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Humane Global Transitions
Therapeutic Community,
Self-help Networking and Peacehealing
Posted: Dec 2000. Last updated: April 2014 The wisdom on the Laceweb
website has been drawn from the grassroots people of the East Asia Oceania
Australasia Region. Consistent with their way, this wisdom is freely
available on the Laceweb Internet site. Now a simple secure process has been
set up, so people reading and downloading this wisdom from the Region may
contribute financially if they so desire. You may send a tiny amount or as
much as you desire. AN OVERVIEW
This page reports on
qualitative Ph.D. research in progress into psychiatrist and humanitarian law
barrister, Dr. Neville Yeomans' life-long action - extending into the margins
of wider society the healing ways from Fraser House, a 1960's innovative
therapeutic community founded by Yeomans. A brief overview of the
research methods, findings and discussion is provided, including a brief
sketch of Fraser House's structure and process, and the processes supporting
the emergence from this Unit of a grassroots self-help/mutual-help healing
network called the Laceweb. This matrix is evolving
among indigenous and disadvantaged minority psychosocial healers throughout
the S.E. Asia Oceania Australasia Region. Laceweb's enabling of small
possibilities for grassroots energised humane global transition is outlined. From Therapeutic
Community to Global Reform This paper reports on
Ph.D. qualitative research into Dr. Neville Yeomans (All references to
'Yeomans' refer to Neville T. Yeomans unless specified otherwise ) work in
combining therapeutic community with self help networking. Yeomans pioneered
therapeutic communities in Australia as founding director and psychiatrist of
Fraser House, a therapeutic community he established in 1959 in the North
Ryde Mental Hospital, in North Ryde, Sydney, Australia (Clark and Yeomans,
1969; Yeomans, 1980 From
the Outback.;
Yeomans, 1965; Yeomans, 1961a; Yeomans, 1961b). Although based within a
mainstream mental hospital, the Unit was a self-help community with residents
evolving well-being together. For Yeomans, Fraser House was part of a wider
life-long quest to ease cultural transition towards a more humane caring
world. This paper is a preliminary report on research into the unfolding
processes of this quest. More specifically, it looks
at the history, theory, practice and healing artistry (Cultural Healing Action) of Fraser House and its
extension in the Laceweb, a little-known therapeutic community centred social
movement started and named by Yeomans, and emerging amongst an informal
network of indigenous and disadvantaged minorities in the S.E. Asia Oceania
Australasia Region. (Origin of
Laceweb name)
For background refer Community Ways for
Healing the World Yeomans modelled Fraser
House structure and process in large part upon indigenous socio-medicine.
Yeomans had close childhood relationships with nurturing indigenous women and
their communities through his father's work as a remote area gold and tin
mining assayer. On two occasions Yeomans personally experienced childhood
near-death traumas. In both the above cases, Yeomans was cared back to
psycho-emotional health by indigenous women. Through these experiences,
Yeomans had first-hand experience of indigenous sociomedicine and
socio-healing for social cohesion (Cawte, 1996; 1974). With his quest in mind,
Yeomans evolved Fraser House from the outset as a micro-model of a
dysfunctional culture - comprising the mad and the bad. For this, Yeomans
arranged for prisoners to be released to Fraser House under license. Feeling Influences
In evolving both Fraser
House and the Laceweb, Yeomans was guided by the feel of visions, ideas and
action. For Yeomans, corrective emotional experience is at the heart of
psychosocial change. Yeomans particularly drew on insights from Firth's
anthropological writings relating to the social cohesion practices of the
Tikopia people of the Solomon Islands (Firth, R. 1936). Firth was one of many
anthropologists Yeomans read during his anthropological/sociological studies
into small village life. Fraser House was modelled on a Tikopia Village and
associated social cohesion ways. Yeomans discussed this with me in a series
of in-depth interviews in Yungaburra in 1992 while we were preparing for a
1992 gathering about indigenous people establishing therapeutic communities.
That gathering was held at the aboriginal elder Geof Guest's therapeutic community
at Petford, North Queensland, Australia - (Developing Aboriginal and
Torres strait Islander Drug and Substance Abuse Therapeutic Communities). One aspect of Tikopia way
was embodied in Firth's concept 'cleavered unities' (Firth, R., 1936). Firth
speaks of unifying processes among the Tikopia that recognise, acknowledge,
play with, respect, celebrate and maintain cleavages (difference/diversity) -
that is, 'unifying cleavage'. One example of the concept
is that Tikopia marriage was between those most different - those on the
opposite side of the Island. Matrilineal land and the custom of the bride
living with her husband's family meant that morning and night would see a
two-way flow of couples across the Island, going to and from their gardens.
As community walking over the ridges - to and fro - passing those opposite to
themselves in friendly banter - the Tikopia people were cohesively embodying
their way of life - a mindbody synthesis with their people, their place and
their world. The Fraser House
infrastructure was originally designed by the Health Department - contrary to
Yeomans' intention - as separate male and female units with separate dining
rooms at either end. Yeomans saw this separation of the sexes as isomorphic
with cleavered dysfunctional community. Once the Unit was started, Yeomans
interspersed male and female dormitories and turned the female dining room
into a lounge. The 250-metre walk
through the Unit from the shared dining room to the shared lounge became a
metaphorical Tikopia mountain trail for co-reconstructing their shared
realities and each other. The walk (along with the rest of Fraser House)
became 'public space' (Ireland, R. (1998) for enriching and sustaining
community. Firth makes no comment about the potential of the Tikopia way of
life as a practical working model for restoring psychosocial health and
well-being in dysfunctional people, families and communities. Yeomans'
realised that potential. Yeomans' aim was to create
'small village' living within the Unit that may impact upon and create shifts
away from isolation and destructive intra and inter-personal cleavage. Fraser
House interventions made intentional functional cleavage in entangled
pathological networks. The intentional cleavering created potential
psychosocial spaces and places for corrective emotional experience - so each
cleavered pathological network may have scope to come together in more
functional unity. Another major influence
on Yeomans was his father P. A. Yeomans, the founder of the agriculture
practice, 'Keyline'. Neville Yeomans extended an underlying Keyline theme -
community cooperation in using Keyline practices for sustaining social,
habitat, economic and environmental well-being (Yeomans, A., 1993 The
Late Percival Alfred ("P.A.") Yeomans; Yeomans, P. A. 1976;
Yeomans 1971, Collected
Papers;
Yeomans, 1965; Yeomans, 1958; Yeomans, 1955). In evolving Fraser House,
Yeomans wove together influences from his father's work and indigenous
understandings, especially relating to socio-geography, context, location,
place and placemaking (Concepts and Frames). Another influence on
Yeomans was psychosynthesis (from a 1998 interview). Assagioli hints at
'cleavered unity' in giving a big picture of psychosynthesis: 'From a still wider and
more comprehensive point of view, universal life appears to us as a struggle
between multiplicity and unity - a labour and an inspiration towards union
... uniting all beings ... with each other through links of love...'
(Assagioli, 1965, p. 31)(my italics). In 1999 during an
in-depth interview, Yeomans identified Humberto Maturana's paper, 'Biology of
Love' as seminal (Maturana & Verden-Zoller, 1996 Biology
of Love).
The article suggests that perhaps our species name should be called Homo
Sapiens Amans (lover). Love is central to Laceweb well-being action. An Insider Looking In
In a 1980 article in the
first issue of the International Journal of Therapeutic Communities, Yeomans
referred to the need to have social research into the evolving Laceweb social
movement in Far North Queensland. One of our major next
steps is to bring together a psychosocial evaluative research team to monitor
the development of this regional community movement. Such may take some time
as social scientists are fairly uncommon in the area (Yeomans, 1980 From the Outback.). In evolving Fraser House
and the Laceweb, Yeomans continually catalysed tentative possibilities. My interaction
with Yeomans is a case in point. At my first meeting with Yeomans in Sydney
in the mid-Eighties we talked about my psychosocial studies and my
eligibility for consideration as a Ph.D. candidate. From the outset, and
without informing me of his wider aspirations, Yeomans mentored and
co-evolved me along side indigenous Laceweb enablers through shared
sociotherapy, psychotherapy and enabler experience within Laceweb contexts
(Yeomans, 1974a On
Global Reform and International Normative Model Areas (Inma)). Yeomans slowly added bits
to other's understanding on a 'need to know' basis. Confidentiality regarding
Laceweb links was one of his concerns. In some contexts in the Region,
healing can be a subversive activity - as in the recent East Timor
experience. Another reason for 'drip
feeding' information is to prevent overwhelm and scepticism. Some indigenous
and other natural nurturers, especially those who are traumatised are already
extremely cautious and easily 'put off'. Yeomans' did not arrange for me see
his 'Global Reform' article until July, 2000 (Yeomans, 1974a On Global Reform and
International Normative Model Areas (Inma)). In 1997, Yeomans inspired
me to do Ph.D. research into Fraser House and the Laceweb. As a potential
precursor to my being part of Yeomans envisioned 'psychosocial evaluative
research team', he had engaged me in prolonged in-depth and long interviews
for ten years. My research challenge is
that of the insider looking in. Since commencing the Ph.D. in 1997, and
following Lincoln and Gubba (1985), further in-depth interviews with Yeomans
and persistent participant observation of Laceweb action have been carried
out. Material obtained from Yeomans has been triangulated with material from
a series of in-depth interviews with each of three professional people who
worked with Dr. Yeomans as senior staff at Fraser House in the Sixties. Other enablers of the
Laceweb have been interviewed. All of these interviews were in turn
triangulated with Fraser House and other archival material (Yeomans, 1965;
Iceton, 1970-1976). As my Fraser House interviewees are all researchers, my
data and analysis has been cross-checked with each of them - in their dual
roles of interviewee and peer. Fraser House ex-residents are also being
interviewed. Fraser House Structure
and Process Margaret Mead spoke of
Fraser House as 'the most total therapeutic community' she had ever been to (Yeomans,
1965, V.12, p. 69). Maxwell Jones, a UK pioneer in therapeutic communities,
suggested that the carefully worked out Fraser House social structure would
have 'evolution as an inevitable consequence' (Clarke & Yeomans, 1969, p.
v-ix). Yeomans, my three ex Fraser House interviewees and an outpatient
confirmed that this 'inevitability of change' applied to residents and staff
alike. In keeping with Yeomans'
indigenous frame, as soon as the first intake of residents occurred, Yeomans
successfully sought transfer of all indigenous people in the NSW mental
asylum system to Fraser House. This information came from a 1998/9 interview
with Yeomans, and a 2000 interview with a former outpatient (Yeomans, 1962). Yeomans' writings provide
glimpses of his process. A key aspect of the current Ph.D. research involves
identifying and specifying the therapeutic and healing 'elements' used at
Fraser House and the processes used to extend these into the Laceweb. Fraser House elements
included:
During resident intake,
steps were taken to have gender and age balance and all diagnostic categories
represented. Balance was also sought between married/single, socio-economic
status and mad/bad. In balancing over-controlled/under-actives and
under-controlled/over-actives, typically, two pairs of each type would share
a bedroom. This provided scope for a shift away from behavioural extremes to
a more normal centre. A 'resident committee'
based resocializing process was evolved and all aspects of Unit
administration were devolved to these committees. Residents and outpatients
always outnumbered staff on any committee and every committee member had one
vote. Residents would often out-vote staff. Yeomans had a veto power which he
rarely used. On Yeomans' call, the residents typically made the ecological
decision. They were the ones most embedded in the community, and Yeomans
operated on the premise that, 'the locals know what is missing in their own
well-being'. He acted on this premise in his subsequent Laceweb enabling. An endeavour was also
made to maintain the above balancing within committees. Nurses wrote a
handbook on Fraser House Committees and other structures and processes
(Yeomans, 1965). There were other handbooks written. As everything at Fraser
House was under continual review, structure and process were continually
changing. In using work as therapy,
tasks were assigned to those who could not do them. A social recluse was put
in charge of purchasing for the kiosk. A compulsive thief was placed in
charge of the kiosk, stole funds and had to face the transforming pressure of
the total community - the mad and the bad. He became meticulously honest.
Residents managed their own accounting for the kiosk, with accounts presented
to the residents' parliamentary committee. That committee was made up of
members of all committees and reported to Thursday Big Group, so all
residents and outpatients became exposed to learning about ecological money
use. A example of the Fraser
House use of slogans is, 'No one is sick all through'. In the early days of
Fraser House, permissiveness within the staff-resident relation was embodied
in the slogan, 'We are all patients here together'. The best advice that
could be given a resident was, 'bring it up in the group'. As an example, a
notorious bank robber along with other former prisoners, in Fraser House on
license from Long Bay Prison, were planning to use Fraser House as a base for
a major robbery. Fraser House was not secure and residents typically had
weekend passes. One resident revealed the plans in a very tense Big Group.
The bank robber reformed. He became a research assistant to the Director of
the Australian Institute of Criminology in Canberra for many years. Fraser
House slogans became a simple shared language and set of beliefs that were
easily taught to new arrivals. Within the Fraser House
Therapeutic Community, 'community' was the primary therapy. Big group was
held morning and early evening on weekdays for exactly one hour. Knowing this
rule, from the moment that Big Group commenced, varying residents were
invariably clamouring to get collective interaction focused on their
concerns. Strict time keeping helped sustain a mood of, 'let's get on with
it'. Residents could only stay six months. This was reduced to three months.
Two return stays could be negotiated. These protocols also conveyed, 'Get on
with transforming your life - now!' Small therapy group
membership was based on a number of sociological categories. Both the
sociological category and the composition of small groups varied daily and
membership in all the groups at any one time were based on the same category.
The social categories were: (i) age, (ii) married/single status, (iii) locality
of domicile, (iv) kinship, (v) social order (manual, clerical, or
semi-professional/professional) and (vi) age and sex. People in pathological
social networks would be all together with everyone else in Big Group.
However, because of the continual changing composition in small groups, the
members of these pathological networks were regularly split up (cleavered)
for the small group sessions. For the small groups
based on locality of domicile, Sydney was divided into a number of regions.
In most cases, groups of people came regularly on the same trains, buses and
each other's cars so they all got to know each other. Mutual travel was
fostered by the Outpatients, Relatives and Friends Committee, one of the
resident-run committees. This committee would arrange the matching up of
attendees to maximise car-pooling and people travelling together creating
networking possibilities. Residents would attend
the locality group for the region they would be returning to. Typically, by
the time they were to leave, they and their family friendship network would
have expanded to a functional network of around seventy people. This means
people, who may have previously had a dysfunctional social network that was
smaller than those typical in society, ended up having one that was typically
larger in terms of the number of people in the, 'closely known and regularly
interacting' part of their social network. As well, these people had all of
their rich Fraser House experiences in common, and a common set of
communication and mutual support skills. There are reports that
Fraser House ex-residents did keep in contact with each other and get
together for friendship, mutual self-help and support. One such group helped
in evolving the self-help group, 'Recovery' that later changed its name to
'Grow', now an international organisation. Without being accompanied
by staff, residents made suicide prevention and domiciliary care
interventions in the wider community using a vehicle purchased and funded
from profits from the resident run kiosk. Residents who were almost ready to
leave Fraser House would provide domiciliary support to those who had already
left. There were many
successful field trips by the resident-run suicide prevention group at all
hours. As an example, the high cliffs at the Gap on Sydney Harbour's South
Head is a well known suicide spot. Fraser House residents on the suicide
prevention group would volunteer at short notice to travel from the Unit on
the North Shore and cross Sydney Harbour Bridge to reach the Gap. This Fraser
House outreach was a precursor to Lifeline, a well known Australian telephone
crisis support line. In the early Sixties when
Yeomans was completing postgraduate studies in psychology and sociology he
started the Psychiatric Research Study Group. It was a forum for the
discussion and exploration of innovative healing ideas. Margaret Mead chaired
the group when she visited Fraser House (Yeomans, N., 1965, Vol.12 page 68).
It met at rooms adjacent the Unit. The study group networked
for, and attracted very talented people. Students of psychiatry, medicine,
psychology, sociology, social work, criminology and education attended.
Prison officers and parole officers with whom Yeomans had been working within
the prison and corrective system also attended along with Tony Vinson, who
became Director of Corrective Services in NSW. Any promising ideas
raised in the group tended to be tried out in Fraser House and adopted if
fitting. One of Yeoman's concepts is, 'the survival of the fitting', a Yin
adaptation of the original emphasis on 'the fittest'. This group was an early
example of Laceweb informal healing networking. Yeomans wrote of
cost-benefit analysis research into Fraser House: Some years ago,
I arranged a cost-benefit analysis of Fraser House, compared first with
traditional Admission unit in another psychiatric hospital, and second with a
newly constructed Admission unit which some felt might be a pseudo
therapeutic community. Somewhat to my surprise Fraser House was not only more
effective but also cost less than the other two. The traditional unit was
next cost-effective and the 'pseudo' unit least (Yeomans, 1980 From the Outback.). Fraser House experience
supported Yeomans premise that traumatised and dysfunctional people could
evolve themselves through self help and mutual help towards their own
well-being together. The next step in his quest was to widen therapeutic
community concepts into the wider community. Osmosis into the Wider
Community While Fraser House did
have enduring legacies, in the late Sixties, mental health system-based
pressures skewed Fraser House's structures and processes towards mainstream
practice. Yeomans had recognised that this would happen from the outset, and
had commenced specific steps to extend the Unit's influence into the wider
community shortly after the Unit started. The above-mentioned
suicide prevention and domiciliary outreach and other community outreach were
examples. Another example was that in 1962, Yeomans took time away from
Fraser House to search the World for the best place to evolve what Yeomans
called, an 'International Normative Model Area' (Inma). For Yeomans, an Inma was
a region where ways of humane living together could be explored with a
minimum of interference from dominant society. Yeomans was aware that the
term 'Inma' had sacred significance - being the corroboree of the Aboriginal
women of Central Australia; in ma, as 'in the mother' - the mother nurturing.
He went to the most
oppressed people - the Indigenes and the disadvantaged/oppressed
micro-minorities in a number of places around the World and asked them, where
would be the best place to commence global humane change. Consistently the
answer was given, 'The best place is in the remote regions of Far North
Australia'. Yeomans' outlined a
rationale for this choice and made plans to establish a base in the region
(Yeomans, 1971 Collected
Papers).
Yeomans wrote the poems, 'Inma' and 'On Where' to encapsulate his healing
aspirations, and the place identified by the oppressed people he had spoken
to (Yeomans 1974b Inma; Yeomans, 1974c On Where). Yeomans extended the
ideas in a monograph entitled, 'Global Reform - International Normative Model
Areas', written as a humantiarian law barrister in 1974 for the Australian
Humanitarian Law Committee (Yeomans, 1974a On Global Reform and
International Normative Model Areas (Inma)). Yeomans was exploring
tentative micro-models for peace-healing( dysfunctional conflict ridden
societies and the whole world. Refer: Carlson & Yeomans
(1975) Whither
Goeth the Law - Humanity or Barbarity; Peacehealing is a
Yeomans' concept embracing healing ways - including mediation therapy - that
may heal and foster respectful relationships between previously conflicted
people. Yeomans, in talking of
INMA’s potential role in cultural transitions wrote: The take off
point for the next cultural synthesis typically occurs in a marginal culture.
Such a culture suffers dedifferentiation of its loyalty and value system to
the previous civilisation. It develops a relatively anarchical value
orientation system. Its social institutions dedifferentiate and power slips
away from them. This power moves into lower level, newer, smaller and more
radical systems within the society. Uncertainty increases and with it rumour
(my italics). Also an epidemic of experimental organisations develop. Many die
away but those most functionally attuned to future trends survive and grow. Information typically
passes along Laceweb networks as rumours, 'We heard this works. You may want
to adapt it in your place' (Informal Networks and New
Social Movements).
Yeomans wrote about
indigenous people's choice of Far North Queensland as the better place to
establish Inma: 'Australia
exemplifies many of these widespread change phenomena. It is in a
geographically and historically unique marginal position. Geographically
Asian, it is historically Western. Its history is also of a peripheral lesser
status. Initially a
convict settlement, it still remains at a great distance from the core of
Western Civilisation. Culturally it is often considered equivalent to being
the peasants of the West. It is considered to have no real culture, a marked
inferiority complex, and little clear identity. It can thus be considered
equally unimportant to both East and West and having little to contribute. BUT - it is
also the only continent not at war with itself. It is one of the most
affluent nations on earth. Situated at the junction of the great
civilisations of East and West it can borrow the best of both. Of all nations
it has the least to lose and most to gain by creating a new synthesis
(Yeomans, 1974a On
Global Reform and International Normative Model Areas (Inma)).' In extending Fraser House
into the community, three of Yeomans' premises were (i), that natural
nurturers exist in any culture; (ii), that through enabling support and
osmosis, the healing ways that were evolved at Fraser House may be spread
among these natural nurturers and (iii) that diversity may be accepted,
respected and celebrated among cleavered unities. From the outset Yeomans
viewed Fraser House as one small step towards humane caring global
transition. He envisioned this epochal change towards a more humane
intercultural social-life-world process taking perhaps three hundred or more
years (Yeomans, 1974a On Global Reform and
International Normative Model Areas (Inma)). In keeping with his
humane values and frames, Yeomans starting place for evolving the Laceweb was
with the most oppressed - the indigenous and oppressed small minorities. The
humane change process envisioned is of a pervasively Yin nature; the Inma
energy of the Central Australian Aboriginal Women - nurturing caring energy
and spirituality. It is a positive energy - for well-being. It is not against
anything. It does not counter culture. It does not resist or oppose (Concepts and
Frames).
In summary, the following
is a list of some of the processes used in evolving the Laceweb:
Yeomans sought to foster
transitions away from service delivery by dominant structures that control
and impose process. As a move towards community self help, Yeomans was a
primary influence in the setting up of the Australian Community Mental Health
system in the late Sixties. Yeomans was a prime energiser
and the first Coordinator of the New South Wales Community Mental Heath
Section. He set up Australia's first Community Mental Health Clinic in
Paddington, NSW (Yeomans, N., et al 1993 Governments and the
Facilitation of Community Grassroots Wellbeing Action). Three family friendship
network groups started by Yeomans in the late Sixties were Mingles, Connexion
and Nexus Groups - all with a focus of linking people together for well-being
(Mingles
).
As one process for
enabling the growth of mutual-help networks, in 1968 Yeomans and others
energised the Watson Bay Healing Festival, perhaps Australia's first
multicultural community festival. The Festival included the music and healing
artistry of people from over 30 countries (Watson Bay
Festival).
In October 1969, Yeomans
and others energised the Centennial Park Healing Festival for community
building (Sydney Morning Herald, 1968). Through Yeomans, the Paddington
Community Mental Health Clinic led to the holding of the Paddington Festival
in the early Seventies. Paddington festival and Paddington market were
energised by Yeomans and others to surround the Community Mental Health
Clinic and provide a community (village) space and context (Mangold, 1993,
p.4). Paddington Bazaar remains as a Sydney icon to this day. In a resonant vein,
Yeomans later evolved the Rapid Creek Project in Darwin as a possibility for
linking the indigenous Larakia people's healing networks into community
markets, environmental restoration action, the long-grass people (indigenous
street people), and other community wellbeing actions. The festivals were
followed up with the Campbelltown Festival around 1971/2. Yeomans attended
the 1979 Cooktown Arts Festival which was energised by a Fraser House
ex-outpatient and others. Yeomans had researched
mediation practices around the world as part of his (humanitarian) law degree.
Yeomans was a key enabler in developing the Divorce Law Reform Society of
NSW. Branches of the Society spread to other states. Yeomans prepared a
series of mediational submissions (Carlson & Yeomans, (1975) Whither Goeth the Law; Yeomans, 1974d Humanitarian Law) - particularly the
desirability of setting up family and individual counselling and family
mediating processes. These writings, along with other submissions from the
Society, became a basis for submissions to Justices Evatt and Mitchell and
played a substantial part in the formation of the new Family Law legislation.
From these beginnings, the use of mediation has been growing in Australian society.
In the early Seventies,
Yeomans and others used the Fraser House Big Group collective therapy model
for a series of annual gatherings in Armidale and Grafton, attended by a
balance of indigenous people and Anglos (Kamien, 1978; Iceton, 1970-1976; Franklin,
1995). Many indigenous attendees now play significant community roles. Eddie
Mabo, a Torres Strait Islander who was to play a crucial role in land law
reform in Australia, attended the Grafton Gathering. The theme for these
gatherings was, 'Surviving Well in Relating to the Dominant Culture'. In speaking of humane
transition Yeomans wrote: 'It
is submitted that consciousness-raising would occur firstly among the most
disadvantaged of the area, including the Aborigines. Thus human relations
groups on a live in basis could assist both the growth of solidarity and
personal freedom of expression amongst such persons. In initial experiences
along this line (speaking of the Armidale and Grafton Human Relations
Gatherings) the release of fear and resentment against whites has led to a
level of understanding and mutual trust both within the aboriginal members
and between them and white members (Yeomans, 1974a On Global Reform and
International Normative Model Areas (Inma)).' These gatherings were
often very 'wearing' for attendees. At the Armidale and Grafton gatherings,
Anglos who attended reported that the first day was taken up with Aborigines
working through their fear and resentment. Most of this was directed at the
Anglos present at the Workshop. On the following days
mutual understandings and trust began to emerge. Because of floods delaying
some Aboriginal and Islander people's arrival at the Grafton Gathering to the
second, third or fourth day, the group was processing anger and resentment
introduced by these late arrivals for a number of hours following each
person's arrival. Laceweb action is not always all love and sweetness. Often it is very heavy
going for all concerned. Max Kamien, a psychiatrist, wrote about attending
the Armidale healing gatherings with Aborigines from the remote NSW town of
Bourke. Upon their return home, the Bourke Aborigines immediately set up
similar regular healing gatherings in their own community leading to
well-being change (Kamien, 1978.; Iceton, 1970-76; Franklin, 1995; Widders,
1975 Black
Alternatives: Aborigines in the Seventies and Beyond). The Friendship
Networks Connexion and Nexus Groups at different times produced the
Aboriginal Human Relations Newsletter that emerged from the Armidale and
Grafton Indigenous Gatherings (Iceton, 1970-76). Yeomans wrote in the
first issue of the International Journal of Therapeutic Communities about
actions inspired by Fraser House (Yeomans, 1980 From the Outback.). These actions were
spreading Fraser House ways through evolving and enabling Australian Outback
indigenous self-help networks. Through the Seventies,
Eighties and Nineties, Yeomans engaged in co-learning co-mentoring exchanges
with indigenous and disadvantaged minority Laceweb enablers (An Example of Enabling
Indigenous Well-being).
Yeomans wrote of proposals evolving in the late 1970's for a safe haven on
Palm Island, North Queensland for indigenous and disadvantaged people from
the Region (Yeomans, 1980 From the Outback.). Yeomans started small indigenous
therapeutic community houses in Mackay, Townsville, and Cairns in Northern
Queensland (Yeomans, 1980 From the Outback.; Wilson, 1990, p.
71-85). Yeomans and others enabled gatherings and other contexts for sharing
of therapeutic community healing ways among indigenous and small minority
family-friendship networks (Sharing
therapeutic community healing ways). In the early Eighties,
Yeomans and an Aboriginal person who had co-enabled the Armidale and Grafton
Gatherings with Yeomans, enabled Aboriginal and Islander Well-being
Gatherings in Alice Springs and Katherine in the Northern Territory. Evolving
Laceweb links in those areas continue. In the late Eighties,
Yeomans, with the same Aboriginal person and others, enabled a dispersed
urban Laceweb therapeutic community that evolved in the Bondi Junction area
in NSW. About 145 people were involved in regular healing gatherings and
other linkings. Most of the attendees were linked into the process by
receiving phone calls from Yeomans. Yeomans became a
co-enabler and co-learner with Geoff Guest, the Aboriginal healer elder of
the aboriginal therapeutic community at Petford, 180 kilometres inland from
Cairns in Far North Queensland (Geoff Guest Salem Camp). Geoff has supported
self-transformation among indigenous and other youth over the past 20 years.
Over 2,000 were supported in the middle ten years. An indigenous Laceweb
person and Yeomans were granted observer status at Unrepresented Nations and
Peoples Organisation (UNPO) meetings in The Hague. That indigenous person
became involved in UN Working Groups. Both roles enabled networking among
indigenous and disadvantaged minorities in the region. Yeomans was the only
non-indigenous main platform speaker at the Indigenous Section of the UN Rio
Earth Summit. Yeomans worked on the
wording of an Indigenous Treaty with NGO's, and a Young Persons Healing
Learning Code (Yeomans, 1992a Inter-people Healing
Treaty Between Non-Government Organisations and Unique Peoples; Yeomans, 1992b The Young Persons Healing
Learning Code).
Yeomans and others
pioneered mediation therapy among indigenous networks around the Atherton
Tablelands - extending mediation practice towards healing relating. In 1992,
Yeomans enabled a Mediation Therapy Gathering at Lake Tinaroo. Attendees
included local indigenous women, as well as a number from remote communities
in the far North. An example of the
interplay of Laceweb processes is when Yeomans used conversations at the
local monthly Yungaburra Market to energise a fortnight of activity featuring
two camp outs, a survey of 12 possible festival sites on indigenous and other
land, and a New Years Eve party that energised the evolving of a youth
network in Yungaburra called Funpo (One fortnights
action).
During the Nineties, the
dispersed intercultural therapeutic community that Yeomans had been
co-enabling has been evolving safe-havens in Australia around the Atherton
Tablelands, North Queensland, and the Northern Territory Top End (Yeomans et
al, 1997a). The Atherton Tablelands is evolving as an International Normative
Model Area (INMA). Related humanitarian
initiatives are evolving possibilities in the Region (Yeomans et al, 1998b Self-Help Action
Supporting Survivors Of Torture And Trauma In S.E. Asia, Oceania And
Australasia - Small Generalisable Actions). For example, small
micro projects for supporting survivors of conflict in East Timor,
Bougainville, and the Solomon Islands are evolving. Refer:
Everything is inherently
tentative. Nothing happens unless locals want it to happen. The Laceweb model now
extends to renormalising societies following complete collapse based on local
grassroots self-help/mutual help rather than via top down distant expert
driven processes. The Laceweb model is an isomorphic reversed reframe of the
mainstream model. In the Laceweb model,
social wellbeing may become the primary focus, then local humane law/lore,
then local democratic self governance addressing local wellbeing. Other
normalising may follow from this. Typically, mainstream sets up the political
structure, then the legal system, then the people come last. Even then,
typically the hundreds of thousands of traumatised people tend to remain so
because of expert trauma services being stretched beyond capacity (Yeomans et
al, 1999 Extegrity
- Guidelines for Joint Partner Proposal Application ). Information and a
timeline has been posted on the Internet relating to the evolving Laceweb
networks among indigenous and disadvantaged minority self-help healers in the
SE Asia Oceania Australasia Region (Community Ways for
Healing the World ).
(Also refer the homepage: Future Possibilities). In July 2000 there was a
series of gatherings celebrating (i) the sixth anniversary of the 1994
Gathering, (ii) the UN Day in Support of Torture Survivors and (iii) the UN
Peace Week (A series of
gathering celebrations).
One example of linking
with global bodies with a humane ethos was the 1994 UNHRC funded Laceweb
gathering in the Atherton Tablelands, in Far North Queensland (Working Group,
1994 Report
to the United Nations on the Small Island Coastal and Estuarine People
Gathering Celebration - 1994).
This gathering was
positioned by Yeomans as a follow-on gathering to the UN Small Island Gathering
in the Caribbean. At that Atherton Tablelands gathering, Yeomans handed out a
page listing all of the resonant UN and Global gatherings in the next three
years. He suggested indigenous attendees endeavour to attend these
gatherings. It is understood that,
evolving from the interplay of the above forms of enabling action, there are
now Laceweb links embracing around half of the indigenous people of the SE
Asia Oceania Australasia Region (Sociograms). This Region contains
around half of the World's indigenous people both in terms of numbers and
different indigenous peoples (Down to Earth Auspicing
Motion).
Yeomans quest is now shared by many. Future papers will expand on other
aspects of Fraser House and the Laceweb. References
Homepage references:
Self Help Action Rebuilding
Wellbeing in the East Asia Oceania Australasia Region |
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