Surviving the "cure" : life on Bernier and Dorre Islands under the lock hospital regime / Jade Louise Stingemore.
Thesis - 2010First AustraliansAt UWA Library
Summary
Truncated abstract Between the years 1908 and 1918 two islands off the north-west coast of Western Australia were used as Lock Hospitals to incarcerate Indigenous West Australians who were deemed to have syphilis. Men and women were held separately on Bernier and Dorre Islands respectively. Indigenous people diagnosed with syphilis were forcibly removed from their homelands in public health measures ostensibly designed to limit the spread of disease from the Indigenous people to the colonists. It is clear from historical documentation and oral histories that while few of these individuals actually had syphilis, they were experimented on and kept in an inhospitable and resource-deficient environment until they were either declared cured by the European doctors or died on the islands. Little is known of how the European doctors, nurses, workers and their families or the Aboriginal patients lived on the islands how the Aboriginal patients survived and actually recovered from disease and how the Europeans lived in an environment with few familiar resources. Historical documentation indicated that the Aboriginal people were encouraged to live naturally on the islands and that Europeans were to live as best they could. Many questions remain, however, about how two different sets of people with different ideologies and knowledge of the island environment drew sustenance from it how they used it to obtain food, water, fuel, and medicinal treatments in order to survive and continue their ways of life. This research looks at the ways of life of the people who lived on Bernier and Dorre Islands during the Lock Hospital period and also explores the issue of the use of medical models such as the Lock Hospital Scheme as a means of social and economic engineering and control of native populations. Archaeological site recordings and surveys, which were conducted during two field seasons each of approximately ten days, included recording sites and artefacts, photographing material remains and general surveying of the research area. This research confirmed the existence of the Lock Hospitals, the Aboriginal campsites, the Europeans houses and revealed a plethora of artefacts pertaining to each of these groups of people. From the analysis of the data they yielded, it was seen that the Europeans had been equipped with the latest delicate and expensive ceramic ware, imported foodstuffs, personal objects, building materials and medical supplies. The limited objects associated with Aboriginal sites were confined to domestic and local animal bones, marine shells, highly fragmented bottle glass, ceramic earthenware, governmentsupply corrugated iron and traditional flaked stone and glass tools. Spatial analysis of the remains of the hospital and campsites on Dorre, the island on which females were held, leaves the impression that the site was set up either with great insensitivity to Aboriginal values or as a deliberate attempt to control inmates through institutional hospital design. For example, the mortuary was positioned so as to overlook the living areas of sick patients and the hospital and ward area were surrounded by a wall of dunes. The analysis of the remains on Bernier Island, which accommodated the men, gave the appearance of being more functional, with many open areas...
Title
Surviving the "cure" : life on Bernier and Dorre Islands under the lock hospital regime / Jade Louise Stingemore.
Author
Stingemore, Jade Louise.
Other Authors
University of Western Australia. Centre for Forensic Science.
Published
2010
Content Types
unspecified
Carrier Types
volume
Physical Description
xl, 445, [60] p. : ill. maps.
Notes
Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Australia, 2010.Thesis (M.For.Sc.)--University of Western Australia, 2010.Also available online.
Language
English
Identifiers
Libraries Australia ID 54285302
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