The Intercultural Trauma
Healing Gatherings
For the Sixth Anniversary of the Small Island
Coastal and Estuarine People Gathering Celebration
(Funded by the UN Human Rights Commission)
17 June - 12 July 2000
Atherton Tablelands
Far North Queensland, Australia.
A Month of Gathering Celebrations in Support of the UN Peace
Week
and the 26th June UN Day in Support of Survivors of Torture
&Trauma
Report to the UN Human Rights
Commissioner
An Overview of Gatherings &
Events
Written
2000. Updated: April 2014.
SMALL
TRAUMA HEALING SHARING GATHERING CELEBRATINGS 17 – 21 June 2000
Attendees:
Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islanders, Anglo, Australian South Sea Islanders,
Bougainvillians, East Timorese, Anglo-German, Hmong, Irish, Japanese, North
American Indian, and Papua New Guinea people.
Healing
Way Themes:
Healing Ways Experiential Learning
Laceweb - Trauma Healing
Program
o Art
o Drama
o Drawing
o Sculpture
o Rhythm
o Singing
and chanting
o Local
Cultural Ceremonies
Somatic
(body) healing processes:
o Feldenkrais
functional Integration
o Awareness
through movement
o Wellbeing
physiology
o Linking
awareness of moving, Milton Erikson’s language patterns, and neuropsychobiology
Sensory
healing processes
o Sensory
submodalities
o Sensory
awareness processes
Everyday
healing language approaches
o Healing
metaphor
o Embedded
suggestions, inferences, reframing
Evolving
Self-help Healing Networks
OTHER
ACTIVITIES 17 – 21 JUNE 2000
o East
Timorese Youth dancing, singing and poetry
o Hmong
traditional music and dancing
o Traditional
North American Indian song, drumming and dance
o Showing
of the film, ‘Death and the Maiden’
o Welcoming
ceremony for Spirit Runners
o Didgeridoo
playing
o World
Music Peace Concert and Community Market
o Acapella
Concert
o Peace
Poetry Night
o Multicultural
Performances
o Peace
week song competition
o Australian
Aboriginal Didgeridoo playing and Dance
o Intercultural
Songs and dances:
o Samoan
o Chilean
o East
Timorese
OTHER
ACTIVITIES - 17 JUNE – 3 JULY 2000
Return
visit to Rainforest Healing Place by delegates who were present at the 1994 UN
funded Small Island Coastal and Estuarine People Gathering Celebration
A
meeting with a Torres Strait Islander sharing healing ways and outcomes in a
community renewal program in the region.
East
Timorese gathering celebration - Photo Journalism display - the Aftermath
Small
gatherings with Aboriginal, Bougainvillian, East Timorese, Hmong, Papuan, and
Torres Strait Islander nurturer/enablers regarding enabling self help healing
networks.
17
JUNE – 2 JULY 2000
Gatherings
with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander socio-emotion-spiritual healers
sharing healing ways – including self help wellbeing action in Lotus Glen
Prison and Aboriginal and Islander prison diversion programs.
ON 26 JUNE 2000
A celebration Reunion Supporting the
UN Day in Support of Torture and Trauma Survivors; the reunion brought together
a number of the 1994 Hosting and Supporting Group for the 1994, ‘Small Island Coastal and Estuarine
People Gathering Celebration’, as well as some of the Hosting and
Supporting Group for ‘1992 Preparatory Gathering’ for the 1994 Gathering. This
1992 themes-based open agenda Gathering was held at Petford Aboriginal Therapeutic
Community Farm, approximately 150Km inland from Cairns. Around 100
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders attended that ten day gathering with the
following three themes as approaches to soften substance abuse, and stopping
violence, self harm, and criminal acts leading to secure custody, psychiatric
incarceration and suicide among Aboriginal and Islander youth. (Refer Developing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Drug and Substance Abuse
Therapeutic Communities.
Themes
o Experiencing
Geoff Guest (Old Man), an Aboriginal elder, working with 25 troubled Aboriginal
and Islander youth using therapeutic community self help processes. (Youths
typically stay with Geoff around six weeks, with some staying a number of
months. Geoff has been successfully working with youth for over twenty years,
with over 2,000 youths passing through the community during 1987 - 97).
o Exploring
the evolving and sustaining of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
therapeutic communities.
o Experiencing
using Permaculture and Keyline processes
27 –
30 JUNE 2000
A Stay at Petford Aboriginal
Therapeutic Community Farm observing, and researching Geoff’s processes in
working with 15 indigenous youths.
Geoff’s healing ways were modelled so that they may be passed on to
other Laceweb nurturers (refer page 79 on the link Developing Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Drug and Substance Abuse Therapeutic Communities.
Geoff
on Emu Creek at Petford
24 –
26 JUNE 2000
A
series of energizing meetings towards evolving the 22st Anniversary of the
Cooktown Arts Festival in the coming months. These meetings were attended by
the enabler/hosts of the first and only Cooktown Arts Festival in 1979.
Road
to Cooktown – Now Sealed
Dr
Neville Yeomans, the founder of the Laceweb, was also involved in the
energising of the first Festival. In 1979, around 2,500 attended from a vast
area around the very remote Far North town of Cooktown. The Festival included a
number of plays, a wide range of music, youth orchestras, puppetry and
aboriginal ceremonial dance. A trip was planned to travel up to Cooktown to
survey potential festival sites, energise a hosting group and set up seed
funding processes.
A
series of meetings with a participant in Fraser House, the pioneering first
Therapeutic Community in the Laceweb (1959-69); researched healing ways used at
Fraser House – (refer Community
Ways for Healing the World).
Fraser House Therapeutic Community - North
Ryde NSW (1959-1968)
27
JUNE - 2 JULY 2000
A
series of meetings with hosts and enablers of a network of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Youth Camps
3 - 7
JULY 2000
Townsville
- a series of gatherings exploring action research; meetings with a Fraser
House outpatient; gatherings with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander,
Australian South Sea Islander and Papua New Guinea people on evolving self help
wellbeing networks.
8 - 9
JULY 2000
Atherton
Tablelands: Further preparatory gatherings energising the 2001 Cooktown Arts
Festival. Exploring archival material on the evolving Laceweb. Further
discussions with an Aboriginal enabler regarding evolving the Laceweb in the
Cape York and Torres Strait Islands region.
10
-12 JULY 2000
Reunion
and discussion/research between ex-Fraser House staffers (anthropologist/ psychologist,
senior charge nurse and psychologist). Discussions were held with Dr Yeoman’s
family on early Laceweb action. Discussion with Aboriginal person on Laceweb
action around ten years ago and exploring implications for the future.
Beginning write-up of the co-learning/sharing of healing ways experienced
during the month.