Connection to Community

Connection

By: Christine McFarlane

I have learned that connection to community is integral to helping you in your healing. The notion that “if you are connected to community, you will be okay in the end” is comforting to me because it is within that I know being involved with community has been what has saved me from a path of self-destruction.

My connection to community began when I first walked into the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto almost six years ago, and offered to volunteer. At that time I was like a lost soul, searching for anything to fill the emptiness I felt inside. At the Native Centre, I learned to connect with others. Those I interacted with encouraged me. I was taught my culture, the traditions and the language of my people and this enabled me to come out of the shell that I had previously been in.

Connecting to community has also helped me in my journey through my studies at the University of Toronto. Without community, I do not know where I would be. In connecting to community I have learned so much and it is in that knowledge that I carry with me, that I have been discovering who I am as a First Nations woman and as a writer.

Lately, people have been telling me that I have really learned to ‘find my voice’. I do not think that I could have found my voice without my friends and the people in the community.  With encouragement and support, I have been able to find my wings and soar.  Community has been everything in my healing journey and it is here that I say chi miigwetch to those who have helped me along the way. I could not have done it without you. You know who you are.

The Scoop: By: Christine McFarlane

The courage of many of the people who spoke at the open microphone at the Public Rally in support of people taken during “the 60’s scoop and former CAS survivors” made me feel more empowered to make my own voice heard in the sea of thousands who went through the Scoop too. 

It is because of my studies and the re learning of my culture, traditions and language in recent years that I learned that what happened to me was a part of the Canadian government’s practice of removing large numbers of Native children from their families and their communities. This happened throughout the 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s and under Child Welfare laws this led to interracial adoptions of which the government did not consider the consequences.

The government-sanctioned abduction of First Nations children from their families had many repercussions. When adopted into a different culture, where you are not allowed to practice your traditions or speak your language, you grow up with a sense of loss within and insecurity that something about your background is wrong. 

As a part of that “Scoop”, this is what happened to me. At six months of age, I was taken from my biological parents, along with my other siblings and put into a foster care group home. At the time, the Child Services in Winnipeg felt that my biological parents were unfit to raise their children. My biological father, I have never known and will never know because he was subsequently murdered in 1990, and I met my biological mother twice but I really don’t have much of a relationship with her. A lot of the reasons of why I don’t have a relationship with her are emotionally conflicting for me. On one hand, I want a mother, and yearn for a mother but on the other hand, I know that because I grew up without her , she is still very much a stranger to me. And I fear that opening my heart and letting my guard down will just lead to more hurt.

I was adopted out of the province of Manitoba and into the province of Ontario to a non-native family. There was emotional and physical abuse, and it didn’t end until I was essentially given up by my adoptive parents at the age of ten and put back into the care of the CAS.  During my time with my adoptive family, I was locked in my room on a daily basis, with a deadbolt on my door and an alarm that would go off as soon as I would touch the doorknob. Food was withheld from me, and I was repeatedly told I would never amount to anything.

I went through a lot of emotional anguish when my adoptive parents gave me up. I went through a group home and three foster homes and engaged in a lot of self-destructive behaviors’ because I believed that if my parents did not want me “I must not be worth anything.” 

Fast forward to today and I am studying at the University of Toronto specializing in Aboriginal Studies, doing what I love the most- writing and I have embarked on a path of healing. On this path of healing I have realized that “I can no longer try to destroy myself, because it is within me to correct the wrongs that were done to me and change the legacy of my family, one step at a time by making my voice heard.”

Sydney Harbor Bridge and Sydney Opera House By: Christine McFarlane

Australia Story

Australia Story:

By: Christine McFarlane

On the other side of the globe Aboriginal communities face similar colonial impacts as their counterparts- the First Nations people of Turtle Island.

“Colonization is not just about the settling of land, it is also a continued practice of dispossessing the Indigenous people through various means,” says Dr. Karen O’Brien, a lecturer in the Indigenous Studies program at the University of Sydney. On this July day, O’Brien’s class includes two Anishinaabe students from the University of Toronto who are participating in a five-week immersion program to learn about Aboriginal Australia.

O’Brien states “upon the time of contact in 1788, the Aboriginal population was estimated to be at 1 million.” It was after contact and the complete alteration of landscape that led to the extinction of native fauna and flora that “Aboriginal people became affected” and their ‘population became decimated through disease, social policies and violence and dropped to around 400,000 people.”

 Social policies in Australia have included the government-sanctioned abduction of Indigenous children—known as the “Stolen Generation”—and the implementation of the Aborigine Protection Board, a government agency established in 1909 that was given the power to remove children without parental consent and a court order. 

Though there was an attempt through social policies to remove Indigenous Australians from their place of origin, it is evident through the different lectures given by the professors at the University of Sydney that Indigenous Australians are anything but removed from their country, languages and traditions and that their heritage is alive and thriving.

Cultural identity for Indigenous Australians is similar to that of the First Nations people of Canada. They see land and culture as being inextricably tied together and they convey this through various forms of creative expression, whether that is through visual arts, music, dance or literature.

Throughout their time at the University of Sydney, students were introduced to various mediums to dispel any misplaced notions that they may have had about the Indigenous peoples of Australia, and learned that there are several hundred Indigenous peoples of Australia with many of their tribes existing before the British colonization of Australia in 1788. These groupings include the Eora; Gadigal; Guringai; Wangal; Gammeraigal and Wallumedegel people.

Site visits included visits to the New South Wales Art Gallery, the New South Wales Parliament House, a Tribal Warrior Cruise, where students embarked on a journey by taking a boat across the Sydney Harbor to an island for an authentic Aboriginal cultural performance.  They also watched Indigenous directed movies such as the film “Ten Canoes,” that was born out of a collaboration with the Indigenous Australian actor David Gulpilil and the non-Indigenous direcot Rolf de Heer, watched a narrative,”One Night the Moon,” directed by Rachel Perkins that showed the practical and moral implications that overt racism played out between the non-Indigenous and Indigenous people on the frontier, a documentary film on Australia’s grandmother of literature, Kath Walker, who was a poet, activist and public speaker, who in her time was “largely responsible for a change in attitude towards her people.”

Students also gained knowledge about the traditional food of the Ngemba Tribe of North West New South Wales when Sharon Winsor of Thulli Dreaming’s gave a bush tucker workshop that involved native plants, bush fruits, traditional cooking, plant uses and medicinal uses, and bush tucker tastings with damper, native jams and rainforest punch.  The workshop also consisted of Winsor discussing the various instruments used in hunting and the giving of an emu caller (a traditional instrument used in hunting that imitates the call of an emu) to each student to bring home with them.

Outside of class time, students did their own sightseeing with a few going to see the sacred Three Sisters formation in the Blue Mountains- The Blue Mountains region is an area close to Sydney in New South Wales Australia, and is less than an hours drive from Sydney. The name given to this grouping of 900 metre peaks refers to a legend of three Katoomba sisters who wanted to marry three brothers from the Nepean tribe, contrary to established custom. A witch doctor transformed the sisters into rocks to protect them in an ensuing battle, but the shaman was killed before he could reverse the spell. This legend is claimed to come from an Indigenous Australian Dreamtime legend of the Gundungurra People of Katoomba New South Wales, Australia, an Indigenous tribe whose land surrounds the Blue Mountains area.

Indigenous Creative Expression Week 5 from Summer Abroad in Australia

Christine McFarlane

Reflection Journal Week 5

I especially liked our topic for our final week, Indigenous Creative Expression, and how we were able to see the work of various Indigenous artists of Australia. I have found that throughout my studies here in Australia, and back home in Canada, Aboriginal visual art, music and dance has become an integral way of maintaining cultural identity.

Cultural identity through creative expression is important for everyone but with Indigenous peoples, I believe creative expression takes on a lot more meaning because the art of Australian Aboriginal peoples is one of the oldest, richest and most complex forms of creative expression in human history. Through art and its various expressions, the non-Indigenous society can be privy to how a culture other than their own keeps their traditions and customs alive.

According to the book ‘Aboriginal Australia: An Introductory Reader in Aboriginal Studies’, authors Colin and Eleanor Burke and Bill Edwards state “ the art of Aboriginal Australians today take on many forms”(Bourke, Edwards) and “despite significant change and diversity, the art retains an underlying unity of inspiration-the land and human relationships that are associated with it. It has solid links to the past, but is firmly rooted as political, social and creative action in the present.” (Bourke, Edwards)

The statement that ‘art retains its political, social and creative action in the present” was clearly evident when lecturer Michelle Blanchard relayed how Indigenous film portrays Indigenous people, issues or stories and allows mainstream society to witness “Australia’s relationship with its Indigenous peoples and heritage.” (Blanchard)

It is interesting to note that since the 1970’s, the portrayal of Indigenous peoples has transformed them from being seen as the stereotypical “uncivilized, noble savage’ to a people that are now conveyed as “fully fledged human beings with a normal range of personality” (Langton) and their presence is seen with a subtlety and human fragility that we see in other mainstream films in the non-Indigenous film industry.

This is evident in not only the movie “One Night the Moon” directed by Rachel Perkins but also in the following short film clips of “Nana”, “Hush”, “Bloodlines”, “Two Big Boys”, and “Custard,” produced and directed by a Bit of Black Business. (Film Australia) In “One Night the Moon”, the narrative is based on the true story of a child who went missing in the outback of New South Wales in 1932. Due to its time in history, we see how overt racism plays out on the frontier when the father emphatically states “no blackfella is to set foot on my land”. (Langton) The father ignores the fact that the Aboriginal tracker who is considered the “best tracker” by the police to find the girl, could very well find his daughter alive.  The very nature of how racism plays out on the frontier at that time, results in tragedy because the little girl is eventually found dead, and this distrust of someone who was seen as very capable of finding the little girl, because of his skin color, and what he represented draws the audience into the very “vexed nature of racism”. (Langton) The audience is also drawn into its practical and moral implications, especially on behalf of the Aboriginal tracker, who must stand back and let the father of the little girl do what he believes to be right, which entails not using the Indigenous man’s expertise and knowledge of the land.

In conclusion, the five short film clips that I have also mentioned shows how the Australian Indigenous film industry has blossomed and has given Indigenous artists a wider sense of agency as to how they want to relay their stories, cultures and traditions. With this greater sense of agency, in the words of lecturer Michelle Blanchard “the ones who write the history also have agency of the past, present and future.” (Blanchard) This is an advance in the Aboriginal art and cultural movement that is truly inspiring to witness, because it plays an important role in helping to change the non-Indigenous peoples attitudes towards Indigenous peoples and brings about positive change.

Works Cited:

            Bit of Black Business. Film Australia. 2007. http://www.creativespirits.info/resources/movies/bit-of-black-business.html

Blanchard, Michelle. (29, July 2010) Class Lecture. University of Sydney, Koori Centre.

            Bourke, Colin& Eleanor, Edwards, Bill: Aboriginal Australia: An Introductory Reader in Aboriginal Studies. University of South Australia, 1994

            Langton, Marcia. 2006 Indigenous Performing Arts; Aboriginal Studies; The Performing Arts (incl. Music, Theatre and Dance); Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage.

Perkins, Rachel. One Night the Moon. 2001 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290794