VIOLENCE
“… pathetic creatures who once were women …”
Hey, Boss man,
You asked in your email for my lasting impressions of Alice Springs, what I saw, what I did, and what has stayed with me. Well, I’ll be honest. The one biggest impression was being in the mall one morning watching a drunken Aboriginal woman screaming at someone and using some very colourful language. She was bare footed, had a scarf around her head and looked rather dirty. Her own people just stood around and watched her as though she was on show, laughing and sniggering at her awful swearing. They seemed to think she was funny. I thought she was sad. I wondered what had brought her to that degraded state, how she had lost her dignity, her self respect. She was threatening violence and appeared to expect violence, as though violence was part of her life, and she could only continue it, as though it was expected of her. After that experience, I deliberately noticed other Aboriginal women, their appearance, their dress, their behaviour. Many of them had faces covered in scar tissue as though they had been bashed repeatedly. Many had arms, legs and heads covered in filthy bandages. What horrors exist in their daily lives I could only guess. When I think of Alice Springs, I think of those pathetic creatures who once were women and had been damaged for ever by cruelty.
-Sandy Leighton, San Francisco, USA.
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