John Boulton, ‘Seeking the post-colonial space’, 6 May 2014

Leeds Centre for Medical Humanities and Institute for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies invite all to:

John Boulton, “Seeking the post-colonial space: Aboriginal children and Justice in the Kimberley region of Western Australia”

6 May, 2014
17.00-18.30 at the Leeds Centre for Medical Humanities

This talk will show how the conflict in parenting beliefs and practices between Aboriginal and mainstream Anglo-Australian society leads to children becoming the “body count” (referencing Farmer), with one outcome being their overrepresentation in the Justice system. An analysis of an advocacy strategy for social justice will demonstrate the barrier to achieving the post-colonial space.

John Boulton has worked in the remote Kimberley region of north-western Western Australia as senior regional paediatrician since his retirement from academic practice at the University of Newcastle in 2005. In the Kimberley he advocates the need to inform medical practice with an engagement in its unique history and artistic tradition, and from anthropological and demographic perspectives. He uses photography as a way of connecting with people and country, and the study of rock art as a way of creating respect for its cosmology. He is privileged to have friendships with Aboriginal people whose own lives have been lived so differently but who share many of the same life values. He has academic affiliations with the University of Newcastle, NSW; the Centre for Values, Ethics and Law in Medicine at the University of Sydney; and with the Broome and Fremantle campuses of Notre Dame University, Western Australia.

For more details, contact Stuart Murray (s.f.murrayATleeds.ac.uk) or Graham Huggan (g.d.m.hugganATleeds.ac.uk)

The Leeds Centre for Medical Humanities is in the basement of the University of Leeds School of English:
10 Cavendish Road, Leeds LS2 9JT.