Killing the mockingbird: Systems failure and a radical hope for re-grounding responsibility and access to health care in a Mallee town community

The plight of Aboriginal health and the question of Aboriginal health care in a remote rural community came into focus when I realised that 'the system' was peppered with in-built racist beliefs and values that discriminate against and disadvantage minority groups. Cyborg theory assists the difficulties of explaining the paradoxes that exist for people who live in time spaces somewhere between naturalised cultural antiquities and the terrans of technoculture and consumer culture from which local, state, and national health systems must now emerge. Taking up the idea of emergent worlds in post-colonial moments, a rationale is presented for a move away from white masculinist knowledge practices that underpin existing problems in health care provision. The paper turns toward situated knowledge to embrace the non-teleological time/spaces of Aboriginal country. The idea of emergent worlds is extended into an ethnographic method and a practice of responding attentively to the testimonies of participants. Here, the problems of drug addiction and suicide reveal a serious systemic failure in access to health care for Aboriginal people. This analysis provides justification for a decolonising approach to health care policy and practice.