Context: This presentation reviewed the need to further identify and explore whiteness in health care and allied health, and the impact on First Nations peoples. For health professionals to implement collaboration and culturally responsive practice in remote and rural communities, the role of whiteness must be addressed. The presentation aimed to provide individual and institutional strength-based recommendations to understand and respond to whiteness, to ensure alignment with ethical responsibilities and culturally responsive practice, as a vital step in forming a collaborative approach to health and wellbeing in rural areas.
Issue: There is an emerging awareness of the impact whiteness has on the systemic erasure and lack of prioritising of First Nations peoples, as seen in critical race studies. However, there is still a lack of literature and practice guidance about the need to identify whiteness in health professionals and services. The implementation of intersectional critical reflection in health care, with examples specific to allied health and the authors’ standpoint, assists in identifying the ongoing impacts of whiteness in contemporary practice in regional, rural and remote communities.
Lessons learned: Professional standards may mandate the provision of evidence-based, ethical and culturally responsive practice; therefore, it is required to identify and address the consistent absence of identifying whiteness and its role in rural and remote health care. All healthcare professionals have the responsibility to address systemic colour-blind ideologies preserving whiteness and the erasure of accountability that maintains the burden placed on First Nations peoples. Collaboration is more than working together.