Some medical assistants are similar in some ways to a nurse. They take care of patients in hospitals and other medical facilities, and they perform other tasks to help run the office. They are different from a nurse mainly in that medical assistants cannot plan out what a patient's care will be like. They can only do what a nurse or a doctor instruct them to do.
Other types of medical assistants work in the reception area of a doctor's office, similar to a secretary. These medical assistants may file paperwork, update medical records, and greet patients.
Medical assistants usually go to school for between one and two years. They may hold an associate's degree, or in some cases a certificate if they already have an associate's degree in something else.
Medical assistants tend to earn between $20,000 and $40,000 a year in salary. Factors that influence a Medical Assistant's salary can be their location, the amount of training they have, the amount of time they've been working as a medical assistant, and the skills they've learned while working.
Scalping
Scalping is the act of removing the scalp, or a part of the scalp, from a dead body or another living person. The scalp would serve as a trophy from battle or proof of a warrior's skill. Scalping was also done for money, when the scalper was given a certain amount of money as a reward for each scalp of the enemy they acquired.
Scalping was often done during the colonisation of North America. It was practised by certain nations of Native Americans, but this was not the norm. It was also done by European colonists. Some United States and Mexican territories paid bounties for enemy Native American scalps.
In Australia, scalping of dingos was a widespread form of bounty hunting. It began in 1912, when the government of South Australia decided to pay people money for dingo scalps, to reduce attacks on livestock. This was also done in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
Angkaliya Curtis
Angkaliya Curtis (born c. 1928) is an Australian Aboriginal artist. She paints animals from the central Australian desert.
Curtis was born around 1928, at a place called Miti, in north-western South Australia. Her family are Pitjantjatjara people. They lived a traditional nomadic way of life in the desert, often walking long distances from place to place in search of food and water. While living in the bush with her family, Curtis learned about the sacred law of the land from her mother and grandmother. They taught her about the Dreamtime and her family's spiritual ancestors, about bush food and traditional healing. She also learned about traditional crafts. She made ceremonial belts and "" (head rings) by spinning hair on a hand-made spindle.
When Curtis was still a child, she travelled with her mother to what is now Watarru, her mother's homeland. The family lived for a time on cattle stations, and traded dingo scalps and rabbit skins for flour, tea and sugar. They later settled on the mission at Ernabella. When she was older, Curtis married a man named Bill, and worked at Ernabella spinning wool and making rugs.
In the 1960s, she moved back west (closer to her homeland) when the outstation at Amaṯa was established. She now lives at Nyapaṟi.
Curtis is best known for her acrylic paintings, but she is also still involved in traditional handicraft work (making grass baskets and wooden carvings). The most visible motif in Curtis' paintings are her representations of animals. Her works stand out against other artists from her region because of her subtle use of colours.
Her work has been exhibited around Australia since 2007. It was first shown internationally in 2010, in San Sebastian, Spain. Examples of her paintings are displayed in the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, the National Gallery of Victoria, the National Gallery of Australia, and the Australian National University.
Curtis was a finalist for the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2010 and 2011. She was also one of 16 finalists for the Western Australian Indigenous Art Award in 2011.
Dickie Minyintiri
Dickie Minyintiri (born c. 1915) is an Australian Aboriginal artist from Pukatja, South Australia. He began painting in 2005, when he was about 90 years old. After winning the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2011, he is now a very successful artist. He is said to be the oldest artist at Pukatja, and also the community's most senior lawman (a keeper of "Tjukurpa" or sacred knowledge).
Minyintiri was born into a Pitjantjatjara family some time around 1915. He was born in the bush at Pilpirinyi, Western Australia, near the border with South Australia. His childhood was spent living nomadically in the desert with his family. Their homelands were spread over a large area along the border, but they often travelled far to the east for ceremonies. They camped for several years around the Musgrave Ranges near what would later become the settlement of Ernabella. This was before the arrival of White people in the area. The family had their first contact with Western civilisation in the 1920s, when Minyintiri was still a child. They encountered a group of men on camels trying to pull a truck out of a bog.
Minyintiri and his family were there for the establishment of the mission settlement of Ernabella in 1937. They settled on the mission with several other Aboriginal families. Minyintiri has lived at Ernabella since then. He worked for most of his life as a shepherd and shearer. In his later years, he became a widely respected "" (traditional healer), and is now one of the most important elders in his community. Before he became a painter, Minyintiri crafted traditional wooden tools (mostly spears).
Minyintiri began painting at Ernabella Arts in late 2005. He painted at the art centre for a few hours each day, while his wife (now deceased) would wait outside with their dogs to keep her company. Minyintiri originally painted on paper, but now paints on canvas. His works have been shown in many group exhibitions since 2006, in most major Australian cities. The South Australian Museum was one of the first public galleries to show his work, which it did in a 2007 exhibition.
Most of Minyintiri's paintings are done using synthetic polymer paint on canvases. His earliest paintings were done on paper. His paintings are almost always multi-layered (several layers painted over the top of each other), with strong motifs and symbols representing landmarks or figures. Each layer represents a different memory or story. Because of his old age, Minyintiri only paints six to eight artworks a year. Nearly all of them are large canvases.
His paintings depict sacred stories from his Dreaming (a kind of spirituality). He paints songlines, or the journeys taken by the ancestral beings of his Dreaming country – such as the "kanyaḻa" (euro), "malu" (red kangaroo), "wiilu" (stone-curlew), "waru" (wallaby) and "kaḻaya" (emu). His art is often also a reflection of his younger life in the desert, before settling permanently at Ernabella. The religious elements of his works are always obscured, for cultural reasons.
Examples of Minyintiri's work are held in the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of South Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, and the National Gallery of Australia.