Day 10 of the Australian Journey

Today was day of reflection and the day that we travel to Sydney for that part of our cross-cultural exchange.   Before the flight, we spent the morning caucusing and planning for the next year.   We learned that funding exists for next year and that a camp will happen, which pleased and excited us.   My highpoint from camp was Lily, the woman healer/elder/leader from Millumgimby in the Northern Territories, crying during the men's choir concert.   On the last evening of every camp, the men's choir comes over by boat to eat dinner with us and sing to us.   The choir is led by a Maori man, James, who I described in my blog last year.   Briefly, James is a Maori nuclear physicist who has worked for years for the Australian defense industry and has run Maori-style sweat lodges in Australian prisons for Maori inmates ( and anyone else who wanted to come).   The choir is composed of, as they say, "black fellows and white fellows."   After dinner the choir serenaded us with Maori songs, a song from the Solomon Islands, from where one of its members hailed, aboriginal songs, and English language favorites (West Virginia, Oh Shenandoah, and the like).   Lily cried because she had never believed in her life time that white men would sing to her.   I thought this moment got to the heart of what we are trying to accomplish with cultural exchange -- for all the Voices to speak and be heard with equal volume and respect; to equalize the privileged voices and the dispossessed voices.   Lily's tears were evidence to me that we were accomplishing our mission.

I wrote last year about the "black-white" distinction in Australia.   It rings strange to my eyes.   When I look at aboriginal people here, I do not see black people.   I see Australian aboriginal people.   So when they call themselves black fellows and talk about the white fellows, it's strangely disconcerting to me.   It reminds of how people talked in the American South during my childhood which was deeply disturbing at the time.   I confess to thinking of "black" people as people who identify with ancestors who came from Africa to North America against their will.   Of course, they don't all look black either.   In fact, an actually black person is very hard to find.   Most people are varying shades of brown depending upon how much melanin they have in their skin.   The colder the climate, the less melanin you need.   The more sun, the more you need.   The downside to having lots of melanin is that it slows the absorption of some of the vitamin D in climates with little sun.   A theory exists that African-Americans have more depression than white Americans (controlling for poverty, etc.) because of a relative lack of vitamin D.   I know when I measure vitamin D in Vermont, it's always low.   I stopped measuring it and just give everyone vitamin D, because that's more cost effective, since it can't hurt you anyway and it's cheap.   Maybe if I practiced in Arizona, I'd rethink that position.   But, anyway, it's confusing to see people calling themselves black fellows, but I've come to understand it's a result of the colonizing position that the British took as they invaded the Australian continent and forcibly imposed their will upon the people who lived here.   I suspect it justified their actions because, in the 19^th century, "black" fellows were seen as inferior to "white" fellows -- primitive, just one step above the animals.   Of course, "red" fellows in the United States (why red, I do not know) were even seen as below "black" fellows.   All this was justified with a variety of pseudoscience, including phrenology, the study of the shape of skulls and what that revealed about intelligence.   Charles Darwin, to his credit, argued vigorously that skin color was a minor gene that had very little relation to anything else and almost no correlation with anything except the strength of the sun where one's ancestors evolved.

Part of the success of our project is echoed in the increasing number of requests we are receiving to come to other communities and to assist other communities in creating "culture camps".   Apparently this idea of spending one week together exchanging culture and participating in each other's ceremonies is novel.   In Canada, culture camps to celebrate one's own culture and heritage are common.   In North America, now, many people spend over one week together to celebrate the sun dance.   But apparently spending time together to exchange culture is new.   We have seen that the process results in increased awareness of the value of one's own culture and culture carriers (elders, leaders, etc.).   There appears to be a beneficial effect of watching someone from another culture share his or her practices and participating in them.   The process brings us closer to together.   In celebrating diversity, we find unity.   We have seen that culture camp has inspired some of the "white fellows" to look for their own ancestors and practices, whatever those are.  

We also heard that being able to tell one's stories -- personal and cultural -- to others and to feel heard by them was also important.   For aboriginal people to tell their personal and cultural stories to "white folks" and for the "white folks" to listen was powerful.   Whenever trauma occurs, all the stories must be told and culture camp provides an opportunity for this to happen.   The energy of the story is what happens between storyteller and listener when the story is told.   This energy produces healing.   The obstacles in the story are the gifts of the story.   In the myths and legends of a people, our personal stories can emerge without the complication of interpretation which suppresses the story and the healing.   We heard that non-indigenous cultures always want the newest, shiniest, most dramatic stories, while indigenous cultures like the old stories, the ones that have been told over and over.

A woman in our group told about working in Croatia soon after the war.   She was hired to help women tell stories to their children, but the women had lost all the stories of their culture and only had Disney stories.   She was puzzled about what to do.   She went to a house one freezing morning when it snowed, and sat with the young mother around her kitchen table, who said, "It's bad for us, but not as bad as it is for the lions."   This family had little food and was virtually malnourished but they were most concerned for the lions in the zoo who were suffering more than they.   Our friend told about walking through the snow and entering the zoo in the middle of winter and how heart-wrenching it was to see the desperately thin, starving animals.   She came upon the fence around the lions and thought that once upon a time, this must have been nice, in a Communist sort of way.   She switched her task to working with the local women to create a new story about saving the lions and finding a way to get them out of the zoo and to a place where they could thrive.

Then we flew to Sydney and were met by Pauline, who will be our hostess for the next three days.   We drove through incredibly thick rush hour traffic to her home in Manly and had a marvelous meal of cioppino, prepared by her husband who had lived in San Francisco.

Day 9 of the Australian Journey

I awoke to run only to be greeted by the sound of a driving rain.   Though I don't relish the thought of loading the boats while getting drenched, the sound of the rain on the roof is strangely comforting.   The temperature is chilly.   We were warned that summer is very hot in southeastern Australia, even up to 40 degrees.   I am sitting on the veranda under the sheltered portion wearing a shirt, a sweat shirt, and a jacket.   I almost didn't bring the jacket.

Today is our last day at Boole Poole.   We travel again today to the cultural center for further interactions with the community and the elders.   We had an extra day at Boole Poole last year and that allowed us to do "doctoring" for some of the elders who came over on the boat.   I wrote about that in last year's blogs which are still available at www.futurehealth.org.     By doctoring, I mean the aboriginal North American version of energy medicine/osteopathy.   I suspect that every culture had its own form of energy medicine and hands-own manipulative medicine, though some do not carry these practices in their current repertoire.

                Eventually enough people awoke that we could have a discussion on the veranda around breakfast while the rain continued to steadily fall.   Our breakfast question was how to bring spirituality into human services.   That led us to consider pathology as an organizer.   In medicine and psychology, what's wrong with you, the diagnostic category, has become the pivot point around which everything is organized.   The assumption is that diagnosis tells you everything you need to know to assist someone.   Then relationship comes not to matter because once the diagnosis is made, anyone can apply the treatment.   Spirituality becomes unimportant.   It is like the steam generated by a locomotive -- pretty to much but not necessary for the operation of the engine.   It is a byproduct that can be ignored.   How do we change that?

                Our conclusion was that we have to listen to the many stories surrounding the person and to grant validity to all those stories.   Everyone has a story about how and why they got sick.   Often their stories have fused with the stories of the dominant paradigm, such as "I'm sick because I got bad genes and there's nothing I can do about it."   Everyone also has a story about how healing is supposed to happen.   We have stories that guide us to what to expect when we consult someone who is supposed to help us.   My story in seeking a traditional healer is very different from my story in consulting an orthopedic surgeon.   I have different expectations for what they will do to me and for me.   But, what if I had an expectation that each of them should see the Divine in me and acknowledge it before proceeding with what they do?   That seems logical for the traditional healer, but why can't I also expect that from the orthopedic surgeon?   Thus, the human services toward which we are striving includes a willingness to meet people where they are and to experience their experience.   As a practitioner in a human service, I need to be willing to "be in the story" that's brought to me.   I need to "be in the details".   I cannot maintain the same level of clinical distance characteristic of the biomedical paradigm.   I actually have to be empathic.   I actually have to care even if I can't do more than that.   Caring and listening are powerful interventions even if nothing else can be done.

                This led us to discuss the indoctrination that new professionals receive. Their training and socialization makes them less able to interact with aboriginal people.   Some people enjoy formality and distance.   Most aboriginal patients do not -- at least not in the same way.   I know I want to feel heard.   I want to believe that someone cares enough about me to hear all the stories that I feel I need to tell.   Perhaps he or she will care enough to elicit some stories from me that I didn't know I had.   I need to enter into the stories of my clients enough to share some lived space ("Lebenswelt") with them.   That is considered unprofessional in some circles.   I am not saying I need to share my ongoing problems with them, though I do use stories about problems I have solved as teaching tales with clients.   I think we distance ourselves from clients related to our fear of ambiguity, mystery, and helplessness.   The biomedical model purports to give us a certainty that it doesn't deliver.   However, if we scrunch our eyes tightly shut, we can pretend that all is as it says it is and that we have certainty.   Sometimes we are helpless to do anything and we don't like that either.   We are afraid to not know the answer.   If I can maintain enough distance, I won't be affected by the vicissitudes of my clients' lives, including when they die.   In the biomedical model, I can't afford to care too much.   I can't afford to love my patients.

                Doctors and patients often come from radically different cultures.   Implicit within this is a difference in class and wealth.   Managed care in the United States has removed much of the wealth possibility from doctors, but the image remains.   In other countries, doctors never had the wealth potential that they had in the capitalist countries.   When we come from different cultures, we may have such stereotyped stories about each other that we are incapable of listening or interacting.   We interact as if both of us were wearing a mask.   Maybe we are!

                We agreed that our shared task, and what culture camp accomplishes, is to build bridges with others who are trying to see the world and human services differently.   Our current systems do not encourage emotions for and with the clients.   We want to change that and to experience the human condition with them and from them.   When we do that, we bring spirituality into our practice because that is one aspect of being human -- to reach out to what is greater than us, to contemplate larger powers, to appreciate our small stature in the universe and to be awed by the vastness of all we can perceive.

                Culture camp is giving us a shared language for how to move in this direction.   It is validating our experience of wanting to hear each other's' stories.   By observing each other working in our own context, we learn to more deeply appreciate the human stories and to see the richness of our own.   Seeing others' cultures helps us to find our own hidden assumptions, the beliefs and stories generating those beliefs that we don't know we have. We have trouble seeing the stories which surrounded us when we were born as stories.   We think of them as ineluctable facts.   Seeing others who don't share those most basic stories helps us to recognize our own.

                One of the aboriginal elders told us that those who have lost sight of the world as animated and magical need to practice seeing the artifacts and sacred objects as really alive.   They need to learn to see the energy around the object instead of the object itself.   Compassion is the ears getting bigger and bigger, she said.   "Call upon your ancestors," she said, "and hear everything without judging."   We talked about the difference between judgment and discernment.   I can discern that I don't want to be involved in a particular process or don't want it for myself, without being critical of those who are involved in that process.   We heard about the young men from Idaho who come to the Northern Territories to convert the locals to the Church of Latter Day Saints.   They are on a mission.   They look so out of place in the tropics wearing white shirts and ties.   They must always be home at 10pm.   "I don't want their religion or to do what they're doing," one man said, "but I don't judge them for doing it.   Being in this strange new place must be quite exciting for a sheltered young person from the rural United States."  

                I brought up my favorite Lakota concept of the nagi, which I have already discussed in these blogs.   Unique about this concept is the sense of person as swarm and the notion of swaminess, which is a mathematical/engineering concept now of how swarms behave.    We are swarms of conscious stories and tellers of those stories rather than concrete objects.    Where all the bees gather, there is a queen.   The queen represents the collection of concatenated stories that we privilege as better somehow than the rest.   My example of swarm behavior comes from deer nibbling on the leaves of acacia trees.   The acacia trees then secrete toxins to stop the deer from nibbling which every acacia tree in the neighborhood does simultaneously.

                A woman present brought our attention to how are bodies speak their story for us.   Laura told a story about a time when she felt traumatized.   She was also suffering from pain from her left shoulder down to her left hip.   She used phrases like, "I'm all twisted up about this."   "I overreached."   "I stretched myself too far." "I feel down."   "I bent over backwards."   We were able to point out to her how her language matched her body sensations.   The situations of her life were reflected or were parallel in her body.

                The discussions continued throughout the day with the eventual result of planning for next year's conference.   The rain continued so we made our soaking way to the boat with all of the sweat lodge blankets, some of which got quite wet.   We made a bumpy trip to the mainland and loaded the car for the drive back to Melbourne.