Chapter Twelve - Evolving the Laceweb

ORIENTING

This chapter researches the questions:

1. What is the Laceweb?

a. What are the Laceweb’s structure and processes

b. How are they being evolved and sustained?

c. Is Cultural Keyline an aspect of Laceweb action?

d. What is INMA?

2. What patterns and integration are there linking aspects of Fraser House, Fraser House outreach and Laceweb? Is Cultural Keyline an integrating theme and a model of engagement?

3. Are the Laceweb and Inma linked to epochal transition?

This chapter looks at specific action by Neville in Far North Queensland and the Darwin Top End evolving and supporting the Laceweb Social Movement networks amongst Indigenous and other Unique People in the Oceania SE Asia Australasia Region. Neville used the term ‘Unique People’ to include Indigenous people and oppressed small minorities in the Region. The seminal role of Neville’s enabling of Aboriginal Human Relations Gatherings in 1971, 1972 and 1973 in evolving the Movement is discussed. Neville’s evolving of a number of small therapeutic community houses, local-lateral networks and gatherings are detailed. His involvement in the North Queensland ‘New State’ Movement is discussed along with his evolving of an International Normative Model Area (INMA) in Far North Queensland and the Darwin Top End.

EVOLVING THE LACEWEB

Aboriginal Human Relations Gatherings

In the view of Neville (July 1999) and Terry Widders (Aug 1999), the annual Human Relations Gatherings Neville and other people enabled in the years 1971-1973 at Armidale and Grafton in North East New South Wales were a seminal energy in the evolving of the Laceweb network. Consistent with Fraser House being a ‘balanced community’, these gatherings were attended by equal numbers of:

· Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people

· Males and females

· Under controlled and over-controlled people

The gatherings were teed up by Dr. Ned Iceton, a former Doctor with the Royal Australian Flying Doctor Service and a lecturer at the University of New England Extension Service. Iceton held the first gathering in 1970 with only Aboriginal males attending (as in Iceton’s view, the colonial experience had been more destructive to the Aboriginal men). Neville attended the 1971, 1972, and 1973 gatherings. Consistent with Neville’s earlier action research and Cultural Keyline, the 1971-1973 gatherings were theme based – using the theme ‘Surviving Well in Relating to the Dominant Culture’.

During an interview I had with Iceton in Armidale (July, 1999) he described local Aboriginal youth Terry Widders’ role as being quite crucial in these gatherings. Widders knew the cultural nuances supporting the Aborigines’ opening up during the first of these Human Relations Gatherings - a milieu that was strange and potentially very threatening for Aboriginal and Islander attendees at the outset. Terry started talking about the difficulties he had faced in surviving well and about his plans for his future. On hearing one of their own speaking in this forum, other Aboriginal people followed. Neville knew that while the social topography was diverse, this theme about ‘surviving well’ was a Keypoint touching the lives of all attendees – Aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike. Soon attendees were following keylines of discussion. Neville, Widders and Iceton all confirmed Neville’s pivotal enabling role behind the scenes.

Sociologist Margaret-Ann Franklin (1995, p. 59) makes particular reference to Terry Widders’ contributions to these Gatherings and there consequent ripple-through effects in the local Aboriginal community. She quotes Terry commenting on the Human Relations Gatherings:

They were good for different people in different ways. It intensifies communication, that’s what it does. It focuses you. You get down to the specifics of social and cultural communication rather than just, ‘how’s the weather?

Terry’s comments aptly describe Big Group at Fraser House – relational exchange (1995, p. 59) is both social and intercultural. Additionally, all involved are personally affected in differing ways.

Franklin quotes Iceton’s summary of outcomes:

……purposeful local group activity, and in which an evolving underpinning is to be provided by an updated and appropriate set of commonly accepted ideas (worked out together) about what are the right ideas and right kinds of behaviour towards each other and the world outside, and the right way to help each other stick to them after they are worked out.

This quote is resonant with Fraser House way and Aboriginal traditional sociomedicine for social cohesion (Cawte 1974; Cawte 2001).

Resonant with Fraser House, at times, the Human Relations Gathering operated at very intense though ecologically tight levels. As in Fraser House, Neville ensured that the context-specific functional aspects of behaviour were supported and that the context-specific non-functional bits were not supported. Both Neville (July, 1999) and Iceton (July, 1999) confirmed this. In sorting through big issues and the minutia like the Big Groups did at Fraser House, each Human Relations Gathering at end was deemed to be a great success.

A young Aboriginal woman sent Ned a copy of the diary she kept during the second Armidale Workshop. This diary was published with her permission in the next issue of the Human Relations Magazine - excerpts from her diary:

I feel very mixed up, uneasy, frightened and I try to get myself out of this by staying in my room while the meeting is on, but I feel that it will only work in two ways, either (1) I will close up altogether, and go back to my old ways of joking my way through, or, (2) go and sit in and listen to the discussion and see how I feel when I have finished there. I decide to go back and sit down and listen to the rest speak.

The final comment in her diary:

It was a good week for everyone I talked to, and the next one will be even better.

Further excerpts have been included in Appendix 33. Her diary is resonant with the diary of the Fraser House resident included in the back of the Clark and Yeomans’ book on Fraser House (1969). There is the same emotional turmoil and confusion. She could make little sense of what was happening within her during that Gathering, though there is a strong sense as the diary proceeds that she is integrating many aspects of her being - corrective emotional experience rather than insight.

The Self Organising Rollout for Bourke

Three people from the Aboriginal communities around Bourke attended the Human Relations gatherings in Armidale in 1971 with Professor Max Kamien a psychiatrist. In Kamien’s book, ‘The Dark People of Bourke - A study of Planned Social Change’, (1978, p. 48, 49, 55, 57, 69-70, 77-78, 297, 324) he refers to these Armidale and Grafton gatherings as ‘a milestone’ in renewal among the Aboriginal people from around Bourke, a remote town in New South Wales’ (Kamien and Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies 1978, p. 48, 49).

While returning to Bourke, one of the three had extensive conversations with members of different Aboriginal communities visited on the way. Upon returning to their own remote community out in Bourke, and on their own initiative, the three commenced in their own community similar human relations gatherings to what they had experienced in Armidale. The Aboriginal person who had carried out the conversations in the communities on the way back to Bourke was the key enabler for the local Bourke action (Kamien and Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies 1978, p. 48, 49). This is one example of the presence of nurturers in oppressed communities. It was also in part, an indicator of Neville’s ability to pass on community healing ways such that others who have been traumatized may be ready, willing and able to enable gatherings and have the follow-through to organize and actually hold gatherings with local members of their community on an ongoing basis.

Local non-aboriginal teachers in Bourke had their first contact with adult Aboriginals (the parents of their students) when they attended these Bourke human relations groups (Kamien and Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies 1978, p. 48, 49).

Further Rollout for Armidale

As a follow-on gathering, Terry Widders enabled two human relations workshops for Aboriginal youth in Armidale on the weekends 26-27 June 1970 and 10-11 July, 1971 – another example of a local nurturer self starting action. He reported on these in Issue No.1, July 1971 of the Newsletter (Aboriginal Human Relations Newsletter Working Group 1971a). (An almost complete set of the Newsletter is held at the National Library in Canberra (Aboriginal Human Relations Newsletter Working Group 1971b)). This newsletter contained reports of the Human Relations Gatherings as well as wellbeing related contributions from Indigenous and resonant people from all over Australia. The University of New England cut funding for the Aboriginal Human Relations Newsletter. This was when Connexion, a self-help Functional Matrix Network evolved by Neville and others around Sydney took over the editorial, printing and distributing role with Rick Johnstone playing a lead role (he was a mover in getting the Maralinga Atomic Test Royal Commission started which resulted in a major clean-up of Aboriginal traditional lands).

During 14 - 22 May 1972 a third Human Relations Gathering was held in Armidale NSW. A group of thirty-four Aborigines from around Bourke journeyed to Armidale and twenty-one actively participated in that Gathering. The three from Bourke who attended the first gathering came to the second gathering. Neville, Widders and Iceton again enabled these gatherings.

Wider Networks

Neville and Terry Widders (Aug 1999) confirmed that networks formed through these four Gatherings continue to this day. Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who attended the Human Relations Workshops are now playing key enabler roles within Aboriginal and Islander communities and have gone on to become key people in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs. Eddie Mabo’s attendance at the 1973 Grafton Gathering is noted in Ned Iceton’s file notes in his archives, and in the Human Relations Newsletters. Eddie Mabo was the Torres Strait Islander who energized the legal challenges relating to the invalidity of the notion Terra Nullis that led to the Mabo Decision granting Indigenous land rights in Australia. Eddie Mabo wrote a letter dated 2 March 1974 published in the March 1974 Newsletter about his attempts to get funding for an Aboriginal run school in Townsville before current funding ran out.

After the Grafton Workshop in 1973, Neville and Terry enabled Human Relations Gatherings of Aborigines in Alice Springs and Katherine in the Northern Territory. Neville said that the Indigenous Networks that were evolved through the Armidale, Grafton, Alice Springs and Katherine Human Relations Gatherings and the associated Aboriginal Human Relations Newsletter were seminal in the evolving of the Laceweb (Dec 1993, Dec 1994, July 1998). These networks continue to evolve.

As one example of follow-on from the Human Relations Gatherings, Terry Widders continues to network through being on the UN Indigenous Working Group. Neville said (Dec 1993) that Terry Widders and himself were two of a very few people who had been granted observer status at meetings of the Unrepresented Nations and People Organization (UNPO) based in The Hague.

Neville himself had returned to full time study at the University of NSW between 1972 to 1975 working on his law degree, and when this was completed he shifted north. This is discussed in the next section. Terry went on a study tour of China in the 1970’s and later obtained a Masters degree on Chinese and Japanese minorities and had teaching fellowships in both countries. In the late 1980’s Terry and Neville went to China and had a meeting with three members of the Central government on Chinese minorities.

Evolving Small Therapeutic Community Houses In Far North Queensland

In Neville’s second wife Lien Yeoman’ book, ‘The Green Papaya – New Fruit From Old Seeds’ Lien wrote in part about her life with Neville. Lien writes about heading north with Neville in 1972:

At this time there was a push for a New State of Far North Queensland. Neville saw this as a good opportunity to test out his ideas (Yeomans and Yeomans 2001, p. 104).

In preparing a global order transition model, Neville had been exploring a micro-model of three-level governance at Fraser House – local, regional and global. Neville saw the Queensland New State Movement as an energy he could tap into in exploring new forms of regional governance away from the existing Brisbane based State Government, and far away from Federal Government in Canberra.

In 1975, to explore possibilities, Neville, Lien and baby son Quan travelled up to Cape York in a Kombi Van and they travelled back down to Mackay, Queensland as there was no psychiatrist in Mackay in those days (Yeomans 1980a; Yeomans 1980b; Yeomans and Yeomans 2001).

Neville bought a house in Townsville, set it up as a Wellness Centre and attracted many Aboriginal and Islander clients. Neville ran many groups from this Centre and evolved a functional matrix called UN-Inma (Yeomans 1980a; Yeomans 1980b). This was the time he was planning the possibility of an international refugee therapeutic community cum alternative to criminal/psychiatric incarceration on Palm Island off the coast of Townsville (Yeomans 1980a; Yeomans 1980b). While it did not proceed, Neville said that organising for the possibility of this facility on Palm Island enabled him to have useful networking with at-risk Aborigines – resonant with community strengthen via preparing festivals mentioned earlier.

Neville set up an Aboriginal and Islander Therapeutic Community house modelled on Fraser House in Mackay. Neville was the key enabler for the Mackay house. The Mackay Therapeutic House was far from being a typical boarding house. Neville told me (July 1998) that he had incorporated Fraser House way (as adapted for context) in that small Mackay therapeutic community house.

Dr. Paul Wilson, a well known criminologist and former Acting Director of the Australian Institute of Criminology in Canberra (1986-91), and current Chair of Criminology at Bond University in Queensland (Bond University 2005) devotes Chapter Six of his book, ‘A life of Crime’ (Wilson 1990, p.79-80), to his personal healing experiences living within Neville’s Mackay Therapeutic Community house. The quote below from Wilson describes the changes that occurred within him. Following Fraser House’s self-organising processes, by the time Wilson started living in the Mackay Therapeutic Community, it too was self-organizing and Neville only called in occasionally.

Paul Wilson (Wilson 1990) writes of this learning how to ‘live well with others’ in describing his experience of living in Neville’s therapeutic community. Wilson was having psycho-emotional difficulties in his life at the time and used his stay in this therapeutic community house to sort out his life.

Wilson writes:

Neville Yeomans created a community free of doctrinaire principles. The Mackay setting successfully created a sense of belonging. Most people who have experienced deep personal distress have lacked, in my opinion, any sense of residing in a group or clan. They, like I, have lived their lives constructing walls around themselves, to protect themselves from other people. In the process, they have lacked the knowledge and experience of living in a community.

There was nothing magical in the process of achieving this sense of belongingness..... Our day-to-day activities were almost mundane. I would wake up in the morning and help whoever was up to get breakfast ready. Then as people came in to the kitchen, we would talk about all sorts of things people talk about over breakfasts. Marion would ask one of us to collect some groceries, or to cut the lawn, or help with the laundry.

Most importantly, there were always people around you who you felt cared for you as a human being. This interconnectedness of person with person was the thread that bound the community together and gave us a sense of ‘family’ - a unit that many of us had ignored or not had before.

This passage resonates with the Fraser House milieu, highlighting the point that everyday-life contexts can provide opportunities for learning about how to live together. This links to what Neville (Aug 1998) called, ‘caring and sharing the Aboriginal way’ – ‘home, street and rural mediation therapy’. It also links to the relating process Neville termed ‘mediation therapy’ (and ‘mediation counselling’) a form of therapy where ‘mediation’ was a descriptor (adjective) of process. Neville referred me (Dec 1993) to Amelia Renouf’s (1992) essay about the uneasy sixth step in mediating - that of a form of mediating that is inherently reconstituting and healing relating. Almost invariably, conventional mediators are not equipped to engage in this type of process and do not attempt to do so. Neville’s mediation-therapy requires a fundamentally different set of healing and therapeutic processes, competencies and abilities compared to those typically used for mainstream mediation. Neville’s ways have some resonance with Gergen’s ‘relational communicating’ (Gergen 2005).

Neville also used what he called ‘context healing, street mediation and group story performance’. These draw on Indigenous healing process, cultural action and cultural healing action (Yeomans and Spencer 1993; Queensland Community Arts Network 2002). They also draw upon dance, movement and other forms of artistry. This action also uses natural and evolving contexts as mediums with healing possibilities.

Neville and Lien travelled North to Cairns, bought a house and stayed for a decade. Neville set up a psychiatric practice; as well, Neville set up a small therapeutic community house that he called ‘Inma’ in the Cairns suburb of Edgecliff.

Photo 1. Photo of Neville’s Therapeutic Community House INMA in Cairns (R. Buschken’s Archive)

This involved two adjoining flats above a drug support and referral agency (Neville, Dec 1993; Rob Buschkens, Oct 2003). The Agency continually referred clients to Neville. Three or four people could stay at Inma. Neville held small therapy groups all the time at Inma with around 12 people attending. Aboriginal and Islander people attended. Robert Buschken from the drug referral centre also regularly sat in on the sessions. Rob was one of my interviewees. Rob said that he gained considerable skill from modelling Neville’s behaviour. Rob’s description (Oct, 2003) of Neville’s group skills was identical to the comments made by my Fraser House interviewees – that nothing seemed to miss Neville’s attention – that he would pick up on something that seemed trivial and produce a major change in a person or group – and that he was so strategic; he was way ahead of everybody. Rob, who has mixed European and Indonesian parentage, was one of the humane caring intercultural nurturer types Neville was always on the look out for. Rob began taking the small groups after Neville left Cairns.