Read Online Caprice by Doris Pilkington Garimara - Free Book Online

Hygiene and Physiology course studied by them. So it wasn’t surprising that Beth Keeley, a first year student nurse at the Royal Perth Hospital, became alarmed when a male patient indicated that he was sexually aroused. The sister-in-charge of that particular ward was astonished as she looked at this attractive nineteen year old nurse with disbelief. After revealing her sheltered background, the sister understood and arranged for her to attend a lecture and film on reproduction. At least she was enlightened without having to learn from practical experience—by trial and error from boyfriends or husbands.

The Crossroads
    It wasn’t until several years later that the negative effects of my Christian fundamentalist education, values and attitudes became apparent. Both incidents were most traumatic and devastating.
    The first incident occurred when I met my father Danny Atkinson, my stepmother Winnie, sisters Janey and Lizzy and baby brother Robert for the first time. The meeting took place on Mt Ross Station, two hundred miles northeast of Kingsley. My surrogate mother Josie Mayler (nee Leach) accompanied me and my four children to the station to explain the customs and instruct me on traditional and social behaviour.
    â€œAll the people who have settled at the Jigalong Mission have either been given anglo names or have had their Aboriginal names anglicised for identification purposes. Your Dad’s surname is Atkinson now,” Josie explained.
    â€œThey seemed to have used all the letters in the alphabet except X, Y and Z,” she added.
    Throughout my life all reference to Aboriginal tribal, traditional culture had been negative and adverse. So it was with fear, trepidation and curiosity that I allowed myself to be led to my father’s camp. That thick impregnable wall erected by the colonists and Christianity had crumbledand I was actually coming face to face with people who were once described to me as “devil worshippers”.
    Before the meeting I was like the hundreds of other European-oriented Aborigines, those without a tradition or a past, those who had undergone (successfully I might add) conditioning to lose our memories of our families and heritage. Those negative beliefs have been firmly ingrained and imbedded forever. That invisible barrier—the gulf between the fullblooded Aborigine and the half-caste created by the colonials and widened by the Christians was a permanent fixture.
    The confusion and conflict arose not from the actual contact with my family, but from confronting the negative and adverse aspects of Aboriginal culture. “Devil worshippers” and “primitive savages”. These descriptions of the traditionally-oriented Aborigines kept bouncing around in my head. I couldn’t could get rid of them, even when our visits to the station became annual or later bi-annual events and the children learnt to recognise all the local “bush tucker” and became more interested and involved in their traditional heritage. My children were not only learning to recognise bush foods but used the traditional names in Mardu Wangka, such as minyara (wild onions), kulyu (wild sweet potato), quomalla (wild tomato) and murrundu (goanna).
    I refused to even attempt to repeat any Mardu words, that would surely indicate that I was allowing myself to be influenced and controlled by a people and a system of beliefs that was destructive and dangerous. I and or rather my mind rejected anything traditionally Aboriginal—except the food—and that included the language, the culture and especially its ceremonies, rites and rituals.
    What a pathetic, misguided, misinformed woman I was then. Here I was unjustly condemning a culture that had survived and practised for over 40,000 years. It took almostten years to undo the damage caused by foreign indoctrination and shake off the shroud of fear and superstition.
    How could I despise my own flesh and blood, and how could I