Queensland Aborigines, Multiple Realities and the Social Sources of Suffering: Psychiatry and Moral Regions of Being: Part 1 (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION This paper is based on an ethnographic study undertaken at an Aboriginal town in rural Queensland in 1995-6 with yearly follow-up visits to the present time. The study sought to understand the residents' high levels of social and emotional distress in terms of their relationship to a history of colonisation and institutionalisation. I explored too how these historical realities related to contemporary marginality and current dynamics between residents and the institutions of health, law, welfare and education. The paper focuses on issues that emerged during the fieldwork concerning contested local meanings of a range of magico-religious experiences and actions and how these meanings seek to establish Aboriginality as spirituality and challenge orthodox psychiatric and Christian interpretations.