Paper short abstract:

Implantable medical devices are continually becoming the treatment of choice in Western biomedical models. This paper will explore the ways in which the move towards the use of implantable medical devices is extending sites of state power over Indigenous bodies in Central and Western Australia.

Paper long abstract:

As biomedicine continues to move further and further into a space of technologically constructed interventions instead of therapeutic treatments, the ways in which medicine can impact the body are becoming more literal than ever before. Medical interventions are now piercing skin and sitting under it, for example in the increased use of dialysis in end-stage renal disease, stents placed into heart valves to treat heart disease, cochlear implants in deafness, and cornea transplants in poor eyesight. All of these medical interventions are used to treat illnesses that disproportionally affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia. In this paper, I will explore the ways in which the disruption of Indigenous bodies by technological medical interventions or implantable medical devices carry personal, social, and political significance, particularly in Central and Western Australia. I will also locate medical interventions in a broader political economy and environment of biopower and interventionist practices that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have faced, and continue to face in contemporary Australia.