18 May 2021

Home » Podcast » An advocate for First Nations people and helping us understand our country’s culture with Dr Jessica Manuela

An advocate for First Nations people and helping us understand our country’s culture with Dr Jessica Manuela

In this week’s episode, Josh is talking to Jessica Manuela who is a Sponsoring Partner in the Tasmanian Young Achiever Awards and has been a judge and is a previous winner.

Dr. Manuela grew up in southern Tasmania. Her father is from the Cook Islands and her mother has Launceston Aboriginal heritage. So she has a particular passion for working closely with Tasmanian Indigenous communities. With the support of the South East Tasmanian Aboriginal Corporation and the Royal Flying Doctor Service Tasmania, Dr. Manuela has developed a specific program for Indigenous Tasmanian adults to access dental care.

Jess has many awards to her name including the St. Lukes Healthier Communities Award, Tasmanian Premier’s Young Achiever of the Year Award in 2017 and is the 2018 TAS State recipient of the Young Australian of the Year Awards.

As a dental surgeon Dr. Manuela gives more than 20 hours of her own time weekly, speaking to school children about dental health and hosting community evenings and aims to make Tasmania the national leader in promoting oral health education.

In this episode:

We learnt that Tasmania had 7,000 Aborigines comprising of 100 clans and 9 nations, but in only a few decades of the British invasion, only 60 were left
Jess challenges us to all learn more about Tasmania’s brutal history and suggests reading this book: Tasmanian Aborigines by Lyndall Ryan
Jess also suggested that we can make change in our workplaces by finding out about the land we work on and start meetings with an acknowledgment of country. You can find the wording here