Artykuły w czasopismach na temat „Kara (Prison)”

Background: There are approximately 66 thousand prisoners remained in 68 prisons in Bangladesh. (source: Kara Adhidoptar, Bangladesh). So these number of prisoners suffers from different diseases. Prisoners are associates with various high risk of infectious diseases, as a result of the possibility of transmission of infections in prisons surroundings. A high prevalence of blood borne hepatitis viruses and HIV carried out in correctional facilities around the world by investigations have shown. There are limited data on medical disorders among prison inmates in Bangladesh. The study was aimed at confirming prevalence of HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C as well to assess knowledge and attitudes related to HIV, HBV and HCV infections among prisoners admitted to DMCH who referred to medicine department and/ or attended out-patient department in DMCH. Objective: To determine the prevalence and risk factors of HIV, HBV and HCV infection among prisoners referred to tertiary care hospital. Methods: This cross sectional study was done with a total number of 100 inmates over a period of one year. Prisoners, imprisonment for more than six months and who gave consent voluntarily were included in the study. After taking consent from the patient’s/guardians history was taken and physical examination was done. Sample was selected from the population by purposive sampling technique. Data were analysis was done using SPSS version 22.0. Result was expressed in tables and graphs. Results: The results showed a significantly higher seroprevalence of HBV (6%) and HCV (4%) though no prisoner was found to be HIV positive compared to the seroprevalence of these virus infections reported in the general Bangladeshi population (5.8% for HBV and 0.3% for HCV). Exposure of risk factors estimated H/O foreign travels 12%, IV drug abuse 14%, extramarital sexual exposure 16%, sharing of needle 10%, H/O blood transfusion 08%, family H/O diseases 05%, immunization of hepatitis B only 8% and homo sexuality 0%. Risk factors for HBV infection was estimated-family h/o disease 20%, IV drug abuse 7.10%, sharing of needles & syringes 10%, sexual exposue12.50%, blood transfusion 12.50%. Risk factors for HCV infection was estimated -IV drug abuse 7.10%, sexual exposue6.25%, sharing of needles & syringes 20%. Risk factors for HIV infection 0% for all risk factors as no one was HIV infected. Among the IDUs 14% was HBV positive and 30% was HCV positive. Conclusion: The results indicate higher prevalence of HBV and HCV infections among prisoners which has proven that HBV and HCV are the emerging public health problem in a developing country like Bangladesh. Various risk factors contribute to raise prevalence of hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV in prisoners. So avoidance from these risk factors is essential to prevent transmission of infection in prison. So health education and dissemination of message about the moods of transmission of these diseases is very important in prison.

In the article we analysed how the introduction and application of life imprisonment in the period of transformation has impacted the development of the penitentiary system to date. We answered how and why the legislature eliminated the death penalty from the catalogue of penalties in the Polish Penal Code of 1997, and replaced it with life imprisonment. We took into account the statistics on life sentences passed in Poland. We present the evolution of the prison system, which for a quarter of a century had to cope with this difcult category of prisoners by fnding new legal solutions and applying international standards. We also discussed some conclusions of the scholarly study ‘Te best of the worst and the still evil: Prisoners serving life sentences’, which has been conducted since 2014 by our research team. Te study focuses on the management and application of this extreme punishment in Poland, the adaptation of prisoners with life sentences to the isolation and social dimension of imprisonment.

Pravosnažnost sudske presude ima veliki značaj za pravni poredak jedne države. Ona unosi sigurnost i izvjesnost u pravne odnose, sprečavajući da se vode parnice i u slučajevima kada su one već pravosnažno okončane. Inače, ne bi bilo kraja besmislenom parničenju stranaka, što bi dovelo do potpune nesigurnosti kada je u pitanju vršenje subjektivnih prava, a pravni položaj njihovih titulara bi bio neizvjestan.

U radu se prikazuje kronološki razvoj javne rasvjete i elektrifikacije naselja Gospić od sredine druge polovice 19. stoljeća, pa do kraja 1950-ih godina kada se gospićka energetska mreža uklapa u državni distribucijski sustav. Začeci gospićke javne rasvjete tehnologijom petrolejskih lampi evidentirani su u posljednjim godinama postojanja Vojne krajine, a u takvom obliku zadržali su se pola stoljeća. Analiziran je kontekst javne rasvjete u društvenom životu Gospića kao i u kompleksnim političkim situacijama uslijed kojih je Gospić u svakom, a pogotovo tehnološkom pogledu, zaostajao u odnosu na ostale krajeve. Poseban osvrt dan je razdoblju dvadesetih godina 20. stoljeća kada u Gospić napokon dolazi električna energija, a s njom i moderno svjetlo. Godine 1925. puštena je u rad Općinska munjara Gospić, a kolika je bila potreba stanovništva za strujom pokazuje i podatak da je već četiri godine poslije izvršena prva rekonstrukcija kojom su značajno povećani kapaciteti. Kao takva, centrala je bila u upotrebi sve do sredine ‘50-ih godina 20. stoljeća kada Gospić dobiva novu dizelsku termoelektranu, koja je uslijed skupe proizvodnje struje radila vrlo kratko. Osnivanjem „Elektrolike Gospić“ 1956. godine, jedinstvenog poduzeća za distribuciju struje na području Like, te dovršenjem petogodišnjeg projekta izgradnje niza dalekovoda, Gospić je napokon 1961. godine dobio moderan i siguran izvor električne energije.

The article is a cultural-historical study and a part of the project Uniting History, which aims to discover the multicultural aspect of performing art in pre-war Liepaja and summarize key facts about the history of the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra. The study also seeks to identify the performing artists whose life was associated with Liepāja and who were repressed between 1941 and 1945, because of aggression by both the Soviet Union and National Socialist Germany. Until now, the cultural life of this period in Liepāja has been studied in a fragmentary way, and materials are scattered in various archives. There are inaccurate and even contradictory testimonies of events of that time. The study marks both the cultural and historical situation of the 1920s and the 1930s in Liepāja and tracks the fates of several artists in the period between 1939 and 1945. On the eve of World War II, Liepāja has an active cultural life, especially in theatre and music. Liepāja City Drama and Opera is in operation staging both dramatic performances, operas, and ballet, employing an orchestra. The symphony orchestra also operated at the Liepāja Philharmonic, where musicians were recruited every season according to the principles of contemporary festival orchestras. Liepāja Folk Conservatory (music school) had also formed an orchestra of students and teachers. Guest concerts were held regularly. A characteristic feature of performing arts in Liepaja was its multicultural character – musicians of different nationalities with experience from different schools of the world were encountered there. World War II not only disrupted the balance in society, but it also had a very concrete and tragic impact on the fates of the people, including the performing artists. Many were killed, many repressed and placed in prisons and camps, and many went to exile to the West. Others were forced to either co-operate with the occupation forces or give up their identity and, consequently, their career as an artist. Nevertheless, some artists risked their lives to save others.

In 1789, the brothers Ivan and Stepan Bashagurov escaped from prison in Perm. Before their capture two years later, they not only robbed houses and raided boats on the Kama but also worked as wage laborers and traveled to St. Petersburg. Their story does not fit into the traditional understanding of banditry in early modern Russia as a social phenomenon reflecting resistance against the state and nobility. The brothers were neither champions of the poor nor enjoyed sympathy and support in the countryside, as is commonly assumed. Through a detailed reconstruction of their case, this article underscores the seasonal and opportunistic nature of their banditry as well as the complexity of the interactions between the bandits and other members of society, which were shaped by acquaintanceship and kinship, on the one hand, and the Russian government's punitive policies against those who harbored criminals, on the other.

Kapelan więzienny to instytucja nieznana przepisom kodeksu karnego wykonawczego, ale występująca w przepisach wykonawczych wydanych na podstawie tej ustawy. Należy zauważyć, że kapelani więzienni mogą być ustanawiani również przez skazanych jako ich przedstawiciele będący osobami godnymi zaufania (art. 42 § 1 k.k.w.). Z drugiej strony kapelani więzienni nie są traktowani w doktrynie i orzecznictwie, zwłaszcza Trybunału Konstytucyjnego, w kategoriach osób zaufania publicznego. Ponadto status kapelana więziennego mogą uzyskać także osoby niebędące duchownymi, dotyczy to zwłaszcza tych związków wyznaniowych, w których doktrynie religijnej nie występują duchowni. Warto też podkreślić, że kapelani więzienni będący duchownymi wykonują de facto zawód zaufania publicznego, jakkolwiek nie realizują wszystkich wymogów przypisanych do tej kategorii osób. Nie zmienia to jednak możliwości uczestnictwa społeczeństwa w wykonywaniu kary izolacyjnej i realizacji zadań readaptacji społecznej przez przedstawicieli kościołów i innych związków religijnych o uregulowanej sytuacji prawnej, nawet wówczas gdy traktuje się ich wyłącznie jako osoby godne zaufania. Celem niniejszego opracowania jest odpowiedź na pytanie postawione w tytule, z uwzględnieniem obowiązujących przepisów nie tylko prawa państwowego, lecz także prawa wewnętrznego związków wyznaniowych. Problem awizowany w tytule poza walorem poznawczym implikuje również konsekwencje praktyki stosowania prawa.

Since the historic uprisings sparked by the murder of George Floyd, growing calls to defund the police have upended mainstream political discourse in the United States. Outrage at appalling evidence of rampant police brutality and an entrenched culture of impunity have moved to the very center of public debate what were until recently dismissed as radical demands. This dramatic shift has, among other things, opened up space for discussion of the history of policing and the prison-industrial complex more broadly. In particular, abolitionists have urged examination of the deep roots of our contemporary situation. As the organizer and educator Mariame Kaba argued in an editorial published in The New York Times, “There is not a single era in United States history in which the police were not a force of violence against black people.”1 That a statement like this would appear in the paper of record reflects a paradigm shift in popular understandings of the history of the criminal legal system.

U članku se daje prilog poznavanju povijesti Balkanske banke d.d. Zagreb od njezina osnutka (1922.) pa sve do formalnoga završetka njezine likvidacije (1948.). Poslovanje banke razvijalo se je u početku izuzetno povoljno. U kolovozu 1922. predsjednik banke Dušan Plavšić pozvan je na dužnost pomoćnika ministra financija. Kako je vlada kojoj je Plavšić pripadao u prosincu 1922. dala ostavku, uslijed tadašnjih političkih prilika nastala je novinska kampanja koja je bila uperena i protiv Balkanske banke. Time je taj slučaj dobio i čisto političku konotaciju. Tada je počela propast Balkanske banke. Kontinuiranim napadima novoga ministra financija, radikala Milana Stojadinovića, na Dušana Plavšića, novinskom kampanjom protiv Plavšića i Balkanske banke te katastrofalno izvedenim devizno-čekovnim transakcijama, cjelokupno poslovanje Balkanske banke došlo je u vrlo tešku financijsku situaciju. Krajem 1924. banci je odobrena prinudna nagodba. Na temelju te nagodbe banka je na svojoj izvanrednoj glavnoj skupštini 1925. zaključila likvidaciju. Banka je pravno postojala sve do 1948., kada je nakon praktično formalizirane likvidacije brisana iz trgovačkoga registra Okružnoga suda za grad Zagreb.

Annotation. The path of struggle, numerous works and literary and journalistic heritage of Abu Nasir Mubashshir at-Tarazi (1896-1977), a native of historical Taraz city, a prominent religious and political figure who spent 47 years in emigration, still remain without due attention and research in Kazakhstan. The voluminous poetic work of the ulema in Persian, Yadgar Zandan ia Aynei Jahan (Memory of the Prison or the Mirror of the World), was born in a prison in Kabul, Afghanistan, from September 6 to November 21, 1947. In the article, this voluminous work in the masnavi genre is analyzed for the first time on the basis of the original. At the end of this work, the poet notes that he wrote this work, focusing on the form of the work of Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi (1207-1273) “Masnavi Magnavi” or “Semantic Masnavi”. The work is divided into 192 chapters, each of which has a thematic title, the main content of which is formed by religious and political motives. Masnavi begins with gratitude and prayer to Allah and praise of the Prophet. In the next chapter, entitled “In Prison”, he describes the mood of his son and the comrade imprisoned with him, and urges them to remain patient. The work examines the situation in the world after the Second World War and discusses complex global geopolitical problems. Equating communism with a plague that has affected all peoples and humanity, with an incurable disease that spreads from one place to another in the form of a microbe, warns of this danger. In the chapter “Turkestan”, he praises his homeland as “the cradle of the great”, “the earth is a treasure, a storehouse of knowledge and art”, “heaven on earth”, writes, appreciating all the advantages, that his homeland was oppressed by the communists, and lists the entire struggle of the Turkestan people for freedom. The sections “Communist power and law”, “Publishing house”, “Education”, “Wakfs”, “Mosques and madrasahs”, “My father’s central mosque in Taraz”, “Dar-ul-Kada (House of judges)” describe the violation of human rights in his native country, the imposition of restrictions on elections, meetings, the press, book publishing, freedom of thought, that in the field of education nothing is taught except for secular sciences and the ideas of the Communist Party, the closure of mosques, madrasahs, waqfs, Sharia courts, repression, etc. The section “Kosh” (Resettlement) touchingly describes the suffering and longing for the homeland of refugees who were forced to leave their homeland, unable to endure the pressure and humiliation of the Soviet regime. The work is valuable as an artistic depiction of a difficult fate, difficulties, and experiences in captivity, true faith in the one and only Allah, selfless love for the Motherland of the author who fought for independence.

Autorice se bave određenim aspektima oblikovanja granica u prošlosti i suvremenosti na prostorima današnje Hrvatske iz sociološke i povijesne perspektive. Nastoje kontekstualizirati neke okolnosti pod kojima se granice između zemalja uspostavljaju, održavaju i mijenjaju. Granice se obično konstruiraju kako bi isključivale Druge i/ili strance, a kao društveni proizvod čije se značenje s vremenom mijenja one uvijek određuju pripadnost. One se s jedne strane tiču ograničenja, podjela, konflikata i isključivanja između etničkih/nacionalnih skupina, ali i procesa proširivanja, uključivanja i redefiniranja u skladu s političkim interesima na lokalnim, regionalnim, nacionalnim i nadnacionalnim razinama. Upotrebom interdisciplinarnog pristupa u komparativnoj perspektivi preispituju se uloge i značenja rubnosti hrvatskih granica u ranom novom vijeku, kada su, gotovo na istim mjestima kao i danas, granice predstavljale civilizacijsku periferiju i konfesionalno definiranu barijeru prema Drugome (Antemurale Christianitatis). Provedena analiza pokazala je da uloga granice Republike Hrvatske, među ostalim, pridonosi obrani Fortress Europe (Šengenskog područja) od neregularnih migracija, odnosno migranata kao Drugih. U radu je na izabranim slučajevima utvrđeno da političke elite, ovisno o svojim interesima, oblikuju i upravljaju granicom, čineći je (ne)propusnom za kretanje kapitala, usluga i ljudi. Pritom je svakodnevica lokalnog stanovništva na granici često bila, a i danas jest u opreci s proklamiranim politikama ograničenja nametnutima odozgo, pretvarajući granicu od prepreke u mjesto razmjene i suradnje. S druge strane, pokazalo se da fragmentacija europskog prostora i jačanje nacionalnih interesa umjesto proklamiranom idealu „Europa bez granica“ vodi osnaživanju „Europe granica“.

Autor se pridružuje raspravi o mogućim značenjima pojma Histria u takozvanom Staroengleskom Oroziju ili Zemljopisu Alfreda Velikog. Krenuvši od nedavno objavljene (1999.) teze Mirjane Matijević Sokol i Vladimira Sokola koji su značenje pojma interpretirali kao Dunav, autor analizira njihove argumente i pronalazi ih inspirirajućima. Naime, osvrćući se na problem isticanjem važnosti Zemljopisa za hrvatsku ranosrednjovjekovnu povijest, spomenuti su autori zaključili da ako je Histria značila Dunav, tada se Dalmatia, koju su oni interpretirali kao Hrvatska, morala prostirati sve do srednjega Dunava krajem 9. stoljeća. Autor smatra da je njihova najveća zasluga u naglašavanju važnosti razumijevanja “tisućljetnih zabluda” klasičnih autora koji su zamjenjivali Dunav za Istru i u čijem kontekstu je raspad klasične zemljopisne paradigme mogao igrati značajnu ulogu u stvaranju ranosrednjovjekovnoga znanja o regiji. Njihove je zaključke o identitetu Histrije i Dalmacije u Alfredovom tekstu ipak ispravno kritizirao Radoslav Katičić (2003.), koji se uvjerljivo usprotivio shvaćanju pojma Histria kao Dunava, preferirajući tradicionalnu interpretaciju. Autor ovog teksta u obzir je uzeo argumente tih autora i pokušao se odmaknuti pažljivo proučivši prethodno spomenuta “zamjenjivanja” uzimajući u obzir velik broj klasičnih, kasnoantičkih i ranosrednjovjekovnih literarnih i kartografskih tekstova te pokušavajući pronaći moguće izvore i doslovan kontekst Alfredovog viđenja regije. Izbjegavajući pratiti dva predložena pravca, autor je, u svjetlu analiziranih pisanih izvora i zemljovida datiranih između 5. st. pr. Kr. i 13. st. n. e., istražio mogućnost da je pojam Histria u Alfredovu djelu – kao i u širem kasnoantičko-ranosrednjovjekovnom kontekstu – mogao, osim jadranskoga poluotoka, obuhvaćati i šire zaleđe. Iako je iznimno teško točno odrediti značenje takve “veće Istre”, autor utvrđuje različitu upotrebu pojma čime se osvjedočuje u postojanje “oblika znanja”, koji smatra da se Istra prostirala duboko prema onome što je danas Slovenija, to jest, da pojam obuhvaća dijelove rimskih provincija Venecije i Istre te Norika. Predlažući tumačenje da je ova kasnoantičko-ranosrednjovjekovna upotreba pojma mogla zaista potjecati iz “antičkih zamjena” (često u obliku “mitskih reživljavanja”), autor ukazuje na moguće političke, pa čak i administrativne kontekste u kojima je Istra mogla značiti “nešto više od samo jadranskoga poluotoka”. Uzimajući u obzir složenost problema, autor se ipak suzdržava od pokušavanja davanja odgovora na pitanje kada se takva upotreba pojavila i u kojem je točno kontekstu mogla funkcionirati, ostavljajući ove odgovore nekoj drugoj, detaljnijoj i usredotočenijoj analizi.

Kostnadsoverslagene for CO2-håndtering varierer sterkt i den offentlige debatten. Ettersom det kostet 5,3 milliarder kroner på Kårstø i 2006, hvorfor skal det da koste 25 milliarder på Mongstad i 2018? Denne artikkelen peker på kostnadsdrivende elementer i norsk realisering av CO2-fangst og hva det kan komme til å koste i fremtiden. En analyse av kostnadsbildet for et generisk CO2-fangstanlegg og et anlegg i Norge er gjennomført som ledd i en diskusjon av hvorfor kostnadene blir høye i Norge. Likeledes er det analysert hvordan prisen kan endre seg i et mer modent marked og ved mer effektive beslutningsprosesser, prosjektgjennomføringer og en mer normal industriell tilnærming til utviklingen av slike prosjekter. Sammenligningene er gjort for fangstanlegget og er basert på et anlegg for etterrensing (post combustion) for et gasskraftverk med de mest moderne gassturbintypene. Konklusjonen er at kostnaden for selve CO2-fangsten er relativt lik for et anlegg uavhengig av om det er plassert i Norge eller et annet sted i Europa. De høye kostnadene som preger debatten i Norge, gjelder primært tilleggskostnader for infrastruktur, kontraktsmodeller og at hvert anlegg må bære alle kostnadene med tilførselssystemer selv. Analogien til bilkjøp er slående. Bilens kostnad levert på kaia er omtrent den samme overalt i verden. Men det er stor forskjell på kostnadene om du velger å plusse på bilprisen med kostnaden for bygging av veier, etablering av et servicenett og bygge ut bensinstasjoner. I Norge er situasjonen sammenlignbar med dette for CO2-håndtering. Det er mulig å gjennomføre CO2-fangst i Norge til en lavere kostnad enn det som er kommet fram så langt. Dette krever at man har en helhetlig tilnærming til prosessen som tar hensyn til særlig kostnadsdrivende valg. Teknologien for å rense ut CO2 fra røykgasser er ikke spesielt kostbar. Det vil være mulig å fange CO2 fra gasskraftverk til en kostnad ned mot 500 kr/tonn CO2 (ca. 60 ?/tCO2) i fremtiden. Det tilsvarer et påslag i gasskraftprisen på 15 til 20 øre/kWh for fangstdelen av CO2-kjeden, for hele kjeden kan dette utgjøre rundt 30 øre/kWh. De første anleggene vil være dyrere. Med dagens kvotepris på rundt 15 ?/tCO2 er CO2-fangst ikke lønnsomt, men det er grunn til å tro at kvoteprisen vil nærme seg rensekostnaden fra 2020. Dette er tidspunktet EU har satt for full auksjonering av alle kvoter for blant annet kraftproduksjon. Kvoteprisen kan da komme i leiet 40-60 ?/tonn, som vil gjøre CO2-håndtering mer attraktivt.

Photo by Hédi Benyounes on Unsplash ABSTRACT The current incarceration facilities for the growing number of women are depriving expecting mothers of adequate care crucial for the child’s mental and physical development. Programs need to be established to counteract this. INTRODUCTION Currently, Diana Sanchez was eight months pregnant when she was arrested for identity theft and put in a prison cell in Denver. At five a.m., two weeks after being incarcerated, she announced to a deputy outside her cell that she was going into labor. Footage from a camera in her cell shows her pacing anxiously or writhing in her bed for the five hours preceding the arrival of her son. She banged on the door and begged for help. All she received was an absorbent pad. She gave birth alone in her prison cell on July 31, 2015, around 10:45 am. At 11:00 am, a prison nurse walked in to cut the umbilical cord and take Sanchez’s newborn baby without offering postnatal care. Sanchez was later sent to a hospital, and her baby was separated from her until she was put on probation. In 2018, on behalf of her three-year-old son, Sanchez sued Denver Health and Denver Sheriff Department and won a $480,000 settlement.[1] Though many more men are incarcerated than women, the rate of growth of female incarceration has exceeded that of male incarceration for decades. One study estimated that 231,000 women are currently incarcerated in the US,[2] 80 percent of whom are mothers, and 150,000 pregnant.[3] Another recent study of 1,396 incarcerated pregnant women found that 92 percent had live births, 6.5 percent had stillbirths or miscarriages, and 4 percent terminated the pregnancy. The authors found that there is no system of reporting pregnancy outcomes in US prisons. There is a noteworthy ethical lapse in mental, emotional, and medical care that threatens the well-being of pregnant women in prison. According to Carolyn Sufrin, “Pregnant incarcerated people are one of the most marginalized and forgotten groups in our country… and women who don't get counted don't count.” [4] Poor documentation, visibility, and transparency contribute to the systemic abuse of incarcerated women. Studies document women giving birth alone in cells and shackles in solitary confinement. Their complaints regarding contractions, bleeding, and other pains of labor are often ignored.[5] l. Prenatal Care in American Prisons Diana Sanchez was not offered any prenatal care after she was incarcerated. And neither she nor her son received appropriate postnatal care.[6] Sanchez was on medication for opioid withdrawal while pregnant, which could have been detrimental to her baby’s health.[7] There is an unacceptable absence of pre- and postnatal care in most US prisons. A lack of regulation makes the availability of perinatal care unpredictable and unreliable. Several studies confirmed that there is not a standard for prenatal care for women incarcerated during pregnancy. [8] Knowledge of the appropriate mental and physical care pregnant women require, addiction support, and support for maternal-infant bonding all exists outside the prison system and ought to be used as a benchmark. At the very least, pregnant women, birthing women, and new mothers should not be placed in solitary confinement or shackled.[9] In the prenatal arena, depriving an individual of adequate healthcare is not appropriate and could be cruel and unusual. Only 18 percent of funding in prisons goes to health care for the prisoners. That is roughly $5.7 thousand per prisoner, according to an NIH study done in 2015.[10] There should be an adequate amount of funding for the health needs of incarcerated pregnant women. By depriving pregnant women of healthcare, the prisons are depriving the fetus of adequate care. ll. Respect for Autonomy During Incarceration Women maintain healthcare autonomy even when incarcerated. The purpose of a prison sentence is retribution for crimes and rehabilitation to prevent reoffending.[11] The separation of a mother and newborn causes significant developmental and psychological harm to the child and the parent. Parent-child separation does not serve the purpose of retribution or rehabilitation and is authorized only due to prisons’ limited space and resources that make it difficult to accommodate children, as well as a state interest in children’s best interests or the custody rights of the other parent. When it is possible to keep a family together, prisons should make every effort to do so for the health of the mother-child relationship. Incarcerated people may become a burden to family or society due to prison medical neglect. For example, diabetes and hypertension, which can occur during pregnancy, can worsen without treatment. The inability to access the care they would otherwise want and need endangers women and poses a burden to the healthcare system after incarceration, Depersonalizing individuals convicted of crimes must be placed in the context of historical eugenics practices. State-sanctioned sterilization and efforts to prevent women from reproducing were widespread during the early 20th century.[12] Cases of coerced and nonconsensual sterilization of incarcerated women and men evidence the history of eugenics.[13]Abortions are offered to some incarcerated women.[14] However, many incarcerated women are denied the right to see healthcare providers to thoroughly discuss abortion or other options.[15] Although the abortions are consensual, the quality of consent is questionable. lll. Prison Nursery Programs, “I need something to live for…” Indiana Women’s Prison (IWP), a max security female prison, has a program called Wee Ones that enables women convicted of nonviolent crimes to spend 30 months bonding with their newborn child. It is one of eight programs in the country that allows pregnant mothers to spend the last few months of their sentence with their children. It is a voluntary program that allows pregnant offenders a private room in a housing unit. It offers parent education, resources that are accessible after release, and career education. The program application process and the rules to which women must adhere to remain in the program are stringent. The programs generally have a zero-tolerance policy. Even simply sleeping in the same bed as the child or arguing with other mothers can result in termination from the program. Kara, a pregnant woman incarcerated for drug possession, had a history of abuse in her family and tended to act out in anger against her peers in the program. She was learning how to have healthy reactions to anger when handling her child, but her temper ultimately led to her removal from the program. Her son was placed in foster care, and Kara returned to the regular cells. In an interview before her transfer, she told the camera that Charlie gave her a purpose. With tears in her eyes, she said, “Charlie was my way of life here [...] I need something to live for [,] and I screwed up.”[16] Pregnancy in prison can be a way to improve quality of life for some women. Studies demonstrate that nursery programs improve mental health of the incarcerated women.[17] The secure attachment of the infant to its primary caregiver promotes healthy development in the child and a bonded relationship with the mother.[18] The close bond between mother and child in prisons has been shown to decrease recidivism and to reduce the burden on the foster care system.[19] Women who do not qualify for these programs, or are incarcerated in prisons without them, are separated from their newborn babies and their other children. The disconnect can lead to the child rejecting the incarcerated mother once she is released.[20] Programs like Wee Ones honor women’s autonomy while they are incarcerated. During interviews, the women expressed that although raising a child in that environment is difficult, it was better than not being with their children. While rocking a baby in her lap, one inmate expressed her frustrations with Wee Ones but then paused to express gratitude and said, “After all, it’s prison. And prison ain’t supposed to be nice.”[21] The ethical issue of autonomy reflects a more difficult dilemma in the prison landscape. lV. Counter Arguments: Do the Nursery Programs Work for the Children and the Women Typically, newborns are taken from their incarcerated mothers within two to three days of birth and sent to live with a relative or placed in foster care. Many women are never reunited with their babies. There is much debate over whether the programs are beneficial to the children. One ethical issue is whether children, as innocents, are being punished either by being in the prison system or by being separated from their mothers. Skeptics, like James Dwyer, have argued against keeping innocent babies in the custody of incarcerated mothers asserting that there is little evidence demonstrating that the programs rehabilitate the women.[22] Dwyer commented on the “reckless” hopefulness the programs provide: "It might, in fact, be the babies distract them from rehabilitation they should be doing instead. […] They're so focused on childcare and have this euphoria — they think they'll be just fine when they get out of prison and they're not. We just don't know."[23] One study showed that 58 percent of incarcerated women are arrested again after release, 38 percent are reconvicted, and 30 percent return to prison within three years.[24] Dwyer uses this data to argue that the programs are not worthwhile. However, the data is not limited to the special population that had the prison nursery experience. The data applies to all incarcerated women limiting its applicability. More importantly, there is compelling evidence to support prison nursery programs.[25] The programs do decrease recidivism[26] and prison misconduct,[27] and they allow women to create stronger bonds with their children.[28] Bev Little argues that allowing mothers to bond with their babies only delays the inevitable separation and will cause trauma and have other ill effects on the baby. [29] But others feel that stronger maternal-fetal attachment is best for both parties. There is evidence that the bond, once formed, is long-lasting. Later in life, there is less drug addiction among children who stayed in the nursery rather than being separated from their mothers.[30] Another counterargument is that the policies in prison nurseries are not as useful for motherhood outside of the facility; thus, an issue with recidivism occurs because the women are less prepared for motherhood upon release from prison. Prison nursery programs establish methods and procedures for successful motherhood that are unique to operation within correctional environments. Yet, fortunately, parenting classes offered by prisons and jails emphasize sacrifice, self-restraint, and dedicated attention to the baby. These classes aptly apply to motherhood outside of prison.[31] One incarcerated mother experiencing addiction, Kima, was described as ambivalent toward her pregnancy. “It’s something about knowing but not knowing that makes me not accountable or makes me think I’m not accountable,” Kima shared.[32] After the nurse confirmed her pregnancy, she acknowledged fear and knew she would be held accountable to the baby. The occurrence of pregnancy ambivalence is common.[33] A study of a population of prisoners from Rhode Island found that 41 percent of the women expressed ambivalent attitudes about pregnancy. 70 of the women from a population in San Francisco expressed ambivalent or negative attitudes towards pregnancy.[34] But the ambivalence of some women toward pregnancy is not a reason to prevent women who feel differently from reaping the full benefits of programs that support them during pregnancy. Another counterargument is that prison is becoming a comfort that women might seek if they are homeless or housing insecure. For example, Evelyn was released from a San Francisco jail after being arrested for using cocaine. She was 26 weeks pregnant and had a four-year-old son in the custody of her aunt. Following her release, she was homeless and using drugs in the streets. She felt that her only hope of keeping her baby safe was to go back to jail. Like Kima, she had been in and out of jail from a young age. She grew accustomed to and dependent on the care provided there. While incarceration can provide a home and a nursery, there is no ethical reason to argue for making prison less comfortable by separating babies and children from incarcerated women. Instead, these facts suggest we are not doing enough for women outside prisons either. CONCLUSION Many experts stress the dearth of research and information on these women and their babies. There is no empirical data to show how big the problem is, but there is evidence that programs providing nursery care for the children of incarcerated women have many benefits. Because the research is not largescale enough, many pregnant women in the prison system are ignored. Many women give birth in unacceptable conditions, and their children are taken from them the moment the umbilical cord is cut. While the US incarcerates too many women, a movement to expand prison nurseries could help new mothers bond with their children. Strong educational programs could aid in lowering the rates of recidivism by providing therapeutic resources for mothers.[35] There is a growing problem of mass incarceration in the US as many women are placed in correctional facilities. Most of these women are convicted of possession or use of illegal substances.[36] Many women come from disadvantaged backgrounds, poverty, and have experienced addiction. Depriving an expectant mother of adequate care is cruel and irresponsible both to the mother and her innocent child. The criminal justice system is harming children both mentally and physically. Reform of the system is needed to provide the basic care those children need. Programs like IWP’s Wee Ones are necessary for physical, psychological, and social development. A program that offers a place for mothers to raise their babies in the community of other mothers would incentivize and facilitate healthy parental habits. Further programs for mothers who are released from prison would give them valuable resources to keep them from returning and encourage healthy relationships between the mother and the baby. - [1] Li, D. K. Video allegedly shows woman giving birth in Denver jail cell alone, with no assistance. Denver: NBC News, 2019. [2] Kajstura, Aleks. “Women's Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019.” Prison Policy Initiative, 29 Oct. 2019, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2019women.html. (“Including those in prisons, jails, and other correctional facilities.”) [3] Swavola, E, K Riley and R Subramanian. "Overlooked: Women and Jails in an Era of Reform." Vera Institute of Justice August 2016. [4] Sufrin, C. Pregnant Behind Bars: What We Do and Don't Know About Pregnancy and Incarceration Allison Chang. 21 March 2019. Transcript. [5] Sufrin, C., 2019. (Suffrin expressed that she had seen such practices firsthand working as an OB/GYN for incarcerated women.) [6] Padilla, M. “Woman Gave Birth in Denver Jail Cell Alone, Lawsuit Says,” New York Times, Sep. 1, 2019. [7] Li, D. “Video allegedly shows woman giving birth in Denver jail cell alone, with no assistance,” NBC U.S. News, Apr. 29. 2019. [8] Knittel, A. and C. Sufrin. "Maternal Health Equity and Justice for Pregnant Women Who Experience Incarceration." JAMA Network Open 3.8 (2020). A study in Ontario, Canada, coincided with a study done in Australia. [9] Sufrin, C., et al. "Pregnancy Outcomes in US Prisons, 2016–2017." p. 803-804. [10] Sridhar, S., R. Cornish and S. Fazel. "The Costs of Healthcare in Prison and Custody: Systematic Review of Current Estimates and Proposed Guidelines for Future Reporting." Frontiers in Psychiatry 9.716 (2018). [11] Kifer, M., Hemmens, C., Stohr, M. K. “The Goals of Corrections: Perspectives from the Line” Criminal Justice Review. 1 May 2003 [12] Perry, D. M. "Our Long, Troubling History of Sterilizing the Incarcerated." The Marshall Project: Sterilization of Women in Prison 26 July 2017. [13] Rachel Roth & Sara L. Ainsworth, If They Hand You a Paper, You Sign It: A Call to End the Sterilization of Women in Prison, 26 Hastings WOMEN's L.J. 7 (2015); See Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535 (1942) (procreation considered a fundamental right; fact pattern of male sterilization in prison based on type of crime.) [14] Sufrin, C., M. D. Creinin, J. C. Chang. “Incarcerated Women and Abortion Provision: A Survey of Correctional Health Providers.” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. p. 6-11. 23 March 2009. [15] Kasdan, D. “Abortion Access for Incarcerated Women: Are Correctional Health Practices in Conflict with Constitutional Standards?” Guttmacher Institute. 26 March 2009. [16] Born Behind Bars. Season 1, Episode 5, “They Can Take Your Baby Away,” produced by Luke Ellis, Francis Gasparini, & Jen Wise, aired on 15 Nov. 2017 A&E Networks [17] Bick, J., & Dozier, M. (2008). Helping Foster Parents Change: The Role of Parental State of Mind. In H. Steele & M. Steele (Eds.), Clinical applications of the Adult Attachment Interview (pp. 452–470). New York: Guilford Press. [18]Sroufe, L. A., B. Egeland, E. A. Carlson, W. A. Collins. (2005). The Development of the Person: The Minnesota Study of Risk and Adaptation from Birth to Adulthood. New York: Guilford Press. [19] Goshin, L. S., & Byrne, M. W. “Converging Streams of Opportunity for Prison Nursery Programs in the United States.” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation. 15 Apr 2009. [20] Babies Behind Bars. Dirs. W. Serrill and S. O'Brien. 2015. Another IWP pregnant woman is Taylor. At the time of the show, she was pregnant and expecting twins. In interviews throughout the episode, she expressed how her pregnancies in prison had put her in a better mood and felt beneficial to her. She had tried to sign up for the nursery program for her previous pregnancy, but her sentence was too long to get it. Her child was sent to live with a caregiver, and when Taylor was on probation, Taylor’s daughter didn’t want to be around Taylor. Taylor was so distraught that she messed up and went back, this time, pregnant with twins. After she was reincarcerated, she was able to be accepted into Wee Ones. She expressed to the camera man that the program might help her feel more like a mother so that when she gets out, she will have someone to care for. Taylor, Kara, and many other women depend on their children or their pregnancy for a purpose while behind bars. They relied on their babies to be a boon for them. [21] Babies Behind Bars. Dirs. W. Serrill and S. O'Brien. 2015. [22] Corley, C. "Programs Help Incarcerated Moms Bond with Their Babies in Prison." Criminal Justice Collaborative (2018). [23] Corley, C. "Programs Help Incarcerated Moms Bond with Their Babies in Prison." Criminal Justice Collaborative (2018). [24] Owen, B. & Crow, J. “Recidivism among Female Prisoners: Secondary Analysis of the 1994 BJS Recidivism Data Set” Department of Criminology California State University (2006) p. 28 [25] Prison Nursery Programs: Literature Review and Fact Sheet for CT. Diamond Research Consulting, 2012, www.cga.ct.gov/2013/JUDdata/tmy/2013HB-06642-R000401-Sarah Diamond - Director, Diamond Research Consulting-TMY.PDF. [26] New York Department of Correction Services (NYDOCS). (1993). Profile of Participants: The Bedford and Taconic Nursery Program in 1992. Albany, NY. Department of Correction Services.Rowland, M., & Watts, A. (2007). Washington State’s effort to the generational impact on crime. Corrections Today. Retrieved September 12, 2007, from http://www. aca.org/publications/pdf/Rowland_Watts_Aug07.pdf. [27] Carlson, J. R. (2001). Prison nursery 2000: A five-year review of the prison nursery at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 33, 75–97. [28] Carlson, J.R. [29] Little, B. "What Happens When a Woman Gives Birth Behind Bars?" A+E Networks, 29 October 2019. <https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/what-happens-when-a-woman-gives-birth-in-jail-or-prison>. [30] Margolies, J. K., & Kraft-Stolar, T. When “Free” Means Losing Your Mother: The Collision of Child Welfare and the Incarceration of Women in New York State 1, 9 (Correctional Association of N.Y. Women in Prison Project 2006) [31] Sufrin, C. Jailcare: Finding the Safety Net for Women Behind Bars. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017. [32] Sufrin, C. Jailcare: p. 155. [33] Peart, M. S. & Knittel, A. K. “Contraception need and available services among incarcerated women in the United States: a systematic review.” Contraception and Reproductive Medicine. 17 March 2020 [34] LaRochelle, F., C. Castro, J. Goldenson, J. P. Tulsky, D.L. Cohan, P. D. Blumenthal, et al. “Contraceptive use and barriers to access among newly arrested women.” J Correct Health Care. (2012) p. 111–119. [35] Goshin, L., & Byrne, M. (2009). “Converging streams of opportunity for prison nursery programs in the United States.” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation. 2009. p.271–295. [36] Elizabeth Swavola, Kristine Riley, Ram Subramanian. Overlooked: Women and Jails in an Era of Reform. New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2016.

The focus of my research centers on the contemporary work of Georgia-based artist, Kara Elizabeth Walker. In conducting extensive research on the life of the artist as well as three select artworks which recall the antebellum slave era within the south, I argue the explicit presence of the power of the enslaved prepubescent girl and young woman. The three select works that I intend to analyze are Burn, a cut-paper silhouette on canvas created in 1998, The Invisible Beauty, a mixed media piece made in 2001, and Cut, a paper cut-out silhouette made in 1998. In a time where one’s power and freedom were both stripped away upon entering the prison-like confines of a plantation home, the life of a slave (a female slave in this case) was committed to grueling housework, the rearing of her slave master’s children in the place of her own, sexual exploitation and merciless beatings, humiliation, submission to her white counterparts, and in many cases, the occasion of rape. Walker’s intense, overtly erotic and disturbing life-size (and larger than life size) interpretations of the Antebellum south force a stirred emotion within her viewers, so as to implicate them upon viewing. Utilizing methodologies such as formal analysis, feminist deconstruction, semiotic analysis, and psychoanalytic theory, I will prove that Walker’s work is not only a provocative rendition of the horrors of the slave era, but also a way to deconstruct the notion of the female slave as a powerless individual and counter that thought process with a more powerful, authoritative, aggressive, and sexually autonomous image of a female slave, as well as the authority reflected in herself as a contemporary African American artist. *As a disclaimer and out of personal respect to my readers, I caution that there are phrases in my article that may be considered offensive, given their racial nature. The artist has used these terms as a way to describe the figures in her works of art. While they may be offensive, I feel they are necessary to bolster my arguments of racial stereotypes of enslaved females, which over time have been socially constructed and historically situated.

AbstractThe Review has chosen to open this edition with an interview with General Abdoulaye Kaka as a representative of State practice in counterterrorism detention. The journal chose to focus on Niger as a State that is affected by an ongoing armed conflict and which arrests, detains and tries suspected members of a non-State armed group under its domestic legal system.General Abdoulaye Kaka has been working as Head of Niger's Central Counterterrorism Agency (Service Central de Lutte Contre le Terrorisme) since 2014. He previously worked for the judicial police in Niger as head of the anti-gang section before opening the first office of the judicial police in Zinder. General Kaka worked for the United Nations (UN) police forces in Ivory Coast between 2006 and 2012, when he became the Commander-in-Chief of the Niger UN police forces.In his current role as Head of the Central Counterterrorism Agency, General Kaka oversees detention operations throughout the country, many of which involve suspected members of the group that calls itself Islamic State's West Africa Province (ISWAP), also known as Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad or, as it is most widely known under its former name, Boko Haram.Niger has suffered the effects of the ongoing conflict between ISWAP and State forces in the Lake Chad region, resulting in casualties, arrests and repeated displacement among civilians. The government of Niger contributes troops to the Multinational Joint Task Force, which conducts operations against the group. At the same time, the government arrests and detains suspected members of ISWAP as part of its counterterrorism efforts. These detention operations are coordinated by the Central Counterterrorism Agency. Established in 2011, the Central Counterterrorism Agency, successor to the counterterrorism section of the judicial police, is made up of representatives from the three primary law enforcement organizations in the country – the national police, the national guard and the gendarmerie – and is principally responsible for counterterrorism investigations in Niger.In Niger, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) helps people affected by conflict in the south-east or fleeing fighting in north-east Nigeria. With the Niger Red Cross, the ICRC delivers aid, treats the wounded, provides water and supports farmers. The ICRC also monitors compliance with international humanitarian law, visits detainees and helps them to maintain contact with their families.The ICRC visits people held by the authorities in at least five places of detention in Niger. After the visits, the ICRC shares its findings on the treatment and living conditions of the detainees confidentially with the authorities and urges them to take steps to address concerns. The ICRC also helps bolster prison management capacities and health services for detainees through technical and material support, and round-table discussions on these topics. The ICRC helps detainees, particularly minors, maintain contact with their families. At the request of foreign detainees, the ICRC informs their families or consular representatives of their detention. Lastly, the ICRC covers transportation costs for security detainees returning home after their release.

The following article is in response to a research project that took the form of a road trip from Perth to Lombadina re-enacting the journey undertaken by the characters in the play Bran Nue Dae by playwright Jimmy Chi and Broome band Kuckles. This project was facilitated by the assistance of a Creative and Research Publication Grant from the Faculty of Communications and Creative Industries, Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. The project was carried out by researchers Kara Jacob and Margaret Hair. One thing is plainly clear. Aboriginal art expresses the possibility of human intimacy with landscapes. This is the key to its power: it makes available a rich tradition of human ethics and relationships with place and other species to a worldwide audience. For the settler Australian audience, caught ambiguously between old and new lands, their appreciation of this art embodies at least a striving for the kind of citizenship that republicans wanted: to belong to this place rather than to another (Marcia Langton in Watson 191). Marcia Langton is talking here about painting. My question is whether this “kind of citizenship” can also be accessed through appreciation of indigenous theatre, and specifically through the play Bran Nue Dae, by playwright Jimmy Chi and Broome band Kuckles, a play closely linked to the Western Australian landscape through its appropriation of the road trip genre. The physical journey taken by the characters metaphorically takes them also through the contact history of black and white Australians in Western Australia. Significantly, the non-indigenous characters experience the redemptive power of “human intimacy with landscapes” through travelling to the traditional country of their road trip companions. The road trip genre typically places its characters on a quest for knowledge. American poet Gary Snyder says that the two sources of human knowledge are symbols and sense-impressions (vii). Bran Nue Dae abounds with symbols, from the priest’s cassock and mitre to Roebourne prison; however, the sense impressions, which are so strong in the performance of the play, are missing from the written text, apart from ironic comments on the weather. In my efforts to understand Bran Nue Dae, I undertook the road trip from Perth to the Kimberley myself in order to discover those missing sense-impressions, as they form part of the “back story” of the play. In the play there is a void between the time the characters leave Perth and reach first Roebourne, where they are locked up, and then Roebuck Plains, not far from Broome, yet in the “real world” they would have travelled more than two thousand kilometres. What would they have seen and experienced on this journey? I took note of Krim Benterrak, Paddy Roe and Stephen Muecke’s Reading the Country, a cross-cultural and cross-textual study on Roebuck Plains, near Broome. Muecke talks about “stories being contingent upon place … Aboriginal storytellers have a similar policy. If one is not prepared to take the trouble to go to the place, then its story can only be given as a short version” (72). In preparing for the trip, I collected tourist brochures and maps. The use of maps, seemingly essential on any road trip as guides to “having a look at” country (Muecke ibid.), was instantly problematic in itself, in that maps represent country as colonised space. In Saltwater People, Nonie Sharp discusses the “distinction between mapping and personal journeying”: Maps and mapping describe space in a way that depersonalises it. Mapping removes the footprints of named creatures – animal, human, ancestral – who belong to this place or that place. A map can be anywhere. ‘Itineraries’, however, are actions and movements within a named and footprinted land (Sharp 199-200). The country journeyed through in Bran Nue Dae, which privileges indigenous experience, could be designated as the potentially dangerous liminal space between the “map” and the “itinerary”. This “space between” resonates with untold stories, with invisibilities. One of the most telling discoveries on the research trip was the thoroughness with which indigenous people have been made to disappear from the “mapped” zones through various colonial policies. It was very evident that indigenous people are still relegated to the fringes of town, as in Onslow and Port Hedland, in housing situations closely resembling the old missions and reserves. Although my travelling companion and I made an effort in every place we visited to pay our respects by at least finding out the language group of the traditional owners, it became clear that a major challenge in travelling through post-colonial space is in avoiding becoming complicit in the disappearance of indigenous people. We wanted our focus to be “on the people whose bodies, territories, beliefs and values have been travelled though” (Tuhiwai Smith 78) but our experience was that finding even written guides into the “footprinted land” is not easy when few tourist pamphlets acknowledge the traditional owners of the country. Even when “local Aboriginal” words are quoted, as in the CALM brochure for Nambung National Park (i.e., the Pinnacles), the actual language or language group is not mentioned. In many interpretive brochures and facilities, traditional owners are represented as absent, as victims or as prisoners. The fate of the “original inhabitants of the Greenough Flats”, the Yabbaroo people, is alluded to in the Greenough River Nature Walk Trail Guide, under the title, “A short history of Greenough River from the Rivermouth to Westbank Road”: The Gregory brothers, exploring for pastoral land in 1848, peacefully met with a large group of Aborigines camped beside a freshwater spring in a dense Melaleuca thicket. They named the spring Bootenal, from the Nyungar word Boolungal, meaning pelican. Gregory’s glowing reports of good grazing prompted pastoralists to move their flocks to Greenough, and by 1852 William Criddle was watering cattle for the Cattle Company at the Bootenal Spring. The Aborigines soon resented this intrusion and in 1854, large numbers with many from surrounding tribes, gathered in the relative safety of the Bootenal thicket. Making forays at night, they killed cattle and sheep and attacked homesteads. The pastoralists retaliated by forming a posse at Glengarry under the command of the Resident Magistrate. On the night of the 4th/5th July they rode to Bootenal and drove the Aborigines from the thicket. No arrests were made and no official report given of casualties. Aboriginal resistance in the area was finished. The fact that the extract actually describes a massacre while purporting to be a “history of Greenough River” subverts the notion that the land can ever really be “depersonalised”. At the very heart of the difference lie different ways of being human: in Aboriginal classical tradition the person dwells within a personified landscape which is alive, named, inscribed by spiritual and human agents. It is a ‘Thou’ not an ‘It’, and I and Thou belong together (Sharp 199-200). Peter Read’s book Belonging: Australians, Place and Aboriginal Ownership contains a section titled “The Past Embedded in the Landscape” in which Read discusses whether the land holds the memory of events enacted upon it, so forming a tangible link between the dispossessed and the possessors. While discussing Judith Wright’s poem Bora Ring, Read states: “The unlaid violence of dispossession lingers at the sites of evil or old magic”, bringing to mind Wright’s notion of Australia as “a haunted country” (14). It is not surprising that the “unlaid violence of dispossession lingers” at the sites of old prisons and lock-ups, since it is built into the very architecture. The visitor pamphlet states that the 1890s design by George Temple Poole of the third Roebourne gaol, further up the great Northern Highway from Greenough and beautifully constructed from stone, “represents a way in which the state ideology of control of a remote and potentially dangerous population could be expressed in buildings”. The current Roebourne prison, still holding a majority of Aboriginal inmates, does away with any pretence of architectural elegance but expresses the same state ideology with its fence topped with razor wire. Without a guide like Bran Nue Dae’s Uncle Tadpole to keep us “off the track”, non-indigenous visitors to these old gaols, now largely museums, may be quickly led by the interpretation into the “mapped zone” – the narrative of imperialist expansion. However, we can follow Paul Carter’s injunction to “deepen grooves” and start with John Pat’s story at the Roebourne police lock-up, or the story of any indigenous inmate of the present Roebuck prison, spiralling back a century to the first Roebuck prison in settler John Withnell’s woolshed (Weightman 4). Then we gain a sense of the contact experience of the local indigenous peoples. John Withnell and his wife Emma are represented as particularly resourceful by the interpretation at the old Roebourne gaol (now Roebourne Visitors Centre and Museum). The museum has a replica of a whalebone armchair that John Withnell built for his wife with vertebrae as the seat and other bones as the back and armrests. The family also invented the canvas waterbag. The interpretation fails to mention that the same John Withnell beat an Aboriginal woman named Talarong so severely for refusing to care for sheep at Withnell’s Hillside Station that “she retreated into the bush and died of her injuries two days later”. No charges were brought against Withnell because, according to the Acting Government Resident, of the “great provocation” by Talarong in the incident (Hunt 99-100). Such omissions and silences in the official record force indigenous people into a parallel “invisible country” and leave us stranded on the highways of the “mapped zone”, bereft of our rights and responsibilities to connect either to the country or to its traditional owners. Roebourne, and its coastal port Cossack, stand on the hauntingly beautiful country of the Ngarluma and seaside Yapurarra peoples. Settlers first arrived in the 1860s and Aboriginal people began to be officially imprisoned soon after, primarily as a result of their resistance to being “blackbirded” and exploited as labour for the pearling and pastoral industries. Prisoners were chained by the neck, day and night, and forced to build roads and tramlines, ostensibly a “civilising” practice. As the history pamphlet for The Old Roebourne Gaol reads: “It was widely believed that the Roebourne Gaol was where the ‘benefit’ of white civilisation could be shown to the ‘savage’ Aboriginal” (Weightman 2). The “back story” I discovered on this research trip was one of disappearance – indigenous people being made to disappear from their countries, from non-indigenous view and from the written record. The symbols I surprisingly most engaged with and which most affected me were the gaols and prisons which the imperialists used as tools of their trade in disappearance. The sense impressions I experienced – extreme beauty, isolation, heat and sandflies – reinforced the complexity of Western Australian contact history. I began to see the central achievement of Bran Nue Dae as being the return of indigenous people to country and to story. This return, so beautifully realised in when the characters finally reach Lombadina and a state of acceptance, is critical to healing the country and to the attainment of an equitable “kind of citizenship” that denotes belonging for all. References Aboriginal Tourism Australia. Welcome to Country: Respecting Indigenous Culture for Travellers in Australia. 2004. Benterrak, Krim, Stephen Muecke, and Paddy Roe. Reading the Country. Perth: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1984. Carter, Paul. The Lie of the Land. London: Faber & Faber, 1996. Dalton, Peter. “Broome: A Multiracial Community. A Study of Social and Cultural Relationships in a Town in the West Kimberleys, Western Australia”. Thesis for Master of Arts in Anthropology. Perth: University of Western Australia, 1964. Hunt, Susan Jane. Spinifex and Hessian: Women’s Lives in North-Western Australia 1860–1900. Nedlands, WA: U of Western Australia P, 1986. Read, Peter. Belonging: Australians, Place and Aboriginal Ownership. UK: Cambridge UP, 2000. Reynolds, Henry. North of Capricorn: The Untold History of Australia’s North. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2003. Reynolds, Henry. Why Weren’t We Told? Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Books Australia, 1999. Sharp, Nonie. Saltwater People: The Waves of Memory. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2002. Shire of Greenough. Greenough River Nature Walk Trail Guide. 2005. Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. Decolonizing Methodologies. Dunedin, New Zealand: U of Otago P, 1999. Watson, Christine. Piercing the Ground. Perth: Fremantle Arts Centre P, 2003. Weightman, Llyrus. The Old Roebourne Gaol: A History. Pilbara Classies & Printing Service. Wright, Judith. The Cry for the Dead. 1981. 277-80. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Hair, Margaret. "Invisible Country." M/C Journal 8.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/09-hair.php>. APA Style Hair, M. (Dec. 2005) "Invisible Country," M/C Journal, 8(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/09-hair.php>.

“Garihmato—Look after, to Care for” Melaleuca Alternifolia, commonly called Tea Tree, only grows naturally in the lands of the Bundjalung people from north coast New South Wales. The particular medicinal properties of the Tea Tree have been used for thousands of years, and the Tree and its effects on land, water, and people form part of Bundjalung oral histories and spiritual governance. This article explores media about Tea Tree from the 1990s to 2020s in print media through agricultural media and magazines, as well as online media through TikTok. This combination highlights the generational positionality between the authors as Mother/Daughter and as different consumers of media, with Kath mainly consuming print and Phoebe consuming online. It also utilises a synergy through timing, with the 1990s being when Kath was in her 20s and the 2020s being Phoebe’s time in her 20s. Through analysing the tropes and messaging surrounding Tea Tree, we as Bundjalung women unearth the continued colonisation and exploitation of First Nations knowledges by the health and wellbeing sector – from the mainstream pharmaceutical industry to alternative wellbeing to user-generated travel content. This article considers these areas. Ultimately, acknowledgements of Indigenous land or origins of knowledge are not enough. We call for a structural reaffirmation and recontextualisation of First Nations’ ancestral medicines. Cultural Positioning Our family has an audio recording of our Githabal ancestor Granny Dorothy (Williams) Webb being interviewed by Terry Crowley, a linguist who was recording the Bundjalung language in the 1970s. This recording of Granny forms part of the body of language resources published in the Crowley’s The Middle Clarence Dialects of Bandjalang. In one section of the recording, Crowley quizzes Granny on the names for different trees. When he asks about Tea Tree, Granny quickly responds “bulam” (also sometimes spelt “bulihm”) and then attempts to begin a story on how the bark “bulam-ga” was used for shelters. Crowley abruptly stops her reminiscence as he has no interest in the ethnographic detail, just the linguistic material. Had he allowed her to speak further, he would have known that Granny had much more to say on Tea Tree. Some parts of her knowledge would have not been spoken to him, however, as Tea Tree, in particular Ti Tree Lake, formed a part of her women’s knowledge. As Granny’s female descendants, we operationalise our cultural connection to Bulam/Tea Tree in this article while being mindful and respectful of the importance of keeping certain knowledge within our female genealogy. We remain faithful to Granny’s language and to her teachings which we are privileged to know through oral history from her daughters Gertie and Esther Webb and her granddaughter Julianne Butler. The Context of ‘Wellbeing’ The World Health Organisation states in its Constitution that “health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (WHO). While noting that this definition is a significant improvement on exclusively bio-medical definitions, we argue that there is still room for a further expansion. In critiquing the WHO definition, Sartorius (662) notes a third dimension of health, which is “a state of balance, an equilibrium that an individual has established within himself and between himself and his social and physical environment”. The inclusion of the environment resonates more deeply with many Aboriginal philosophies but remains problematic due to its individualistic nature, removed from culture, community, and Connection to Country. Through industry research, understandings of ‘wellness’ from the ‘health and wellbeing’ sector at large appear to remain fluid to consumer demands. In a 2021 report, “Wellness in 2030”, research shows that “consumers are spending more on wellness than they ever have before. Wellness is now a $1.5 trillion market globally” (Chopra et al.). Rather than provide a definition of what ‘wellness’ means, the report focusses on six ‘wellness categories’ as identified by consumers: health, fitness, nutrition, appearance, sleep, and mindfulness. From this we can understand that the ‘health and wellness’ industry might not promote a secure philosophy of wellness because, as inherently capitalist enterprises, they want to be responsive to social trends in order to secure profit. For Aboriginal peoples, our understanding of wellbeing is much more concrete. Culture is inextricably connected to Country, and the guardianship of that relationship is a foundation for life and a key indicator of wellbeing (Grieves 2; Oliver 1). Put simply, “if the land is sick, you are sick” (Kenyon). Conversely, the belief that “if you look after the country, the country will look after you” (Weir et al.) has framed a multi-generational cultural governance grounded in The Dreaming. Therefore, this article proceeds on an understanding of wellbeing beyond the limitation of mainstream definitions – we understand wellbeing as being place-based, enculturated, and grounded in action not aspiration. Our case study on the wellbeing representations in media promoting Tea Tree in various forms such as oils and immersive experience speak to this framing. Bulam (Melaleuca Alternifolia) Many Australians are familiar with Tea Tree but are unaware that one particular variant, Melaleuca Alternifolia, only grows naturally within the lands of the Bundjalung people. In addition to continuing oral histories, it was noted in various journals in the early colonial period that Bundjalung people used Bulam (Tea Tree) for a range of uses – to cover shelter, to line the coolamons which held jarjum (children), and for a range of medicinal purposes for its antiseptic, antibacterial, and antifungal properties. Bulam could also be used as a diluted drink, or as a crushed oil rubbed on wounds, with the added advantage of also repelling insects (Murray 693). Additionally, Tea Tree occupies a revered place in Bundjalung beliefs and practices through its transformation of Country. We contend that the phrase “Country makes us healthy” is not a metaphor but a deeply held cultural norm with spiritual and physical attributes. In regard to Bulam/Tea Tree, it is important to acknowledge that there are bodies of water in Bundjalung Country which are ringed by Tea Tree, in particular Ti Tree Lake. The healing properties of the water are enhanced by the infusion from leaves into the water, giving it antibacterial properties; these waters are seen as Women’s sites and are particularly important as birthing places. It is contended that the name Tea Tree comes from the recording of Captain James Cook’s 1770 mapping of the Australian eastern coastline. Coming ashore, Cook and his party witnessed Bundjalung people making a ‘tea coloured’ drink from the leaves of the tree. A number of sailors also used the leaves for tea (Drury 11). Neither the sailors, nor Joseph Banks who collected samples, were aware of the potential health benefits of the Tea Tree. Some early colonists in the north coast region did use the leaves medicinally but it was widely unknown amongst non-Indigenous people until the twentieth century (Drury 19). It was not until the 1920s that Tea Tree was produced and marketed by Arthur Penfold, an Australian chemist. Marketed as an oil, it is claimed that soldiers during World War II were given Tea Tree oil for use in the trenches (Australian Tea Tree Industry Association). However, with the advent of antibiotics, Tea Tree fell out of favour as a remedy, but recent interest, from both pharmaceutical and alternative medicine sectors, has seen a steady growth in production and promotion of Tea Tree for viable wound care globally (Jones). Unpacking Ethnocentrism, ‘Common Sense’, and Settler-Colonial Extractivism Australia has since developed a flourishing market for ‘herbal remedies’ which is dominated by Western and Chinese medicinal products. While Indigenous Medicines are experiencing growing popularity, they have traditionally held a very small market share (Wohlmuth et al.). Interestingly, while some Indigenous medicines have been used to develop Indigenous-owned micro-economies (Oliver), Tea Tree products have predominantly been distributed by non-Indigenous people. This is problematic because it removes the product from its broader cultural context and does not recognise Indigenous Intellectual and Cultural Property Rights. In fact, the marketing of Tea Tree oil in some contexts displays a distinct ethnocentrism. We understand ‘ethnocentrism’ to refer to individual and systemically entrenched beliefs in the perceived ‘rightness’ of the perspectives and processes of a person’s own group. Ethnocentrism also identifies that this belief in the ‘rightness’ of their own community acts alongside an aversion and disdain for ‘outsiders’ and their ways. This belief often enforces loyalty along ethnic lines in order to consolidate power, wealth, and resources in order to deprive the ‘outsider’. Notions of ethnocentrism have been present in the Australian social, cultural, and political consciousness for centuries (Cole) Another idea to consider with Australian ethnocentrism is theorist Antonio Gramsci’s concept of ‘common sense’. He argues that, while individuals of a social group may hold its conception of the world, the same group may repeat rhetoric that is not their own due to the ideas' prevalence in ‘normal times’. This is when the repetition of ‘common sense’ understandings becomes “not independent and autonomous, but submissive and subordinate” (Gramsci). Many of the media representations we unpack later in this article can be understood as repetitions of settler-colonial ‘common sense’ which reinforce and value the supposed ‘supremacy’ of white non-Indigenous understandings while trivialising or disregarding First Nations ways. Consequently, this brings the issue of ethnocentrism beyond individual acts to highlight the extractive nature of settler-colonial nations, which premise themselves on the ‘elimination of the native’ and our ways of being, knowing, and doing (Kauanui). This elimination does not have to be purely genocidal but also includes the appropriation and assimilation of First Nations people, resources, and knowledge. Mississauga Nishnaabeg writer Leanne Simpson from northern Turtle Island (Canada) argues that extraction and assimilation go together. Colonialism has always extracted the indigenous … every part of our culture that is seemingly useful to the extractivist mindset gets extracted … and assimilated into the culture of the settlers without regard for the people and the knowledge that created it. (Klein) In our analysis of media representations below, we will see many examples of what this section seeks to explain. Media will trivialise or dismiss First Nations people and knowledge through extraction, appropriation, and assimilation of our resources into their own ethnocentric understandings. Tea Tree Oil Use in ‘Australia’, 1990s-2020s In the 1990s, as Tea Tree oil began to expand in the market, the Australian Financial Review published an article entitled “Bringing Tea-Tree Oil Out of the Swamp” (Brown). The article’s provocative introduction asserted: the world's first big plantation producer of tea-tree oil discovered early that its product's folksy image was not easy to shed. Decades of labelling as a bush remedy was a disadvantage when the product was eventually promoted as scientifically proven medicine. However, the company has succeeded in convincing consumers that the native product is a quality one, and the result has been the birth of a new industry. In deconstructing these assertions through a Bundjalung lens we have much to say! Firstly, it is a peculiarly Western lens which denigrates swampland. The late anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose (1996) gave voice to many of the Aboriginal perspectives which she had heard, contending that ‘wilderness’ is a construction of the West. For Aboriginal people, swamp is still sacred: it is the home of the Tea Tree and is not perceived as lesser, but rather as an interdependent element of the broader landscape, of the health of waterways, teeming with food and medicines. Secondly, we note the usage of “folksy image” and “bush remedy” as hurdles to be overcome. Given that both of these, particularly ‘bush medicines’, are coded to Aboriginality, this presents another layer of disconnection of the emplaced and enculturated nature of Tea Tree. In fact, later studies have shown that there is strong uptake and identification with traditional medicines exactly from that basis. For instance, interviewees from clinics distributing traditional remedies recall, “blackfellas and whitefellas come and tell us, ‘I’m feeling better from your bush medicine, can I get some more?’” (Oliver). Additionally, if we consider the global market, the WHO estimates that “60% of the world’s population relies on herbal medicine and about 80% of the population in developing countries depends almost totally on it for their primary health care needs” (Khan). Therefore, we contend that the ‘disadvantage’ is in targeting the ethnocentric Western market, which is masked by an apparent global outlook. This year, in “Three Tales from Tea Tree Farmers”, an article published in The Farmer Magazine, the developing ‘Australian’ Tea Tree industry is foregrounded in the by-line with “First Nations people have understood the value of Australian tea tree oil for thousands of years” (Hadgraft). This is particularly ironic given the content of the article itself: white face after white face come through the editorial shots of farmers with their crop, and not another whisper of the Aboriginal people and knowledges the article leads with. In this and other business-focussed articles, the Tea Tree narrative transcends its literal grounding. In contrast, a range of alternative medicine commentators do acknowledge the centrality of Bundjalung culture to Tea Tree’s curative potential, but place Aboriginal knowledges in a liminal space – a kind of choose-your-own-adventure – which samples across belief systems and practices to create a hybrid model which weakens Aboriginal cultural authority. We note that these erasures and slippages are not necessarily made from malice, but nevertheless constitute a problematic narrative through an Aboriginal lens. For example, Madelaine West, in “The Only Way to Create a Kinder World Together”, lauds the Tea Tree-infused lake waters in the Bundjalung nation as a kind of New Age transformative landscape. She comments: since time immemorial, these lakes have been a sacred Indigenous birthing place and meeting ground of the First Nation tribes of the Arakwal-Bundjalung people. Historically a ‘girls only’-type affair, many Indigenous men still observe this practice. It should be noted here that ‘girls only’ seems to hearken to the literary tradition of girls' adventure fiction – the self-sufficient tomboy who challenges gender norms. While this trope has, and can, continue to serve to empower young women, there has often been a racialised element to this narrative (McRobbie and McCabe 1981). In the context of Tea Tree, it is salient to note that Women’s Business transcends the girls-only trope as the framing of spiritual authority with severe consequences for those men who transgress this element of lore (Bird-Rose 36-8). Thus West’s contention of the personified Lake sits in direct contravention to her stated position that “it is not for me to interpret nor appropriate the culture of the traditional custodians of this region”. The warm, soothing waters of these lakes offer up their healing properties to one and all ... they don't discriminate along lines of colour, creed, residence or orientation. They just hold you in their fluid, forgiving embrace, wash you clean, heal your hurts and soothe your soul. (West) We note that there is no problem in personifying the body of water as this directly correlates to international movements to the legal personhood of waterways, such as the Whanganui River in Aotearoa (New Zealand), or recognition as a living entity such as the Yarra River in Victoria. What should be noted, however, is that within the context of international instruments like the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and various national and state policies, First Nations people (in particular Traditional Owners) are central to the representation of engagement with water (Pelizzon et al.). In this context it would include a culturally mediated guardianship on who may bathe in the waters, which speaks to a respect for cultural traditions and consultation for permission to use the waters. There is an ongoing tension for First Nations people attempting to negotiate this preferred power-sharing with local, state, and national governments while their Country continues to be desecrated by ignorant and selfish visitors. Despite lack of support from the state, First Nations peoples regularly attempt to exert their own environmental governance and authority over sacred sites on their Country, with one way being through the use of signs informing guests of the nature of the area. Similar to our special lakes in Bundjalung Country, Kuku Yalanji people from the Daintree have the Blue Hole Pool, which is a healing and birthing place reserved for women’s business. Kuku Yalanji Traditional Owners have struggled for years to protect this site, as non-Indigenous people have decided to make the pool a regular swimming spot. Multiple erected signs are constantly dismissed and a boom gate installed to stop vehicles has been broken multiple times by disgruntled visitors. (Hollis) Protecting these lakes has hit another obstacle with the rise of #traveltok in the 2020s, a subsection of media on the user-generated short form video-sharing app TikTok dedicated to sharing the best spots to travel. All someone has to search for is ‘swimming hole daintree’, and videos show overwhelmingly non-Indigenous tourists (of all genders) sharing their travels to the Blue Hole Pool. One video shows a girl with her friends trespassing past the aforementioned boom gate (TikTok a), and another video shows a young man filming himself in the sacred women’s pool with the caption “Add this to your bucket list in Queensland!” (TikTok b). Ironically, a number of commenters note that he would have had to ignore numerous signs warning him to not swim. However, the video still garnered 2,200 likes, and over 700 people have saved the video. A similar search for ‘Ti Tree Lake’ reveals comparable content. The first video belongs to a young woman, Rhiannon, presumably in her early 20s, who declares in a voiceover that “this is one of the best places to swim in Australia”, before listing off the health and wellbeing benefits of the Tea Tree-infused lake (TikTok c). While she acknowledges in the second half of the video that the lake is “valued” by Indigenous women after birth, she fails to name Bundjalung people for her audience of 508,000 views, and instead closes her content on how nice her hair felt afterwards. Through this type of media content creation, a young white woman has assumed the right to promote one of Bundjalung Nation’s most significant sites. Another video nearby in the search list shows a young man bathing in our women’s lake (TikTok d). West and Rhiannon are certainly not alone in their shaping of the lake as a natural healing place through a lens of wellbeing language. A letter to the editor complaining of men using the lake took a far different approach to a gender prohibition, adding dismay that the lake was being used by men seeking random sexual hook-ups. In speaking of the significance of the Country, the author writes, “once upon a time it was an Aboriginal birthing ground. Yeah fellas, a sacred women’s area”. Ironically the concern of what had been ‘lost’ was also framed through a nostalgic appreciation where 20 years ago I used to come here with my girlfriends and we would swim in the tea-tree lake, dive deep to retrieve the mineral rich mud from the bottom and lie in the sun until it had dried. It was the ultimate day spa. (Leonard) While noting this conversational tone, there is nevertheless a deep disjuncture between a sacred women's area and a day spa. We argue that the significance of Tea Tree lakes is not open to appropriation through reinterpretation, not through a female empowerment and revitalisation agenda nor a neo-spiritual agenda which arose in the 2015 media discussion on a non-Aboriginal Victorian couple’s decision to give birth in Taylors Lake, reported by the Byron Shire News. In the paper’s next weekly edition, they gave voice to Arakwal custodians who commented: Taylors Lake or Ti Tree Lake is the most significant Aboriginal women's site in the Byron Shire … . The lake belongs to all Bundjalung women and holds deep spiritual significance to us, and our men never go there out of respect … . This woman speaks about her respect for Aboriginal culture but did not ask our permission. We were horrified when we saw the picture in the paper of this man in the sacred women's lake. (Kay cited in C222morrow) This last example particularly exemplifies the attempted ‘elimination’ of First Peoples through the attempted appropriation and assimilation of Indigenous practice. This absorption of the practice of bathing in these lakes into non-Indigenous practices attempts to displace Indigenous peoples from our Country, our sacred sites, and our knowledge. Through the re-framing of these places as ‘wellness’ tools or feminist liberation, we are experiencing the continued colonisation of our special places, which are our birthright as encultured female members of First Nations groups. Calls to Action There is a trend in academic literature which provides the scope of problems which plague Indigenous peoples. Our article concludes not with a restatement of the issues, but with a series of Calls to Action. Every day that we do not empower Traditional Owners in the management of their own Country is another day that sites such as Ti Tree Lake are desecrated and culturally significant plants like bulam are exploited. This requires individual and broader systemic change: Non-Indigenous peoples seeking healing and enlightenment from Country must be mindful that they are guests in those spaces. Wilfully ignoring Indigenous protocols or seeing protocols as a “pick and mix” option devalues Country. Social media guidelines for platforms such as TikTok must include avenues to flag or remove or add warnings for culturally insensitive content. This requires ongoing collaboration with First Nations people to further refine what content breaches these guidelines. Content creators must also adapt to community feedback. There must be legal recognition of Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) regarding First Nations’ knowledge of Country. First Nations people must be empowered to economically benefit from their knowledge as business owners and entrepreneurs utilising their individual, familial, and communal knowledge. Local, state, and national governments must empower Traditional Ecological Governance systems. Acknowledgement is not enough, sovereignty and land back. #notyourdamndayspa. References Australian Tea Tree Oil Industry Association. “About Australian Tea Tree Oil.” 10 June 2023 <https://teatree.org.au/teatree_about.php>. Bird-Rose, Deborah. Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness. Australian Heritage Commission, 1996. Brown, Jamie. “Bringing Tea-Tree Oil Out of the Swamp.” Financial Review 17 Apr. 1994. <https://www.afr.com/companies/bringing-tea-tree-oil-out-of-the-swamp-19940117-kate3>. C222morrow. “Arakwal Condemn Birth Plans for Women’s Lake.” 19 Feb. 2015. <https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/byron-shire/arakwal-condemn-birth-plans-for-womens-lake/news-story/2ff9913bd37ce6a3cb3fa1edb45af0f4>. Chopra, Manish, et al. “Wellness in 2030.” 22 July 2021 <https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/consumer-packaged-goods/our-insights/wellness-in-2030>. Cole, Douglas. “‘The Crimson Thread of Kinship’: Ethnic Ideas in Australia, 1870–1914.” Historical Studies 14.56 (1971): 511-525. Crowley, Terry. The Middle Clarence Dialects of Bandjalang. Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1978. Drury, Susan. Tea Tree Oil: A Medicine Kit in a Bottle. Unity Press, 1996. Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. 6th ed. London: Wishart, 1980. Grieves, Vicki. Aboriginal Spirituality: Aboriginal Philosophy, the Basis of Aboriginal Social and Emotional Wellbeing. Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health, 2009. Hadgraft, Bev. “Three Tales from Tea Tree Farmers.” The Farmer 13 Feb. 2023. <https://thefarmermagazine.com.au/tea-tree-tales/>. Hollis, Hannah. “Ignoring 'No Entry' Signs at Women's Sacred Site Has Consequences, Says Custodian.” SBS 31 Mar. 2016 .<https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/ignoring-no-entry-signs-at-womens-sacred-site-has-consequences-says-custodian/2pvigi9gx>. Jones, Greg. “Indigenous Medicine – A Fusion of Ritual and Remedy.” The Conversation 5 Dec. 2014. <https://theconversation.com/indigenous-medicine-a-fusion-of-ritual-and-remedy-33142>. Kahn, Mohd S.A., and Iqbal Ahmed. “Herbal Medicine: Current Trends and Future Prospects.” New Look to Phytomedicine. Academic Press, 2019. Kauanui, J. Kēhaulani. “‘A Structure, Not an Event’: Settler Colonialism and Enduring Indigeneity.” Emergent Critical Analytics for Alternative Humanities, 2016. <https://csalateral.org/issue/5-1/forum-alt-humanities-settler-colonialism-enduring-indigeneity-kauanui/>. Keyon, Georgia. “‘If the land is sick, you are sick’: An Aboriginal Approach to Mental Health in Times of Drought.” 8 Jun. 2023 <https://scroll.in/pulse/921558/if-the-land-is-sick-you-are-sick-an-aboriginal-approach-to-mental-health-in-times-of-drought>. Klein, Naomi. “Dancing the World into Being: A Conversation with Idle No More’s Leanne Simpson.” Yes Magazine 6 Mar. 2013. <https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2013/03/06/dancing-the-world-into-being-a-conversation-with-idle-no-more-leanne-simpson>. Leonard, Ali. “Stop Shagging at the Tea-Tree Lake.” 20 May 2023 <https://www.echo.net.au/2018/01/stop-shagging-tea-tree-lake/>. McRobbie, Angela, and Trisha McCabe. Feminism for Girls: An Adventure Story. Routledge, 2013. Murray, Michael. “Melaleuca Alternifolia (Tea Tree).” Textbook of Natural Medicine. 5th ed. 2020. Oliver, Stefani. “The Role of Traditional Medicine Practice in Primary Health Care within Aboriginal Australia: A Review of the Literature.” Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 9.46 (2013). Pelizzon, Alessandro, Erin O’Donnell, and Anne Poelina. “Australia’s Rivers are Ancestral Beings.” 29 May 2023 <https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/australia-s-rivers-are-ancestral-beings>. Sartorius, Norman. “The Meanings of Health and Its Promotion.” Croatian Medical Journal 47 (2006): 662-64. Tik Tok a. 30 May 2023 <https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSLMykWMF/>. Tik Tok b. 30 May 2023 <https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSLMyqr4a/>. Tik Tok c. 30 May 2023 <https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSLMf29Vm/>. Tik Tok d. 30 May 2023 <https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSLMfmSGN/>. Weir, Jessica, and Kara Youngtob. The Benefits Associated with Caring for Country. AIATSIS, 2009. West, Madelaine. “The Only Way to Create a Kinder World Together.” 20 May 2023 <https://honey.nine.com.au/latest/ti-tree-lakes-madeleine-west/945298a0-15cb-4831-a269-6ed431b81b31>. Wohlmuth, Hans, Chris Oliver, and Pradeep Nathan. “A Review of the Status of Western Herbal Medicine in Australia.” Journal of Herbal Pharmacotherapy 2.2 (2002): 33-46. WHO. “Constitution.” 6 June 2023 <https://www.who.int/about/governance/constitution>.

In The Threshold of the Visible World, Kaja Silverman advances a subtle, ethical, post-Lacanian account of what constitutes “the active gift of love” and how this might be expressed on the screen. She argues for an orientation of subject to love object which is not merely an alternative to romantic passion, but an account of how identification of the loving subject and love object “might function in a way that results in neither the triumph of self-sameness, nor craven submission to an exteriorised but essentialized ideal”. In a move particularly relevant to our focus in this paper, she goes on to suggest that a gift of love so constituted entails an escape from conformity with culturally dictated ideals and thence a capacity “to put ourselves in a positive identificatory relation to bodies which we have been taught to abhor and repudiate” (79). Two lesbian/gay teen films of the late 1990s – Lukas Moodysson’s Fucking Åmål (1998; also known as Show Me Love) and Simon Shore’s Get Real (1999) – offer an illuminating contrast in the ways they deal with the possibility of the gift of love in the conflictual contexts both of teenage gay and lesbian love and sexuality, and of small-town spaces. Space solicits desire, but the sexual frisson that is evoked through encounters in various spaces in film depicted as offering excitement, risk, and bodily pleasures seems limited in three ways. First, the progression from desire to love is severely circumscribed by cultural presuppositions about the physical and social attributes of appropriate love objects. This is particularly evident in the Hollywood teen film, with its recurrent male and female Cinderella roles. Second, the desire represented is predominantly heterosexual, so the appropriate love object is further specified by the assumption of heteronormativity. Finally, there is a persistent attribution of space to woman and time to man – as early as the late eighteenth century William Blake had written, “Space is a woman” (in Bal 169) – and although this has been questioned by feminist thinkers (see Irigaray 1987) it still pervades filmic imagery. As Sue Best notes, the bounded spaces that people inhabit – “the nation, regions, cities and the home” – often rely on feminine metaphors to describe their attributes, contours, architecture; in the case of the romantic ‘home’, its enclosures suggest a warm, uterine space and maternal care. In a related sense, the open spaces of the countryside, the city streets and solitary travel have connoted a masculine space and prerogative (182-3). Traditionally, man moves through these spaces with a sense of temporal purpose, while woman bides her time in bounded domestic space. In Fucking Åmål, the film’s preoccupation with enclosed spaces, and especially the domestic spaces of home and school, on one hand generates an intense mood of claustrophobia while, on the other, communicates the terrifying aloneness of the young person abjected by the “in”-crowd. A measure of the inanity of the teenage boys of this small Swedish community is the unexamined misogyny of their spatial thinking, as when, for example, Jessica’s boyfriend Markus asserts that boys are interested in and understand technology, like cell phones, and that girls are instead good at things like "make-up and looking good". Get Real expresses the contrast more as that of outside and inside: the male domain of the sports field set against the interior space of the room where girls and boys like Steven (“I don’t smoke or play football and have an IQ over 25”) produce the school magazine. While these binaristic notions of gender and space serve as useful means for considering the restrictive nature of masculine and feminine constructions which still exist in various contemporary societies, they are also limited and limiting when it comes to thinking beyond a heterosexual framework. The imbrication of space and woman could account for the ongoing censure, disruption, and violation of feminised movement in so-called masculinised spaces. The notion of transgressing across spaces is the underlying theme of both Get Real and Fucking Åmål. Both films, with their “coming out” narratives, move away from conventional cinematic representations of teen love. Moreover, they provide a cinematic space in which the female or male body is a source of same-sex pleasure and desire, and offer viewers a space not defined by the other gender or by a narrative progress towards heterosexual romance and fulfilment. Consequently, the characters’ sensual/sexual encounters privilege bodily pleasure, response, and the ability to go beyond “the blind spot” of patriarchal sexuality (Irigaray 1985). Where they differ is that Fucking Åmål depicts Elin (the “love object”) progressing so far in her love for Agnes that her triumphant coming out is simultaneously an affirmation of a body universally abhorred and repudiated within the dominant youth community. There is no suggestion, for example, that Agnes will need to abandon her loose, oversized clothes and her trousers in favour of Elin’s short skirts and low-cut tops (although there is a hint that Elin may find Agnes’s intellectual interests more engrossing than the belated and etiolated versions of popular culture she has up until now inhabited). In contrast to Fucking Åmål, Get Real depicts the ultimate failure of John Dixon (the love object) to acknowledge love for Steven Carter, abhorred and repudiated by male peers for his suspected (and actual) homosexuality. Space is a shifting signifier which points to, but does not anchor, meaning across social, cultural, and territorial dimensions. In a Foucauldian sense, space is often linked to concepts of power. Furthermore, space, particularly queer space, becomes both a visual and metaphorical entity which needs to be interrogated in terms of its relationship to, and representation through, the eye of the beholder. In Get Real and Fucking Åmål “looking” becomes a complex play between characters and viewers. The specular logic that operates within the conventional notions of the gaze, with its underlying structure of a dominant subject and submissive object, is thus both interrogated and undercut (Mulvey). In Get Real a hole in a public toilet wall provides a spatial site for spying on illicit gay sexual encounters as well as a means for checking out a potential sexual partner. Such voyeurism is perverse as it disrupts the visual pleasure which has become intimately tied to patriarchal ideology with its structures of looking (male) and being looked at (female). This is one instance (and there are others in both films) when looking occupies a queer space, demonstrating complicity with voyeurism, desire, and visual pleasure, and disrupting the association of the gaze with rigid gender roles. The act of looking that the characters undertake also helps to make the viewer aware of the particular quality of their own gaze. The films contrive to position the viewer in ways that focus attention on the specific nature of his/her gaze as we become witness/voyeur to the characters’ spatial trajectories across private and public spaces - bedroom, toilet, home, school. Early in Fucking Åmål the gaze is invited and dismantled when Elin goes half undressed to try on clothes in front of the mirror in the apartment block’s lift, only to find that her sister Jessica has forgotten to bring the clothes. By overtly and comically replacing the narcissistic gaze with the gaze of the camera (and hence audience) the film problematizes looking, and begins to establish the situation whereby to look at Elin is to share the looking with Agnes, effectively queering the look. Further deconstructions of the look, or gaze, occur in the contrasting femme/butch representations of Elin and Agnes. The erotic pleasure of looking (at Elin) provides a counterpoint of gazes and highlights the vicissitudes of desire. While Elin’s sexy body and conventional beauty conform to an image of female desirability and make her the object of male fantasy, she is also the love object of Agnes. However, Elin’s feisty, restless character refuses any image of passive femininity. Rather, she embodies an active, desiring female subjectivity. Thus, the space of both female and male spectatorship is open to erotic imaginings. By contrast, the film undoes the tradition of fetishisation associated with the male gaze through the character of Agnes: she wears no makeup, hides her body in oversized clothing, and her hair is unadorned and simply styled. Thus, the camera’s attention to Agnes’s silent watching of Elin undermines the male gaze, creating a female gaze and a space of female desire. A comparable effect is achieved in Get Real when Steven uses his membership of the school magazine committee to suggest that a queer community exists within the school. First, and more subtly, the photographs he takes of John Dixon as school sporting hero queer the act of looking: Steven’s father, a professional photographer, sees them as examples of photographic art; John’s father views them as a celebration of a finely tuned athletic body; girls look at them heterosexually; but from Steven’s perspective they are gay pin-ups. The ground of a love relationship, as Silverman argues, is to posit the other rather than the self as the cause of desire, and hence to perceive perfection in the features of another and to celebrate that perceived perfection. This is the work performed by Steven’s photographs of John, and the irony inherent in the fact that the significance of the photographs depends on the interpretation of the beholder exemplifies how irony operates in these films to change how people interpret the “cultural screen”, the mental picture of society which they have naturalised. In Fucking Åmål, a class photograph of Elin in a school magazine also serves to queer the act of looking as it represents the love object of both Johan and Agnes. Whereas Johan cuts out Elin’s image, effectively excising her from the others in the photograph, and stores it in his wallet, Agnes is content to contemplate the image in the privacy of her bedroom, leaving it intact. Elin’s image has a strong erotic and visual impact on both Johan and Agnes, connoting “a to-be-looked-at-ness”, and the actions by Johan and Agnes to look and to possess can be understood in psychoanalytic terms as their attempt to turn the represented image into a fetish object (Mulvey). In a related way to Steven’s photograph of John Dixon as a gay pin-up, Agnes is able to reinvest erotically in the body of another woman. Steven’s second intervention by means of the magazine is to write the “Get Real” article about youth homosexuality. Once this is banned by the school Principal, it functions as a space of absence which defines and publicises the lack at the heart of the community. Further, in so far as it is lack which makes desire possible, Steven’s manifesto on a more individual level legitimises that lack for homosexual subjects. Get Real quite explicitly seeks to overturn the heterosexist stereotype of gays as lonely and unhappy figures, and to offer a different perspective on gay subjectivity and sexuality. Fucking Åmål performs the same work for the subjectivity and sexuality of young lesbians, as Agnes works through the trauma of her initial rejection by Elin and her “outing” at home, and Elin works through the identity crisis prompted by her emerging desire for Agnes. For each, the journey from abjection to joy ends triumphantly as, with no apparent threat of retribution, they redefine the significance of key spaces, of school and home. Both films use space to articulate the characters’ joys and anguish as they struggle with the conflicting effects of love and desire for another, the taunts they suffer from others because of their sexuality, and the eventual amelioration of the restrictions of their spatial location. While the gaze offers a metaphorical space for looking in Get Real and Fucking Åmål, space is also defined in regional and sexual terms. Elin and Agnes are space-bound characters, living within the claustrophobic confines of small town Åmål (Sweden). The original title of the film (Fucking Åmål), rather than the more bland, international release title (Show Me Love), captures teenage boredom with the stifling confines of their environment. Elin’s howls of exasperation give voice to her feelings of entrapment: “Why do we have to live in fucking Åmål? When something’s ‘in’ in the rest of the world, it’s already ‘out’ by the time it gets here.” When Elin and Agnes attempt an escape by hitching a ride out of town, their make-out session in the backseat of their lift’s car is accompanied by Foreigner’s “I want to know what love is”; the interplay of song lyrics, the young lovers’ sexual play, and their eventual eviction from the car offering an ironic performance that rehearses the double meaning of the film’s title and the story’s vexed themes of subjection and subjectivity. The visual style of Fucking Åmål also adds to the pervading sense of containment that the young protagonists experience. Interior domestic scenes dominate and appear spatially constrained. Often a low-key colour scheme serves as an iconic sign indicating the metaphorical nature of the drabness of Åmål. Agnes, as a relative newcomer to Åmål, occupies the spatial fringe both in terms of her strangeness to the place and her perceived queerness. She is the subject of ridicule, innuendo, and ostracism by her peers. Agnes’s marginalisation and abjection are metaphorically expressed through camera framing and tracking – close-ups capture her feelings of rejection and aloneness, and her movements in public spaces, such as the school canteen and corridors, are often confined to the perimeters or the background. By contrast, Elin appears to be in the spatial centre as she is a popular and sexually desirable young woman. It is when she falls in love with Agnes that she too finds herself dislocated, both within her self and within her home town. The stifling confines of Åmål offer limited recreational spaces for its youth, with the urban shopping centre and park are places for congregation and social contact. Ironically, communal spaces, such as the school and the park, effect a spatial intimacy through proximity; yet, the heterosexual imperative that operates in these public and populated spaces compels Elin and Agnes to effect a spatial distance with its necessary emotional and physical separation. When Elin and Agnes finally ‘come out’, it is part of a broader teen rebellion against continuing ennui and oppressive strictures that limit their lives. Steven (Get Real) lives a privileged middle class life in Basingstoke (Hampshire, UK) although this is unsettled by a pervasive sense of homophobic surveillance, locally and immediately embodied in the school’s masculinist bullies, but networked more widely through fathers, school principals, and the police. As Foucault argued, surveillance has a disciplinary function because individuals are made conscious that they are being watched and judged from a normalising perspective. This being so, even open spaces in Get Real have a claustrophobic effect. The park where Steven goes in quest of sexual contact thus signifies ambiguously: messages are passed from within the smallest space (a cubicle within the toilet) but once outside an individual’s presence can be registered by any neighbour, and the concealed spaces of the woodland are subjected to police raids. The film neatly ties this physical surveillance to mental surveillance when Steven’s father confronts him about being seen in the park when he was supposed to have been working on his essay project about youth in the contemporary world. For Steven, the project is a sham because he is only enabled to write from within the normalised perspective which excludes himself. Communication at the highest level available to him – a prize-winning essay in a public competition – thus denies him any subjective agency. The film’s ironic chain thus entails first the winning of the prize (but only because his father secretly submitted Steven’s discarded essay) and then Steven’s subsequent use of the award ceremony to present his other, suppressed essay and to declare his sexual orientation. In both films, gay and lesbian sexualities are constructed as paradoxical spaces. On the one hand, gay and lesbian desires and identities are distanced from the heterosexual paradigm, yet firmly embedded within it and (therefore subject to) homophobic discourses. Difference is not tolerated. In Fucking Åmål, characters are marginalised because of physical and sexual difference; in Get Real, difference is defined in terms of class, sexuality, and hegemonic masculinity. Both films offer positive outcomes which affirm a resignification of the “cultural screen”. By depicting the dystopic effect of heteronormative society on the principal gay and lesbian characters, each film functions to highlight issues of access to and place within the spatial public sphere. From Fucking Åmål, indeed, we might infer that such strategies as the ironic transformation of the gaze have the potential to produce utopian visions. Despite the strategy of allowing Steven one further transformation of public space, when he seizes a public forum to deliver his coming-out speech, Get Real offers a less utopian vision, but still a firm sense that social space has undergone significant disruption. While Elin comes to accept and realise the value of Agnes’s original “gift of love” to her, John Dixon is unable to move beyond the restrictive confines of heteronormative space and therefore rejects Steven’s public and personal gift of love. Nevertheless, in both films, it is through the agential actions of Elin, Agnes, and Steven in publicly declaring their love for the other that serves as an active signifier, openly challenging the sexualised space of their school and community: a space that passively accepts the kind of orthodoxy that naturalises heterosexualised ways of looking and loving, and abhors and repudiates homosexual/lesbian desire. In this sense, there is an opening up of a queer space of desire which exerts its own form of resistance and defiance to patriarchal discourse. Works Cited Bal, Mieke. Death and Dissymmetry: The Politics of Coherence in the Book of Judges. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Best, Sue. “Sexualising space”. Eds. Elizabeth. Grosz & Elspeth Probyn Sexy Bodies: The strange Carnalities of Feminism. London & New York: Routledge, 1995. 181-194. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison. London: A. Lane (Penguin Books), 1977. Irigaray, Luce. Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. G.C. Gill. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985. Irigaray, Luce. “Sexual difference”. Ed. Toril Moi, French Feminist Thought: A Reader. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987. 118-130. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975) reprinted in Visual and Other Pleasures. London: Macmillan, 1989. 29-37. Silverman, Kaja. The Threshold of the Visible World. New York: Routledge, 1996. Filmography Fucking Åmål (Show Me Love). Dir./writer Lukas Moodysson. WN Danubius/ITA Slovakia, 1998. Get Real. Dir. Simon Shore. Paramount, 1999. Links linenoise.co.uk (Accessed 31/10/02) cinephiles.net (Accessed 31/10/02) brightlightsfilm.com (Accessed 31/10.02) hollywood.com (Accessed 31/10/02) movie-reviews.colossus.net (Accessed 31/10/02) culturevulture.net (Accessed 31/10/02) english.lsu.edu (Accessed 3/11/02) Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Mallan, Kerry and Stephens, John. "Love’s Coming (Out)" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.6 (2002). Dn Month Year < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/lovescomingout.php>. APA Style Mallan, K. & Stephens, J., (2002, Nov 20). Love’s Coming (Out). M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 5,(6). Retrieved Month Dn, Year, from http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/lovescomingout.html