Working With Tribal Aboriginal People In Australia
I have worked with six different Aboriginal communities in Australia and find that Theraplay, either in its traditional form or with adaptations to fit local cultural patterns, a very helpful approach.
There is considerable political and social concern at present in Australia around the issue of the "stolen generation," the many thousands of Aboriginal children taken from their families and placed in foster or institutional care in the name of helping them grow up to be responsible citizens. Tales abound of parents returning from work to find all their children taken away, never to be seen again. Although some children were taken into foster care, the majority were placed in institutions. When I was in my twenties, | worked in such an institution. One of the white foster care workers fell in love with one of the Aboriginal babies. She desperately wanted to adopt him, but was not allowed to do so because it was considered better to keep the baby in an institution!
Apart from the resulting deep-seated bitterness of the Aboriginal people, this benighted policy has also left a whole generation with very little idea of how to parent their children. Alcohol and other drugs are much overused, partly as a way of dealing with the trauma they experienced and also because in traditional Aboriginal culture no rituals have ever existed to assist in the regulation of alcohol. Many Aboriginal families live in poverty. There is a very high rate of teenage pregnancy and often the parents spend all day sitting drunk in large family groups on the main footpath of country towns while the children run around neglected and unsupervised.
In traditional Aboriginal culture it is the grandmother who is the disciplinarian. The grandparents in my groups had all been raised in institutions. A few had managed to stop drinking and become reasonably functional. Their own children (the parents in my groups) had been raised by them as best they could, but of course they really had no idea how to parent, having never been properly parented themselves.
Traditionally a parent’s job is simply to "show love" for the child, which in practice looks (to an outsider) like ignoring them! So the child often does not listen to his or her parents, and often sees little of them.
All of the above problems are compounded by the fact that Aboriginal parenting traditions strongly value trial and error learning. It is foreign to their traditional culture to provide the kind of structure that white parents provide and they seldom intervene if a child is making mischief. For example, if the children are playing chasey or fighting in front of a shop as they often do, Aboriginal parents will yell at them from time to time but make no real effort to stop them. Because of their mischievous behavior Aboriginal children are often treated by whites with suspicion. Indeed, young Aboriginal children delight in using their ability to dart into shops and take goods by cunning, behavior that their parents openly condone because of their bitterness towards white society.
In the Aboriginal kinship system all relatives are termed "cousins" and, therefore, one grandmother may in fact have a very large number of children for whom she is responsible. Some grandmothers are severe alcoholics and are unable to look after their grandchildren for this reason. The grandfather is seldom involved in the daily care of the child. He only becomes involved once a boy enters puberty, and then only if the boy decides to go through the traditional tribal rites of passage. However, many boys now refuse to be initiated, preferring instead to adopt "white man’s ways," including Nike shoes and other symbols of white prosperity. This leaves the tribal elders and grandfathers disenfranchised and with no way of passing on the tribal secrets. Overall this is truly a culture in crisis.
In the dry season of last year I worked with the tribal people at Mowanjum, a primarily Aboriginal outback town of around 3,000 people, twenty kilometers out of Derby. To get there requires driving over dusty gravel roads. The buildings I worked in were fairly primitive with worn linoleum on the floors. There was usually a small table and a few old saggy lounge chairs scrounged up from the rubbish tip [dump], but not much else.
I was employed by the community to help the young mothers (no fathers were in evidence) and their young children develop personal and social skills as well as parenting skills. These sessions employed a mix of methods, but were mostly role-playing and Theraplay. For example, one morning the young women asked for assertiveness training to help them deal with the police, school, and hospital systems (with which they are in frequent conflict) and also with their menfolk. Their children (about 8 of them, mostly 2-4 year olds) were in the room with them. The children would not leave because their grandmother was there as well. Each tended to cling to his or her mother and cry if she got out of her chair, looking up at me with big terrified brown eyes. They were passive however, so they would just stand and cry helplessly rather than following her if she left the room.
On my second day there, a handsome Aboriginal male visitor happened to come into the building on business and walked into our group by mistake. In Aboriginal culture, men do not come in when there is "women’s business," but I asked for the women’s permission to include him in our role-play. He played the part of a "difficult" male, and played it with flair, much to the delight of the young women, who hooted with laughter at his antics. However, it was far too realistic for the children, who started to cry, and the young mothers started to get angry and impatient with them. So I was presented with a perfect opportunity to do Group Theraplay, first with the children and then their mothers using a range of fun activities. Great favorites were lotioning of feet, footprints, hiding M&M:s, bubble blowing and blowing cotton balls under each other’s armpits. Over time we developed all sorts of variants. From then on every day they requested "them games you play," and my only difficulty was to make sure that these very deprived young women didn’t take over the activities from their children. Nurturing activities were very popular, but they wanted the grandmother and me to nurture them, and resisted nurturing their children. I also had to make sure that I was evenhanded with the time that I gave each one, or they would get cross and sulk. It was hard for them to get used to playing with their children, and especially hard for them to get the hang of Structuring activities. They refused to play "(Grand)mother May 1?" "Alphabet", or "Red Light Green Light." This was partly because the adult must structure the activity and the children must follow the rules, but also because they are "white" games.
When we added imaginary and culturally acceptable details, the games were very popular. They loved building a tower of pillows and having to wait for the all clear sign before they could jump and not be swallowed by an imaginary crocodile. We eventually developed a whole lot of stories about people going walkabout and having to consult the spirits of Dreamtime before they could take the next step. They loved this and became very creative. I had to get the grandmother to give the orders of course or it would never have worked, so I needed to know when to defer to her. Fortunately I have had a lot of contact with Aboriginal people as I have two Aboriginal foster brothers and have a special interest in Aboriginal culture, so I knew the rules.
It is impossible for me to tell everything that happened-there was far too much! But I noticed that the children over time became much less clingy, much more confident, and the young mothers were happier, more relaxed, and more nurturing. I even noticed them starting to set some limits for their children. It is only a start, but the results were inspiring. The community was extremely appreciative and they have asked me to come back. It was a great experience.
SERVICE CLUB OF CHICAGO FUNDS TTI
The Theraplay Institute recently received funding from The Service Club of Chicago. The Institute is pleased to be able to use this funding to upgrade equipment for clinical services and general office functioning. For information on other donations to The Institute see page 9 of this issue.