Outside the Ward and Clinic: Healing the Aboriginal Body

Despite predictions in the 1970s that, with the advent of Western medicine, there would be no Aboriginal healers by the end of the twentieth century, maparn continue to be active within the Kutjungka region of the Kimberley (Western Australia). Using narrative and art from the healers themselves, the author examines their contemporary role and practice. As desert people continue to engage their healers, as also the services of the local health clinic, the author explores how two very different models of health care might better understand each other and work together to improve desert people's health.