Go quietly

I had a pretty stressful day today.

When I came home and lay in the hammock, the first thing that popped into my head was this: the only people who had a unified view on today's situation were Aboriginal staff and those living closest with them in their communities.

As always,  I am struck by the immense power of culture. About what we take to be normal, and therefore unexamined, and how we interpret 'abnormal'.

Take a simple, and perhaps innocuous thing like 'bad' language. While staying at my brother's house not that long ago, I because acutely aware of the different standards of what we would each regard as acceptable language. I counselled my daughter on a few occasions that while Daddy or Mummy might say certain words, they weren't okay where we were staying.

Personally, I think 'butt crack' is a funny way to describe someone's bottom, but clearly that's just my sense of humour! I'm not particularly fussed by the word 'bugger' either as a general expression of frustration. After doing protective behaviours, I also try to focus on using the proper names for private parts to demystifying for children and adults alike what is basically just a word for a body part. All these revelations were from within my own culture context. What about a context where cultural values and their manifestations in personal and social interactions were markedly different?

Living here, I hear a lot of swearing from the kids. Now that I know a bit of the local language, I'm even more aware of the frequency of swearing. The 'f'word is thrown around a bit, but that doesn't seem to worry the parents.Who am I to judge?

In fact, who I am to know? There is a whole lot more here that is different from other places. People encourage little kids to retaliate physically when they are aggrieved. I remember being slightly shocked when I heard another staff member telling me that he'd observed a parent gently encouraging their baby to 'stone' (ie throw little rocks) at a toddler sibling who was annoying her.

Clearly not something that falls within the Western parenting values repertoire, but the existence of this little moment in time indicates a much larger, substantially different way of dealing with conflict. A way of dealing with conflict that is more open, more immediate and more physical.

There are undeniably times when that physical expression of emotions tips the line and becomes violence. The bar where this occurs, however, is not where I draw it. It is where it is drawn within the culture of the people concerned, and within the bounds of the law generally. Making judgment calls on physical displays of emotion as indicative of a broader malaise is, however, a very risky thing to do with confidence.

I am very tempted by the idea of what it would feel like to truly walk in the shoes of another. Where daily the world is unpredictable, when my culture meets the culture of the mainstream. The power of the mainstream. When having an open fire, instead of a barbeque or a kitchen, is a matter worthy of note. When interactions seemingly innocuous snowball exponentially into events of monumental personal proportions.

There is a general quiet, reserved wariness I notice in Aboriginal people I meet for the first time. As if perhaps I am being tested for the true quality of our time together. Is it with good intent or to judge? It takes a while to get past this, to begin to communicate as much as possible that I see their way of living as inherently valid as my own.

To walk in their shoes is a journey unimaginable in my mind. The gulf is too great. Making the gulf all the more important to note before I and others take a flying leap into the void between us.

Dazzling white all around

I'm back. At last. Heave a huge sigh of relief (it's been a long short time away).

Like all spells in a different country, it's been a very productive time for self reflection. Helped no doubt by studying a complementary uni subject (aka Critical Reflective Practice) and some significant personal challenges.

I've been mulling over this post for a while. As seems to always happen, my creative juices start to flow as soon as I hit the long red dusty roads again. Already I've clocked up 1700k and it's only been a week and a day since I stepped onto the tarmac at Kalgoorlie airport.

Now I have to distil my experiences of four months in Toowoomba into one return blog. The result: the dazzling power of white.

Undoubtedly one of the most interesting things to strike me about my work back in the 'mainstream' is just how transferable what I've learnt is to other cross-cultural situations.

I can't get away from just how damn white I actually am. The odd 'look and feel' of that statement first struck me when I was reading an article about working with Aboriginal people. It posed the interesting question of what answer you would give to someone who came up to you on the street and said (all casual and chatty, in good interview style) "so, what's it feel like to be White?"

The question in fact seems ludicrous. Umm, what do you mean? the most likely puzzled response.

You know, White, non-Indigenous, Caucasian, Westerner. White.

Oh, um, I'm not sure. It feels ok, I guess.

It's a pretty hard question to answer. But unless I stop to ask it (and I only just avoided bringing you all into my assumed white loop, by not saying 'we' just then), I will hardly have the self awareness to see where I daily go wrong.

A fun way to spend the day - for some!

For example, my first question, after introducing myself to a refugee community leader: 'So, what do you do?' This I asked to someone who only 2 years ago was living in a refugee camp, who had arrived in Australia, learnt a new language, found somewhere to stay, navigated enormous personal and social change, and commenced study for a new future. And my opening fallback question is what does he do for a job! What on earth was I thinking?... or rather, wasn't thinking.

As it turned out, that meeting proved to be one of the highlights of my Toowoomba stay. At the end of a fascinating, engaging conversation, we shook hands with genuine feeling and went back to our respective worlds, a small rope bridge thrown out between us. Some shared moments based on the truth of our own experiences, many of which for me were grounded in what I've learned out bush.

My whole time on bitumen has led to not one blog post . The deceptive solidity of the ground beneath me, where (almost) everyone and everything makes sense just as it should.

What grounds us is our culture, but it's not as solid as it seems. In fact, it's a dazzling white fragile fabric beneath.

So while I relentlessly strive for a better, slimmer, more perfect me, what am I leaving in my wake? What values am I fostering in my child, unconsciously, despite the best of intent? Some things can't be shifted by thought or good intention along. They are deeply embedded in the fabric of our daily personal, family and social interactions.

Only by being aware of the threads of that dazzling white, do I begin to see it for what it is. I won't ever be any different, but I hope I can start to better appreciate and value the alternatives. See the strengths where other see the deficits.

See the small child happily playing while others notice only the things around him.

With humble thanks to the team at Mercy Family Services Toowoomba (especially Frances, David, Melina, Nicole, Rachel and Candice - what a great bunch of people and a great place to work!).

Kunda (shy)

I am preoccupied tonight by concerns about my shyness.

Not shyness in the usual sense. I think generally people would not regard me as shy. Would be more likely to use words like confident, assertive... maybe reserved.

Undeniably, deeply shy am I. This has been borne home to me this week when I consider how little I know people in the communities I live in. Communities that I have been living in for many years.

How easy it is to engage at a surface level, through the prism of interactions primarily in a non-Indigenous world. Gravitating towards non-Indigenous safety zones. Validating priorities that don't reflect reality outside my working space.

This reinforces to me how deeply culture guides our interactions, for it's not for want of intent or interest on my part that this has occurred. Get out of your cultural depth, and what happens: ghettos. Not in the pernicious sense of the word (although this is certainly possible, at its extreme) but in the sense of familiar worlds. You and me. Not us and them (and we know who we are).

Just like I observe that Eleanor, nearly 3 years old, has a completely different way of interacting socially within her own cultural context and outside it. An easy confidence, quick to play, hesitant to share, but essentially comfortable. In a cross-cultural context, not too bad but her genuine cross-cultural forays are few. Outside her context, she copies what we do. We stand up against the wall with our legs crossed, so does she. We sit on the verandah edge, so does she.

A few people have said to me 'what an experience she's having!' but I know that's not true. She's living in a remote Aboriginal community, but she's really a Westerner in a Western world. She spends 95% of her time with her parents, in our world. She interacts as we do. She's not living a remote Aboriginal life in the way you might imagine it. Those comments about experience presuppose an immersion that she's not having. Her context is Aboriginal, but her experience is Western.

Mainstream suburban living in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands

So as I find out more about where people live and who they live with this week (by virtue of a series of unrelated events), I am struck by a profound awareness that I should know this information already! I live here. Why would I not have a basic awareness of certain family groups, where they generally live, and who they generally are related to?

The reason being is that my contact is tiny compared to the totality of my life here. The reality of an office environment that dictates documentation as proof of accountability. That targets individuals for reasons informed by Western values not local realities. That dictates enormous amounts of travel to neighbouring communities for reasons of efficiency not effectiveness.

And when I have spare time, I chose comfort. Familiarity. Even when I know I shouldn't, and maybe it would help if I just got out more and talked to the family across the road rather than waving a friendly wave as I searched for my front door key.

I'm kunda. Shy. Just as I would be if I were immersed in a culture overseas and sought out the local Western cafe. Just to relax, read a menu in English, and order a drink that makes sense. It's not really experiencing the place, but from outside it certainly looks like you're there (just don't look too hard or you might find it's harder than you think to really be in an unfamiliar place).

What time tells us

I walked up to the police station from my little DCP house earlier this week. It felt like it was going to be a long walk, being almost from one side of the community to the other.

It took 7 minutes. As I arrived, checking my watch with astonishment, I remembered an early reflection I had when I first arrived in the community five years ago. Within about a week, I was driving distances that seemed absurd, yet going any other way than by car was inconceivable.

Like all things, we fall into the norm. By car. Even if it's just a few blocks. Very rarely do I see non-Indigenous people on foot around the community. Don't ask me why - my little expedition earlier this week confirmed that it is indeed not very far to walk anywhere.

This led me to ponder more broadly on the notion of time. How our mind conflates and expands time, making time a quality more reflective than objective. I remember how long my first year out bush seemed. It stretched on forever as my mind stretched to accommodate the endlessly new information it was processing.

Now it has slowed. Slowed to a pace I recognised also when I very first visited remote communities. Why so slow? Why can't people pick the pace up a little! I wondered, exasperated. My Canberra high-energy hat buzzing.

Over time, I have come to appreciate that slowed down quality. I'm still a little wary of the propensity to lethargy, but more often than not, I see that all things pass. Over time, only the most important things keep coming to the surface.

It reminds me of a favourite Dilbert cartoon, with the office dinosaur (literally) holding up his little hands in simple gratitude as he expresses to Dilbert that if you wait long enough, the people doing the restructuring leave and everything returns to normal. "I don't know why, but it works every time."

Turning the idea around again, I reflected on a recent lesson I learnt in a book. Pila Nguru by Scott Cain. A book I've started dipping into about the Spinifix Arts movement and Tjuntjuntjara mob native title early days. The author recounts another tale of time to blow our objective minds.

While visiting a sacred site, Scott left an old, sick, frail elder in the Toyota while he set out to follow the other men as they danced across a salt pan.

When they had danced the kilometre or so across the flat, they arrived to find the old man already there, keening in a deep trance, met by the men with simple acceptance not incredulity. In our world, a physical impossibility. In Anangu world, reality.

Time passes in different ways. Speed is not an objective quality of physical strength, but a character held by some according to cultural power and wisdom.

In that moment, the author believed that time is not as we believe it. More than just in our heads, or even our wrist watches. In our bodies, an untapped potential to change the world we are in by strength of connectedness.

Time, reflective and spiritual. Certainly not objective.

Share and share alike

Playgroup re-opened today in Warburton. Eleanor has been on the lookout for Anne (who runs the playgroup) for a while, and regularly comments as we go past "Anne's on holidays, she'll be back soon". Soon arrived at last, and playgroup started up again, linked to the school term timetable.

This post is actually about one 10 second moment in playgroup. A moment that speaks volumes about how people live their lives, and deeply embedded cultural values that pass on to children at a very young age.

As a pre-cursor to that moment in time, it might be worth mentioning that I spent a bit of time today secluded in the little cubby house. Eleanor was happy to have me in there, but fought off any other incursions with statements like "no, it's too crowded in here", or "we're already full" (it was just me and her), or "no stop touching the edge" (to a little baby just learning to stand, and having the temerity to put her fingers on Eleanor's cubby windowsill).

So the conventional wisdom is that children this age are developmentally not very good at sharing. I tried to encourage the sharing gene, with regular entreaties "Eleanor, they can come in, let's share" or pulling her hands away from the baby's fingers as she tried to prise them loose. At one point, I upped the ante by saying that I'd leave the cubby house if she didn't start sharing it. That sort of helped but it felt a little like emotional blackmail! The Aboriginal mums just laughed at Eleanor and remarked on how "bossy" she was. It was all good natured, but I do generally struggle with Eleanor not really playing well beside other kids. Still, it's an age and stage.

Or is it... so to 10 seconds of interest. Just as the morning tea and story was coming to a close, little Damiana - about Eleanor's age - burst into the room with her mum. Flash in her pink outfit and new shoes, she was ready for all that playgroup had to offer and morning tea was a good time to arrive. I'm not sure of the family connection, but little Tiawana (about 3 years), immediately motioned her to come sit next to her. Damiana sat down and looked about for something to eat. Tiawana moved her cup of milo closer to Damiana's knee. She didn't notice, so Tiawana tapped her on the knee and pointed at the milo. Without a word between them at any point since she arrived, Damiana picked it up Tiawana's milo and drank it, then looked around for what else was on offer.

This spontaneous unconscious sharing of your own food is something I have seen a lot over the past few year, but hadn't really thought about it until I saw it in mini replay. Cultural values so deeply ingrained that little kids Eleanor's age reproduce it exactly.

So is 'doesn't share well with others' really a developmental stage, or Western cultural values at work again? Is our propensity to own and hoard something that kids are in fact demonstrating in their 'playing beside' rather than 'playing with' behaviour? Developmental charts then become cultural by-products rather than scientific fact.

When you reach for a new cup to pour someone a fresh cup of tea (rather than sharing your own) are you in fact reinforcing cultural values of separateness and individuality. All part of the great Western way. Based on today's 10 second moment, it seems so.

Getting started

I was reminded tonight of some of the classic mistakes I made when I first came here, 5 years ago.

My fire engine red skirt that I wore to a meeting of community council governing committee. My query about why a community member had cut her hair off when it had looked so great before (and refusing to accept her shrug response). My direct questions.

All problematic. Ignorance of certain colours reserved just for men, rituals on the death of a close family member, ways of engaging respectfully.

Thankfully, I was saved by time. A genuine interest to engage. The gentle guidance of colleagues and soon-to-be friends. An inquiring mind. But most important of all, time.

Time on feet. Time in the communities. Time engaging with people. Time finding out more, asking those who knew. Time getting to know others.

Our Western world transacts our interactions with others with ferocious speed. Rules of engagement are clear. In most domains, it is not necessary to know much about the other person you are talking with. It's not necessary to know them at all.

I recently read an article on how to engage with Aboriginal people in a social work context. I skimmed through to the end to see what the conclusions were. I was relieved to see that it said focussing on the relationship, taking time, and engaging in 'self-disclosure' (letting people know who you are) was important.

Why exactly do we eschew this in Western culture? Why is knowing about the other person relatively unimportant in how we relate to them? In this highly individualistic culture, we seem to have lost the individual quality that enriches life.

Individuals. Me. You. Us. What we share together.

Complacency is not an option

I try to avoid being political in this blog.

At times, however, neutrality is not an option. This is one of those times.

I am filled with a visceral sense of latent injustice. It almost feels like I can touch it, even though I cannot see it clearly. Injustice that arises not from a lack of good intent, or even good deeds, but from systemic powerlessness and enormous gulfs in understanding.

I believe that a powerful response to the challenge of cross-cultural communication is humility. Simple openness to learn and understand, guided by the person you are talking with. For all that people say about talking with Aboriginal people, protocols to observe or facts to know, I go by the simplest of maxims. Openness. Honesty. Willingness to learn.

As soon as someone sets him or herself up as an expert, as soon as someone establishes rules inside his or her own head for how to act, problems arise. Those rules, that 'expert' knowledge, is based on understanding the world from a particular perspective. So deeply informed by our experiences in mainstream Western society as to be almost invisible.

We're taught to critically analyse this in social work studies. But is it truly possible to be critically self-aware on a daily basis, in every action and interaction? Especially when surrounded (in the main) by people and systems deeply embedded in the dominant culture. Even when I am daily surrounded by a minority culture, I find it hard to maintain that quality. What hope for those who are not so challenged at every turn?

Aboriginal people live in a world where they are marginalised and discriminated against. Their culture and language is devalued, misunderstood, or ignored. In this space, room opens up for enormous injustices. For people to feel unable to express themselves. To feel unable to be understood. To feel powerless to right wrongs. To be without hope.

Abuse does occur. But so does injustice, and perhaps more frequently so.

So, I have this to guide my daily actions: the more I know, the less I know. The more I need to trust others who know more than I. The more humble I need to be.

Perhaps humility is the antidote to injustice? Complacency is not an option.

That's my naapa (thing)

The house was starting to overflow with Eleanor's toys. With Christmas, a recent birthday and bursts of unnecessary purchasing on my part, new areas of the house were being colonised by multi-coloured plastic and wood in various permutations. I'm a bit of a neat freak. I also remember the 'pre-kid' days, entering houses of people with young toddlers and making slow work picking a safe path along the floor. As a result, I tend to spend a little time every day doing a small clean and organise. The toys, however, had got beyond that level of organisation. I did a big pack up and removed half of them from the living areas. They are now precariously perched on the top shelf of the study cupboard.

This constant need to manage our ever burgeoning pile of possessions has prompted a few thoughts of contrast with the toddler-life of the locals. Just yesterday I was struck yet again by a common response to possessive behaviour by Eleanor. While in the clinic at Pipalyatjara, visiting some clients, Eleanor saw their niece playing with her 'black baby' doll (a 2009 Christmas present from Blackstone Community). "Miiiiine, my black baby!!" she cried, immediately rushing to get it. The father present replied in an instant, "it's mine, my baby", smiling in claim. Eleanor looked taken aback, worried, clutching the doll closer. "Mine". "My baby", he replied, gesturing to hand it over, smiling still. Eleanor took the baby away for safe keeping. The irony of Eleanor taking a little black baby away didn't escape me.

This response is very common. Whereas we tend to rush in and reassure Eleanor that something is indeed hers, or negotiate with diplomatic tact of international quality when fights break out between cousins and (Western) friends, I have never heard local community members say anything close to the following: "How about you let Eleanor play with it for a little bit, then we'll play with it after... don't worry, it's yours, it lives here". There is one community member who calls out to Eleanor everytime she sees her at the shop, "my car Eleanor, my car." Eleanor will fall for it everytime. "No, Marcia, that's your car there." "My car, give me the keys", gently chiding her possessiveness. "No, it's oooour white car, ours". Then she'll turn tail and head into the shop, every step a righteous one.

I do not claim to know much about Aboriginal parenting styles and cultural values, but these little exchanges do regularly remind me of the constant value placed on sharing and common ownership. From the earliest attempts to assert individuality, little kids are encouraged to think about others around them. Our family - without even a thought to what we are doing - reinforce our possessive, accumulative inclinations. Without a thought too, no doubt, the community members reinforce common wealth in the family. Neither is better, just different. Deeply embedded in our world view, lasting well beyond the period of childhood amnesia. Mine. No, mine.