Stories Teach. Stories Heal. Stories are our Law. Educaring Principles and Practices in Healing Generational Trauma
| Monday, October 21, 2024 |
| 4:40 PM - 5:10 PM |
| Room 1 |
Overview
Judy Atkinson PhD. AM, HPRT. CIHP , PhD Queensland University of Technology: AM - Order of Australia: Grad. HPRT Harvard Program for Refuge Trauma: Invited member: CIHP - College of Indigenous Healing Practitioners, PACFA (Psychotherapy & Counselling Federation of Australia)
Speaker
Judy Atkinson
PhD Queensland University of Technology: AM - Order of Australia: Grad. HPRT Harvard Program for Refuge Trauma: Invited member: CIHP - College of Indigenous Healing Practitioners, PACFA (Psychotherapy & Counselling Federation of Australia)
SCU & QUT
Stories Teach. Stories Heal. Stories are our Law. Educaring Principles and Practices in Healing Generational Trauma.
Abstract
Presentation Abstract
• Educate - to care (educare) – to reconcile - repair - restore – rebuild - to set right.
The key message/learning that I aim for delegates to take away from my presentation, responds to the fact that:
• Australian First Peoples have been asking for a truth telling in consideration of colonial (attempted) conquest-genocide, for many years.
• I first sat in educational truth-telling with diverse groups within multiple communities across all states of Australia, in rehabilitation centres and prisons, health services, in the 1990’s as the essential processes with informed my PhD. “Lifting the Blankets. The Transgenerational effects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia”. The theory base of colonial induced trauma evolved from both the group activities and the PhD fieldwork, research.
• This resulted in the book: “Trauma Trails. Recreating Song-lines – the Transgenerational effects of trauma in Indigenous Australia”. The PhD and the book proposed an educational way forward. In healing generational trauma we need to know our Stories. (I will tell you something about stories. They aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have – all we have to fight off illness and death. We don’t have anything without our stories). Hence deep healing therapeutic work require the courage to look deeply into our souls – our stories of who were are and how we have become who we are.
• I will bring copies of the book.
• The key message in this presentation is reclaiming our generational life stories which define who we were, and are and how we have become who we are. We therefore need healing from trauma: a return to wholeness, in its many layers and dimensions.
• When shared, in truth-telling within our sovereign responsibility, in reclaiming our sovereign rights and responsibilities, in our involvement in cultural healing ceremonies and educaring, we help healing happen, within ourselves, across our communal - social groups, and in the country now called Australia. We also challenge our colonisers to look at themselves and what they bought to this country now called Australia: the colonial prisons – youth detention industry – the child removal policies.
• When we share our stories across history, we teach about the conflict and complexity of colonisation which creates marginalisation.
• Hence we also challenge the educational industry to reclaim the meaning of education – from the Latin ‘educare – to rear up - nurture the children - to draw out from them - to lead - to show the way.’
• When we reclaim our cultural and spiritual identities, our responsibility to care for country - care for kin, we reclaim agency and sovereignty, as we teach our young people that country teaches - country heals - country feeds our body-mind-spirit.
• In our sovereign responsibility we also reclaim our right to help healing happen through our cultural and spiritual obligations to each other, on our lands and water-ways, across our nations.
• This has been the journey of We Al-li, that continues to grow and develop.
• Educate - to care (educare) – to reconcile - repair - restore – rebuild - to set right.
The key message/learning that I aim for delegates to take away from my presentation, responds to the fact that:
• Australian First Peoples have been asking for a truth telling in consideration of colonial (attempted) conquest-genocide, for many years.
• I first sat in educational truth-telling with diverse groups within multiple communities across all states of Australia, in rehabilitation centres and prisons, health services, in the 1990’s as the essential processes with informed my PhD. “Lifting the Blankets. The Transgenerational effects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia”. The theory base of colonial induced trauma evolved from both the group activities and the PhD fieldwork, research.
• This resulted in the book: “Trauma Trails. Recreating Song-lines – the Transgenerational effects of trauma in Indigenous Australia”. The PhD and the book proposed an educational way forward. In healing generational trauma we need to know our Stories. (I will tell you something about stories. They aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have – all we have to fight off illness and death. We don’t have anything without our stories). Hence deep healing therapeutic work require the courage to look deeply into our souls – our stories of who were are and how we have become who we are.
• I will bring copies of the book.
• The key message in this presentation is reclaiming our generational life stories which define who we were, and are and how we have become who we are. We therefore need healing from trauma: a return to wholeness, in its many layers and dimensions.
• When shared, in truth-telling within our sovereign responsibility, in reclaiming our sovereign rights and responsibilities, in our involvement in cultural healing ceremonies and educaring, we help healing happen, within ourselves, across our communal - social groups, and in the country now called Australia. We also challenge our colonisers to look at themselves and what they bought to this country now called Australia: the colonial prisons – youth detention industry – the child removal policies.
• When we share our stories across history, we teach about the conflict and complexity of colonisation which creates marginalisation.
• Hence we also challenge the educational industry to reclaim the meaning of education – from the Latin ‘educare – to rear up - nurture the children - to draw out from them - to lead - to show the way.’
• When we reclaim our cultural and spiritual identities, our responsibility to care for country - care for kin, we reclaim agency and sovereignty, as we teach our young people that country teaches - country heals - country feeds our body-mind-spirit.
• In our sovereign responsibility we also reclaim our right to help healing happen through our cultural and spiritual obligations to each other, on our lands and water-ways, across our nations.
• This has been the journey of We Al-li, that continues to grow and develop.
Biography
Of Jiman-Bundjalung (Aboriginal Australian) and Anglo-Celtic - German ancestry, Judy Atkinson’s PhD Trauma Trails – Recreating Song Lines: the transgenerational effects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia, created the groundwork for the under- and post-graduate courses of trauma studies, while she was head of Gnibi College of Indigenous Australian Peoples at Southern Cross University. Since retiring from academic life Judy, with her daughter Dr Caroline Atkinson, through the organisation We Al-li. have focused on community based educational – healing approaches in skill- development responding to trans- and intergenerational trauma consequent of colonisation. She took this work with her into educational programs in Etna Creek Prison working with Aboriginal men in helping to Recreate their Circle of Wellbeing, and to Alice Springs prison, in support of the women’s need for healing recovery, from the trauma that influenced their offending behaviours.
