-being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, contributing to disproportionately high rates of psychological distress, suicide and health inequity (Dudgeon et al., 2022). Truth-telling leads to what must be a genuine self-examination at individual and organisational levels of the place of power and privilege that have sustained the inequities that have negatively impacted Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This is a process of decolonising that, at a personal level, acknowledges how values and beliefs have shaped opinions and practices and, at an organisational level, how systems have sustained a culture of power that has kept Indigenous people at the margins of society (Kovach, 2009). Without a process that honours voice and truth, our country and its people remain anchored to the worst aspects of colonialism, with its trappings of division and disadvantage preventing any movement towards a genuinely egalitarian society.

Conclusion

Honouring culture is more than statements of support and acknowledgement. It must be protected, and there is an ongoing responsibility for all people to respect and value the diversity within all societies. It is marked by actions of cultural responsiveness that provide culturally safe, respectful environments for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that facilitate their connections to culture and country, community and kinship. Honouring is an essential human quality that is demanded of all of us to ensure social harmony and an openness to the rich traditions of all people. It benefits both those who give and those who receive such honour; to do otherwise is to betray who we are as humans.