TRANSCRIPT
"I now started to ask the question: 'why did it happen and why did it happen so violently?' Psychopathic behaviours. And I found that griefology doesn't shame, blame, vilify, demonise."
"You know, you look at our life expectancy, and it's something we have to talk about. I've had my funeral plan written out since I was a teenager and I thought that was normal."
Everyone, at some point or another, will lose someone or something they love.
And yet grief is still seen as a taboo, particularly in dominant western cultures.
So how do different cultures hold space for grief, and are some better equipped than others?
And how can we think about grief beyond the concept of death, looking at other profoundly life-changing forms of loss?
I'm Catriona Stirrat and this is the third instalment of 'Living Loss'.
In this episode, we explore the world's oldest continuous culture, Indigenous Australians, and the varying complex ways First Nations Australians navigate grief.
Rosemary Wanganeen, who you might remember from our first episode, a proud Kaurna and Wirringu Aboriginal woman, and Stolen Generations member.
Exploring this traumatic experience led her to discover the deeply unresolved grief that permeates through much Australia's post-European settlement history and broader European histories.
You might recall this was prompted by a profound realisation of her own trauma and grief, which she describes as phase one, when she found herself at a women's shelter at age 28.
"I had to do all of that research to come out the other end. And having that really deep understanding of grief forgiveness, not religious forgiveness. Grief forgiveness, through griefology, enables a person to go through a deep grieving process, to come out the other end to forgive. Whereas, religious forgiveness, which became part of our story as Aboriginal people, they talk about forgiveness to forgive and forget and just move on. That doesn't sustain, that doesn't do any healing whatsoever. Now I know the power in the grieving process to be able to forgive, to sustain me in thriving."
In developing her seven phases of grief framework, Rosemary delved right back into the history of Australia's colonisation.
Following phase two, which she says involved recognising and exploring her unhealed childhood losses and unresolved grief, Rosemary decided to look into Australia's colonial history.
She asked herself the question: 'who had the right to take me away from my family?'
"I now started to ask the question why did it happen and so violently? So sort of psychopathic behaviours. And I found that griefology doesn't shame, blame, vilify, demonise. And here I am I'm just wanting to understand why was I removed from my family? Looking at 1788 begged the question, if 1788 arrived so violently, why did it happen? Which then meant that the English and the convicts who came here, they must have a story. Something must have happened to them, but what's their story?"
This led Rosemary back as far as the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato.
She concluded that unresolved grief was responsible for the violent colonialism that shaped the experience of Aboriginal Australians, as well as other Indigenous peoples around the world.
"And so I go all the way back to finding a guy called Plato. And Plato coined the idea in 388 BC that grief is not only illogical but it's a weakness. And I thought, whoa, something is in that. And then I started to read between the lines, and realise that, well my thesis is: when humans shut down their healthy grieving processes, particularly healthy grief anger, they shut it down out of fear of being labelled weak. What happens to their physical body I'm thinking? And then I thought it's gotta go somewhere. It escalates. Unhealthy grief anger suppressed escalates to unhealthy grief anger, escalates to rage, escalates to violence, escalates to psychopathic behaviours."
Yarraka Bayles is a proud Birri Gubba Gungalu and Wonnarua Bunjalung woman, and a cultural intelligence facilitator at The BlackCard - an Aboriginal Australian organisation established by Aboriginal Elders and Educators Mary Graham and Lilla Watson.
Yarraka speaks to people all across Australia on a daily basis, educating them on the traumatic history of colonisation for Aboriginal Australians, as well as the ancient civilisation of community and kinship fostered by Aboriginal Australian cultures.
Yarraka has experienced multiple deaths within her family from a young age, an experience she describes as sadly common in Aboriginal families.
"I think the first major death in my family that was so close to me was my Mum. I was 19 years old, a single mother of two year old twin daughters at the time. And it was so unexpected because she was only 45 and she went back to Redfern for a bit of a holiday, and never came back. So I dealt with it very differently to the way that I've learnt to deal with grief and loss and trauma in my older years. My natural reaction was to self-medicate, and just to fill that huge void I was feeling, and anger. Like 'why my Mum?' Like anyone, just, I guess I expected to have my Mum in my life forever. She was very staunch, strong, she just seemed invincible."
This grief was only compounded by subsequent deaths in her family.
Yarraka noticed herself imitating her mother's life of substance abuse, and only in recent years came to realise this to be the intergenerational trauma which is often deeply embedded into the lives of Aboriginal Australians.
"She never spoke about what happened to her when she was little, my Nan never spoke about what happened to her. We go back five generations of Stolen children on my Mum's side and they never once spoke about it. You would never know, they always presented so strong. And now I know why looking back on it. Everything makes perfect sense. Trauma is stored in our DNA for at least seven generations, so that really put things into perspective for me. And what I think is most difficult within our communities is there's no translation, so when we talk to people with a language barrier, we never had intergenerational trauma here. So colonisation introduced the disconnection of culture, language, ceremony. Leading to the statistics that we're seeing now."
Intergenerational trauma is something Uncle Michael Welsh is also sadly familiar with.
The 71-year-old is a member of the Stolen Generation, removed from his family at just 10 years old, alongside his six siblings.
According to a 2018-19 report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, there were an estimated 27,200 surviving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 50 and over who had been removed from their families and communities, representing 1 in 5 of the total Indigenous Australian population from this age category.
The federal government's 1997 'Bringing them Home' report describes 'grief and loss as the predominant themes' of their inquiry into the Stolen Generations.
Uncle Michael speaks warmly of life before he was taken away to Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Home in the New South Wales mid north coast, an institution run by the state government with the intention of forcibly assimilating Aboriginal boys into non-Indigenous Australian society.
"We danced around the campfire of a night time, this was what the beautiful life was like. Bob played the violin, Mum played the piano-accordion. And we danced around the campfire of a night time, while they talked about the stars, and they always had little sticks in there and they was always drawing in the ground. And they'd chuck something in the fire, I think it was little sticks in the fire, and the sparks and the flash and it would flash up and you'd see it twinkling up. And they'd talk about the sparks, and they'd talk about the flames, and the colours, the flames would change colours. So that was a world that was such a perfect world, and we did school, and then they took us."
Uncle Michael and his siblings embarked on a 13-hour train ride from Coonamble, in central-western New South Wales, to the Mid North Coast, on the stolen land of the Dunghutti.
"We got put us on the train and I can still see Mum and the Uncles standing there waving to us with the little handkerchiefs they had. And Central Station became a very important part in our lives, because that's where we were separated from there. My brother Barry and myself, we were told we were going on another train. And my brother Barry asked about our younger brothers and sisters and they said 'they've gotta come on the next train, you will be right, don't worry about it'. So there's nothing we could do about that. So that was the last place that we knew our family... family loved us you know. That was broken there, right on the split, up there."
Uncle Michael says he was subject to horrific sexual, physical and emotional abuse in the institution.
But the boys were also stripped of their identity in every sense.
"I was Michael when I went into the homes. When we passed through those gates of hell as we called it, we were given numbers. My brother and myself, he was given number 17 and I was given number 36. Everything that we had and wore had those brands on it. If we got caught using each other's names we got punished. We weren't allowed to talk, we had no choice to make a decision, and I know now at my life now, that all of these things that they programmed us to do, they programmed us to be slaves for the colonised world."
When Michael was finally allowed to leave the home at 18 years old, he was caught between two worlds, feeling like he belonged to neither.
He turned to alcohol and violence as a response to this all-consuming grief and trauma.
"When I got old enough to go into the pub and drink that was where I ended up headed, because I didn't fit in, at all. I was no longer part of my home community. I finished in and up out of the jail system like a yo-yo, and fighting. I often show it, I've got teeth marks across my knuckles. I didn't look after myself in that sense. I didn't know I was re-enacting what these people in that home's done to us. They taught us how to fight, taught us how to knock people down, and told us we were never allowed to ask questions or do anything. So that was coming out in me."
Connection to community and Country is vital in breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma and grief.
Yarraka says she's passionate about raising awareness around intergenerational trauma as a vital step in breaking the grief cycle, including in her own family.
She believes the higher rates of trauma, substance abuse and incarceration for Aboriginal Australians today are as a result of undiagnosed or misdiagnosed intergenerational trauma.
Yarraka says leaning into culture and country proved to be a more empowering way to navigate grief and trauma when her Dad died in 2016.
"Travelling to different parts of the country, and seeing how we have a real strength-based approach with how we deal with what we call Sorry Business. It's not just, you know, attending a funeral, it's the whole process of before, during and after the passing of someone. But we give grief a place, and we call that Sorry Business. It's ceremony, it's sacred time for family to come together, to sit, laugh, cry, share memories. But also remember that we have a deep respect for the afterlife. My grandma always used to remind us the living belong with the living, the dead belong with the dead. And it's because of that strength-based approach, we come together, we support each other. Because when one member of our community passes we all feel it."
This connection became central to Michael's healing, when he finally decided to speak 50 years after this trauma.
Michael was prompted to delve into his own grief through the fear of witnessing his children experience the same trauma, with his eldest son being taken away from him at birth.
"The pain never goes away. We wake it up each time when we do these types of talks. But I understand above everything else that if we don't talk about it, it slowly kills us from the inside. I'm identifying this trauma that is growing just from me. My concern is now that the next generation are the ones who are going to suffer. While ever they take children away from families, families become broken, communities become broken. So it isn't possible to heal communities, but it is possible to rebuild family structure. Happy families make happy communities. We tell these stories and talk about stuff now that has happened to us in the past. They are the knowledge-holders of the future."
As a member of The Healing Foundation's Stolen Generations Reference Group, Michael's healing most often takes place among other men who experienced the trauma of being taken away from their families.
He refers to this as collective healing.
"We are a community of our own, right? And this is what we understand now as we come together. Collective healing is that sense that when we get together we trust each other. And trust is the most powerful thing, it is the magical word with us. And because of where we were, it's very difficult for us to trust anybody, because of what happened to us. So when we give our trust it's so precious, but if it gets broken then it doesn't go back."
This vulnerability is something Yarraka encourages on a daily basis, both in her work and personal life.
"I think there's a real beauty when we're able to be vulnerable and share our stories. And that's a huge feature of our culture. So I'd just like people to lean into that strength-based approach of our culture. Whether you're Indigenous or non-Indigenous there's beautiful ways of being, knowing and doing. And when we can take into perspective all those different perspectives, I think it can have an amazing, profound impact on peoples."
In our next episode, we will be turning towards other forms of grief beyond death, some of which are unrecognised or unspoken about in our broader society.
