Laceweb - Down to Earth Auspicing Motion

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This page gives a feel for wellbeing needs of disadvantaged indigenous and small minority people in the SE Asia Oceania, Australasia Region. While happening on Australia's doorstep we hear little of what is happening to indigenous and small minority people - 'the cultural genocide, the forced assimilation and the destruction of the environment on which these people's existence and development depends' (quote from the UNPO internet page).

As well this paper hints at the support and healing possibilities that may emerge from an informal network of healers called the Laceweb.

Ideas are emerging for resonant energies to provide uncompromised auspicing support to the Laceweb. The following embraces Down To Earth (Vic) - (DTE) - a self help communal energy that has been enabling large wellbeing conference festivals called ConFest since the Seventies.

DTE is an off-shoot of The Australian Down to Earth Network (ADTEN) founded by Jim Cairns and Junee Morosi. They used the community mental health 'commune' in Paddington that the founder of the Laceweb Dr. Neville Yeoman established as their base for evolving the first ConFest gathering.

CONTENTS:

The Motion

Summary

The Project (3 - 5 Years)

Key Indigenous Issues

The Region: Project Area - Se Asia Australia Pacific

Evolving Possibilities for Travel and Linking

THE MOTION

That Down To Earth (DTE Vic.) auspice the Laceweb $1,500.

Summary

DTE would be auspicing an Aboriginal Laceweb enabler and the Laceweb in assisting the development of the Laceweb and its support loci, in order to promote, develop and nurture wellbeing among indigenous and minorities throughout SE Asia, Australia Pacific.

The Laceweb is a social movement that commenced out of Australian healing communities and festivals in the sixties and seventies and prior keyline deep ecology insights as far back as the 1940's. Refer Communal ways for Healing the World.

Auspicing this social movement will link DTE further into an informal healing network among indigenous and small minority and intercultural people throughout the South East Asia, Australasia and Oceania region. The Laceweb enables self help wellbeing action.

A number of other resonant groups may auspice the Laceweb

Request Letter

The following letter setting out the Project was sent to DTE by an Aboriginal Laceweb person.

The Project (3 - 5 Years)

This is an inter-peoples (inter-indigenous locales) project, a laceweb of small minority peoples (primarily indigenous). The project will address two broad areas:

• The (ongoing) development of an inter-digenous laceweb of mutual support and consultation. (This could include a communication and support laceweb with the regions unincorporated minorities, such as Bougainville, West Papua, East Timor, etc.;
• An intercultural laceweb of similar/same concerns.)

The purpose of the laceweb is to mutually explore, advise, assist in:

• promoting the inter-indigenous agendas to relevant UN bodies such as the Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP), the (proposed) Indigenous Forum, and the Sub-Commission on the Discrimination against Minorities.
• developing a 'neighbours network' of indigenous, and other, peoples concerned with conflict resolution and reconciliation at the regional, sub-regional and micro-regional levels.
• Possibility of Email/Internet/fax linking support/wisdom sharing through DTE and others.
• Providing direct enabling assistance between each inter-indigenous member of the laceweb.
  For example:
  • development/initiation of livelihoods based on the sustainable development of local/regional resources, and
  • supporting the development of community based, co-learning in the delivery of health, welfare and education needs (socio-cultural self help action). A key aspect is supporting self/cultural habilitation, i.e. appropriate psycho-cultural ways of self healing.

• NO other energy/group/organisation to our knowledge is doing 'laceweb' action, e.g. enabling local indigenous self-help and the passing of 'what works' on to other indigenous groups (often through ConFest style gatherings and linking all of this to humane elements of both alternative/mainstream).

• A fundamental approach of this project is that it be primarily mutually beneficial (to interacting laceweb linkers and the supporting loci, such as DTE).

Guidelines and experiences to assist in enervating and synthesising this project are the models developed by Norwegian mediators in the Palestinian/Jewish rapprochement and the Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa, though not simply applied.

Refer Laceweb - Communal Ways for Healing our World elsewhere in the Laceweb Village pages.

Rather, the emphasis of grassroots gatherings in private, supportive consultations in order that differences can be mediated - and not be used to differentiate - will be a key feature of those models used in this project.

'Gatherings' like micro, small and large ConFests.

DTE (in exactly the same way as other support bodies of this project, indigenous and non indigenous) will be seen as one of the laceweb's support foci, entailing a non-compromising line of resourcing and an additional strengthening of DTE's/ other laceweb foci lines of communication.

Re 'non-compromising line of resourcing'. That is, in supporting, we do not run DTE's agenda(s). If each supporting group has strings attached to their support (typical of mainstream), any action fostering "SELF" help among indigenes WILL be hopelessly compromised as we end up telling them what they can and cant do!

DTE would be auspicing an Aboriginal enabler and the Laceweb in assisting the development of the laceweb and its support loci, in order to promote, develop and nurture the basic goals of the project.

If there is a DTE committee consensus on this, and a signed agreement by the committee to this effect, I (the Aboriginal Enabler) would accept DTE's support as a mutually beneficial undertaking for the project's Laceweb model.

KEY INDIGENOUS ISSUES

The following issues have been identified through the regions Indigenous Groups' submissions to the UN working group on indigenous peoples.

GENERAL

(A) Contemporary Environmental/Development Contexts

Historically non indigenous homogenised Asian populations in rich flat lands; non homogenised indigenous relegated to mountains. Western Multinationals arrive and the exploitable wealth is in/under mountains (oil/minerals, trees, dams).

Emergent regional geographies ('contested geographies') of indigenous/minority groups

Developmental/environmental issues within the 'contested geographies':

• land rights
• conflict over resources: mines, dams, forests, fishing

SPECIFIC

(B) Survivability? Sustainability?

• communal survivability:
  • physical
  • social
  • cultural

• of diverse cultures - to the survivability of:
  • cultural regions,
  • environments

• relationship to place:
  • loss of 'habitat' for hunter gathers/swidden
  • land rights
    swidden': short term use of relocated small gardens

• Economics of survivability
  • as individuals
  • cultural groups (dispersed/compact)
  • territorial groups.

• Security - civil unrest

• Humane relational mediating

• Humanitarian/human rights:
  • liberty -
    • individual
    • political
    • civil
  • equality - economic rights to basic needs
  • fraternity - group
  • International Labor Organisation convention (ILO)

• UN and other rights to self determination
  • international sanctions re human rights of indigenes
  • national laws
  • Conflicting status/Identity (in the Nation State) - pluralism
    • indigene V citizen
    • international funding bodies' policies (e.g. World Bank)
    • often 'trans-border' demography

The Region: Project Area - SE Asia Australia Pacific

Approximate: Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Southern Siberia, Mongolia, China, Japan, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Sarawak, E Timor, West Papua, Bougainville, Australia

Indigenous composition:

• The region contains around 75% of the global 'indigenous' population (approx. 180 of 250 million).
• In the same vane, it contains 75% of the world's 'indigenous' peoples.
• The region has 'trans-border' demography.
• Indigenes and small minorities are threatened on two broad fronts:
  • environment (physical)
    • survivability
    • sustainability
  • status
    • spiritual
    • cultural
    • communal

Evolving Possibilities for Travel and Linking

Ideas are evolving for the following possible travel and linking:

• Japanese indigenous Ainu people in Northern Japan
• Indigenous hill people of Vietnam
• Indigenous Groups with links into Singapore
• Indigenous Hill people of Malaysia
• Dalit peoples 'untouchables' minorities on Dacan Plateau -- India (180 Million)

END OF LETTER

The motion calls for support of $1,500 by DTE as a once off nominal figure. (It may be lower or higher with a possibility for further support)

DTE would receive continual feedback and be linked to linking.

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