"Ward naming feels culturally… yuck."

I’ve been a TMS outpatient at the SCGH Day Procedure Unit (Isdell) during the last month, and for what I feel to be an already culturally unwelcoming Unit, the name felt openly threatening. It’s a relatively new Unit, so it’s not like it’s a it was named before the rest of Australia worked out that. 

Although the inpatient wards in this block appear to be named In Language from around the Top End, the name of this Unit is that of a 1907 “Protector of Aboriginies”. It’s hard enough to receive secular white fella care with no Mob input & no spiritual input, but this feels like adding fear to shame. That is, it’s hard to feel the name as anything other than a threat when it’s that of a guy who said if people like me, “I consider it a great scandal to allow any of these half-caste girls to remain with the natives.”

The academic Tony Barra says of James Isdell, “He saw himself as serving both morality and the larger cause of civilisation. ‘I would not hesitate to separate any half-caste from its Aboriginal mother, no matter how frantic momentary grief might be at the time. They soon forget their offspring.’” (DOI 10.1080/14623520802065438)

Honestly, even if it’s named for something named for this guy, the feeling of threat is still present.