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Paint on their lips

Paint-sniffers, good citizens and public space in Brisbane

University of Queensland

Leonie Cox

Queensland University of Technology

Jude Saldanha

Woolloongabba Aboriginal and Islander Health Service

This article describes structured responses to young Indigenous people whose paint-sniffing in Brisbane attracts public attention. It gives an emic account of the sniffers’ responses to these processes and argues that paint-sniffing expresses their alienated and marginalized social status and is part of an encoded revolt against White cultural authority and its imposed norms. Foucault’s view of freedom as the capacity to act and question the taken-forgrantedness of one’s milieu (Dreyfus, 2004), and his notion of the body as the locus of power and control, are used to examine unequal power relations described here. Cohen’s (2002) moral panic and Young’s (1971a, 1971b) deviance amplification frameworks are used to examine the reactions of the police and of ordinary good citizens. We conclude that while dominant responses to paint-sniffing in Queensland rid inner Brisbane of paint-sniffing, they increase the young people’s alienation and marginalization from society, thus reproducing the social conditions that lead to sniffing.

Key Words: deviance amplification • embodiment • Indigenous youth • paint-sniffing • power • resistance

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