Cultural healing
Western Australia’s remote Kimberley region is one of the most sparsely populated and rugged places on Earth, an ancient landscape spanning more than 420,000sq km and home to just 36,000 people, nearly half of whom are indigenous Australians.
On the coast, barramundi, mud crabs and saltwater crocodiles inhabit the vast river systems and wetlands. Hundreds of kilometers inland, in the desert communities of Halls Creek and Balgo, dingoe3s and termites build their burrows and nests in a sparse, sandy landscape where blue skies last not just weeks, but months.
It is in this beguiling wilderness that New Zealander Dr Lorraine Anderson has built her home, lured by a job as medical director of an Aboriginal-controlled health service for the Kimberley’s disparate – and desperately disadvantaged – indigenous people.
“In Australia, white life is a standard for normal life,” Anderson tells the Listener via Zoom from her sunny office at the Kimberley Aboriginal Medical Service (Kams) in Broome. “And when I say whiteness, I’m not just talking about skin colour. I’m talking about power, privilege and, in particular, patterns of thinking associated with non-indigenous, non-colonised people.
“Over the years, the Government has strongly intervened in Aboriginal affairs, including health, and we need to be part of the movement to stop this, take back the health aspects and, in particular, funding and power.”
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