racism

21/11/2022

The Politics of Personal Distress

A couple of months ago I came across an excellent article in the Guardian newspaper by UK clinical psychologist Sanah Ahsan entitled ‘I’m a psychologist – and I believe we’ve been told devastating lies about mental health’. The article is well worth reading. It is important to note […]
17/02/2022

Colonisation and its Impact: A Compilation of Blogs

The process of colonisation and its devastating impact on generations of Aboriginal peoples provides the backdrop to the story of the Aboriginal child artists of Carrolup. In this blog post, I provide links to 15 of my previous blogs on The Carrolup Story relating to various elements of […]
22/09/2021

Marion’s Film Story, Part 1

I first became interested in Aboriginal culture and in Indigenous healing after reading Judy Atkinson’s wonderful book Trauma Trails: Recreating Song Lines – The Transgenerational Effects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia. I developed the educational initiative Sharing Culture which aimed to help Indigenous peoples heal from historical trauma. That website […]
13/07/2020

Carrolup Native Settlement

I continue including sections of our book Connection: Aboriginal Child Artists Captivate Europe, this one focused on the setting up of Carrolup Native Settlement. ‘The economic situation of Aboriginal people living in the South West deteriorates during the first decade of the 20th Century. From 1911, many Aboriginal […]
02/07/2020

Facets of Colonisation, Part 3

In my last two blogs you can see here and here, I have included sections of our book Connection: Aboriginal Child Artists Captivate Europe that described various elements of the colonisation process in Western Australia. Description of the colonisation process, which impacted so badly on Aboriginal people,  provides a context […]
02/06/2020

Why is the Story of Carrolup Important?

‘The first step in re-establishing healthy communities is to acknowledge and understand the impact of the colonial legacy on the lives of Aboriginal people today and the various pathways necessary for healing from historical trauma, using both cultural and contemporary understandings and processes.’ Pat Dudgeon, Helen Milroy and Roz […]
11/05/2020

The Legacy of Carrolup

On the 2nd February 1950, Mrs Rutter told the boys of Carrolup that she would do all in her power to make their work known throughout the world. Seventy years later, John Stanton and I are trying to help the children of Carrolup reach out again, through our […]
20/02/2019

Importance of the Carrolup Story

“The first step in re-establishing healthy communities is to acknowledge and understand the impact of the colonial legacy on the lives of Aboriginal people today and the various pathways necessary for healing from historical trauma, using both cultural and contemporary understandings and processes.” Pat Dudgeon, Helen Milroy and […]
29/01/2019

Racism and Social Darwinism

This is the third of a series of articles focused on the social, political and cultural context in which the story about the Aboriginal child artists of Carrolup took place. [Please note, some people may find the ideas described in this article to be upsetting and offensive]. A […]
22/01/2019

Mr Neville: Removing Aboriginal Children From Their Family

This is the third of a series of blogs that considers the social, political and cultural context existing prior to our story of the Aboriginal child artists of Carrolup. I focus on the policy of removing Aboriginal people from their families, which resulted in what we now know […]
30/11/2018

Farewell Albany & Project Importance

Good morning. Today, John and I head back to Perth this morning after a very enjoyable week staying with Tony Davis in Albany. We’ll drop into The Kodja Place in Kojunup to meet John Benn, who as a youngster was taken to Carrolup by his mother, a local teacher. […]
09/11/2018

Colonisation

The colonisation of Australia by Europeans had a massive negative impact on a peoples and culture that has existed for over 50,000 years. The first settlers brought diseases that wiped out large numbers of Aboriginal people, as they had no immunity to European diseases. Many of the survivors existed […]
09/11/2018

The Impact of Colonisation

The impact of colonisation on Indigenous peoples has been similar in a number of countries, including Australia, Canada, America and New Zealand. In her book Trauma Trails: Recreating Songlines, Professor Judy Atkinson describes how the control of Indigenous peoples by the coloniser was facilitated by three main types of […]
09/11/2018

12 Principles of Indigenous Healing

When I first developed the educational healing resource Sharing Culture, I did a great deal of reading about the healing of trauma and intergenerational trauma. I summarised what I considered to be 12 principles of healing, which are relevant to Aboriginal people here in Australia and other Indigenous […]
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