AusGeoff wrote on Nov 28
th, 2022 at 8:08pm:
Reading through this thread, I'm both surprised and repelled by the
blatant racism and vitriol directed at our Aboriginal population by the
likes of Boris, Redmond Neck, or Johnnie et al.
What "justifies" this sort of bigotry, prejudice and narrow-mindedness?
Whatever, it's ugly and has no place on a forum that
pretends to be anti-racist. (See Rules under "Racism")
I vividly remember one occasion when at the Alice Hospital an ambulance came in with a man who had been speared through the leg as "Payback" for something or other.
The spear was sawn off so as to get the gurney into the Ambulance and I wheeled him in and the Surgeons assessed the damage in the ER and he was scheduled for emergency surgery as the leg had to be amputated as it could not be saved as the damage was to great.
So that happened and the next day his wife came in and she stripped naked and ran all around the hospital through the ER (Cas) and the wards naked and screaming.
Then her husband was wheeled in in a wheelchair and she was even worse as she believed it was not her husband but an evil spirit.
Then she climbed into an empty Ambulance and would not come out so I had to get inside with her - in close quarters - and wrestle with a naked deluded woman who believed in evil spirits and that death was at hand.
Her husband - who was a pretty good chap as I remember - just kept speaking softly to her as she was laying on the ground in floods of tears, screaming and wailing and lamenting the death of her beloved husband.
We had doctors and nurses and interpreters and a huge crowd observing the whole catastrophe and that was just one of many such events I was involved in.
It turned out that someone died and the tribe was convinced that this now one-legged man with the deluded wife was responsible as he must have sung a spell to make some black die so he had to be punished.
Spearing through the leg was the popular tribal punishment but often they die from the dreadful wound.
The hard part for me was the wife and her antics.
It was just another day at the office.