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Indigenous counsellors’ conference a national first

July 13, 2004

indiginous conf copy.jpg Dr Pat O’Shane, returning to the University of New England to give the opening address at a national conference of Indigenous counsellors, psychologists, social workers and healers, emphasised the importance of healing at the community level.
Dr O’Shane, a Magistrate of the Local Court of NSW, was returning to UNE for
the first time since completing a nine-year term as Chancellor of the University at the end of last year. She spoke about the necessity for healing in the wake of the colonial experience, an experience that was “at the foundation of many contemporary problems of Indigenous communities”.
“The illnesses within these communities are perfectly normal responses to
perfectly abnormal circumstances,” she said.

She warned her audience about the danger of “pathologising” Aboriginal
people: of linking them, as a matter of course, with “problems”. “Rather
than focusing on the individual (which is a Eurocentric approach), we should
be treating individuals as members of a community,” she said. A related
danger was the use of bureaucratic jargon in relation to the dispossession
of Aboriginal people. “We have a serious responsibility to be true to the
victims of dispossession and to ourselves, using language we can all
understand,” Dr O’Shane said.
The First National Conference for Indigenous Counsellors, Psychologists and
Healers, on July 9, 10 and 11, drew to Armidale many of Australia’s most
committed Indigenous practitioners, including people with affiliations to a
wide range of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander language groups.
UNE delivers Australia’s first university course in Aboriginal counselling
(the Diploma in Aboriginal Family and Community Counselling, introduced last
year), and the conference at UNE is the first to undertake a practical
exploration of counselling techniques in the context of Aboriginal culture
and tradition. One of the organisers of the conference, Ann Moir-Bussy (a
lecturer in Counselling in UNE’s School of Health), said the enthusiasm of
her Diploma students had been an essential factor in bringing the conference
about. She said that, among many other outcomes, the conference had begun to
move towards forming a national organisation by developing standards and
frameworks for Indigenous counsellors (many of whom work in isolation, in
remote parts of the country).
During the conference, Professor Judy Atkinson, from Southern Cross
University, reported on the role of traditional arts such as storytelling
and the drawing of “story maps” in helping individuals and communities to
recover from traumas such as those associated with the “Stolen Generations”

Posted by Lydia Roberts at July 13, 2004 12:04 PM