COVID-19 Pandemic: The Circus is Over, for the Moment
- PDF / 173,800 Bytes
- 3 Pages / 547.087 x 737.008 pts Page_size
- 31 Downloads / 179 Views
SYMPOSIUM: COVID-19
COVID-19 Pandemic: The Circus is Over, for the Moment Philip Morrissey
Received: 25 May 2020 / Accepted: 3 August 2020 # Journal of Bioethical Inquiry Pty Ltd. 2020
Abstract This critical essay responds to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown in Victoria from the perspective of a retired Aboriginal academic and reflects on personal responsibility, Indigenous history, and resilience. Keywords Indigenous . Ethics . Ecology . Culture . Survival
And the sky opened And we laid down our armour And we danced Naked as they Baptized in the rain Of the New World “Amerigo” (Smith 2012) At the commencement of Melbourne’s April COVID-19 lockdown the Australian Government Department of Health released this statement: People aged 70 years and over, people aged 65 years and over with chronic medical conditions, people with compromised immune systems, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people over the age of 50, are at greater risk of more serious illness if they are
P. Morrissey (*) Box Hill, Australia
infected with coronavirus. (Australian Government Department of Health 2020) So there I was, interpellated as one of those Aboriginals, over fifty years of age. There was something ominous in it, though I had every confidence that the Department of Health injunctive was based on the advice of well-meaning Aboriginal health experts. My disquiet at the statement? I see myself as relatively privileged, in good health, and with the capacity to make any necessary decisions relevant to my health and lifestyle. There was also concern at the increased nuisancing powers given to the Victorian police force, at a time when it had never been in greater disrepute. But at the base of my anxiety were the darker shadows of history—the Aboriginal experience of the intertwined realities of invasion, colonization, and foreign-brought disease. In the words of Wiradjuri poet Jazz Money: across great seas that hulking sickness comes wambunbunmarra greed the first steps the first theft first shots (Money 2019) Two novels published in the late twentieth century provide us with specific perspectives on the Aboriginal experience of disease and invasion and the culture that produces them. Eric Wilmot’s 1987 historical novel Pemulwuy: The Rainbow Warrior takes as its subject matter conflict between the Eora nation and the British
Bioethical Inquiry
invaders between 1788 and 1802. As smallpox (Galgalla) spreads among the Eora people, Pemulwuy, the Aboriginal leader who believes in opposing the British with force, tells the more conciliatory leader Bennelong, that a truce agreed to between the British and Eora can be broken by the British killing the Eora with muskets, bayonets, swords, or deliberately with the release of their “sickness,” the “galgalla in a jar” (Wilmot 1994 [1987], 190-191). (The novel itself suggests that the release of the smallpox cultures was accidental rather than deliberate.) Responding to Pemulwuy’s charge, Captain Macarthur, the commander of the Parramatta Stockade, outlines what amounts to
Data Loading...
