I've been quiet on here the last year. I have felt my desire to write slow from a healthy, near-constant gush down to a trickle and then the very font of my creative well scab over in an ichor of confusion and shame.
What would I write? Do I compound the misery I see out here with my own detached postulations? Do I expose elements of culture that most Australians would find shocking and abhorrent? Do I play out the role of the white civiliser, and condemn history to the same grinding cycle of alienation?
This confusion has had me ricocheting between gut-wrenching analysis and spiritual numbness...there doesn't seem to be a way out of it. The weight of colonial history hangs heavy and in the air; interactions seem scripted, wooden, mechanical. Meetings are formulaic. Shame hangs heavy in a room full of white people, meeting to discuss the community wellbeing of a population that is 90% indigenous. The same tired old clichés are trotted out: 'the parents need to take responsibility'; 'there will be no change unless it comes from the community'; 'why are the kids out so late anyway?'. The tone is one of quiet despair and resentment. And underneath that, shame.
It is one of the most difficult spaces to occupy in a country that is considered generally easygoing. The intersection of colonial culture and identity with genuine indigenous autonomy and difference is a killing field of projections, aspirations, pragmatics and imperatives that yield a high-pressure environment that chews up and spits out most white people in under two years. Burnout rate is massive, and to escape the pain of existence at this periphery most of the leathery long-termers of remote communities have managed to construct tightly defended walls of cynicism, effectively deadening their capacity to feel to a manageable pulse of disappointing validation.
I am focussing on the experience of white people here, because that is what I know. I still have no idea what it is like to be of a continuing live indigenous culture. The people here are still a mystery, despite the fact that I have shared far more time, space and experiences with them than the average Aussie. The measure of our mutual and continued ignorance and misunderstanding is truly unfathomable.
And this is where the dead energy is. It has collected here, culturally, in the chasm of our failure to understand and to be with one another. The gap between human and other has pooled layers and layers of cultural shame into our race relations. It is woven into the fabric of our relationships with ourselves and our collective identities, and our aversion to this feeling means that we are constantly trying to reinvent the state of affairs through well-intended but deeply misguided imperatives.
Sitting in my office, listening to an indigenous DV offender asking for assistance in evading his charges, accusing his partner of lying and of the police conspiring with lawyers to lock him up, I am in this shame. Shoulders slumped, head heavy, I feel the heavy weight in my stomach and the desire to be somewhere, anywhere else. I woodenly ask him follow-up questions, such as why he thinks the police are planning together with the lawyers to incarcerate him and whether he is really sure that there is no other reason for the charges – charges that have been corroborated by close family members of the victim. I try to bring a sense of self-awareness to this young angry and confused man, but the back of my mind refuses to let me or him off the hook. Thoughts like 'how can he be so dishonest' and 'I didn't come here to help DV offenders to dodge charges and responsibility' bounce around my head and I prickle with disgust at the situation.
A deeper cultural shame feeds this agony. A sense of an ancient wrong that has forever tipped the scales of fortune against the indigenous people of this nation. A wrong which we colonials are and will always be responsible for.
And while most of Australia denies or minimises this legacy, an entire industry has developed here in the NT to shape and transform it. Yet despite all our efforts we still cannot sit in it. We are deeply uncomfortable with sitting in the fire of our shame.
Each iteration of indigenous policy - from protection, assimilation, self-determination and now self-management is a link in the same chain of our inability to understand the aspirations and worldview of indigenous australians. Yet we relentlessly forge ahead, in an attempt to escape from our own discomfort with the indigenous other - an other that is often radically different from ourselves. The tendency is always to seek to homogenise the other; the latest 'close the gap' initiatives seek to impose outcomes that the mainstream regard as self-evidently valuable, but indigenous communities continue to reject.
So how do we move this staid dynamic forward? How do we relate on a human level? How do we respectfully negotiate from a place of connected concern and not a frantic and aversive intervention?
I have recently been spiritually resuscitated at a 9 day Nonviolent Communication retreat. One of the workshops that touched me deeply was on the richness of shame – how at the core of shame there is a beautiful need that is not getting met. It is often belonging, dignity or safety, but can be any number of others. What struck me is that to access the rich juiciness of connecting to a core need (i.e. feeling empowered), I had to sit in my shame first. Really be there, sit in it and embrace all the judgments and turmoil that came along with it. And it was unpleasant. Parts of myself that I would label as racist came to the surface. Other parts that I judge as weak or 'difficult' also make their presence known. But sitting in it, embracing it all and allowing it to express shifts something. It shifts the aversion I feel towards the shame; the moment in which it arises and the history which has triggered it. It allows me to be okay with it.
And what is really perverse, is that I am so much more human when I sit in this place and practice self-empathy regardless. I find that all that aversion and judgement is not there anymore. What is there is a human – scared, confused, looking for help and answers. And me, wanting understanding and to contribute. And moving from this place of compassion is the only hope I see of healing any kind of divide - be it personal, interpersonal or cultural.
So I invite anyone who notices shame in their lives to make time to embrace it. Really allow yourself to feel into it and into what you are longing for. Recovering these parts of ourselves makes us more whole, and less likely to react to enemy images and spurt distrust into the confluential network-matrix of human relations that keeps this party going.
Pace out shame-lovers.
What would I write? Do I compound the misery I see out here with my own detached postulations? Do I expose elements of culture that most Australians would find shocking and abhorrent? Do I play out the role of the white civiliser, and condemn history to the same grinding cycle of alienation?
This confusion has had me ricocheting between gut-wrenching analysis and spiritual numbness...there doesn't seem to be a way out of it. The weight of colonial history hangs heavy and in the air; interactions seem scripted, wooden, mechanical. Meetings are formulaic. Shame hangs heavy in a room full of white people, meeting to discuss the community wellbeing of a population that is 90% indigenous. The same tired old clichés are trotted out: 'the parents need to take responsibility'; 'there will be no change unless it comes from the community'; 'why are the kids out so late anyway?'. The tone is one of quiet despair and resentment. And underneath that, shame.
It is one of the most difficult spaces to occupy in a country that is considered generally easygoing. The intersection of colonial culture and identity with genuine indigenous autonomy and difference is a killing field of projections, aspirations, pragmatics and imperatives that yield a high-pressure environment that chews up and spits out most white people in under two years. Burnout rate is massive, and to escape the pain of existence at this periphery most of the leathery long-termers of remote communities have managed to construct tightly defended walls of cynicism, effectively deadening their capacity to feel to a manageable pulse of disappointing validation.
I am focussing on the experience of white people here, because that is what I know. I still have no idea what it is like to be of a continuing live indigenous culture. The people here are still a mystery, despite the fact that I have shared far more time, space and experiences with them than the average Aussie. The measure of our mutual and continued ignorance and misunderstanding is truly unfathomable.
And this is where the dead energy is. It has collected here, culturally, in the chasm of our failure to understand and to be with one another. The gap between human and other has pooled layers and layers of cultural shame into our race relations. It is woven into the fabric of our relationships with ourselves and our collective identities, and our aversion to this feeling means that we are constantly trying to reinvent the state of affairs through well-intended but deeply misguided imperatives.
Sitting in my office, listening to an indigenous DV offender asking for assistance in evading his charges, accusing his partner of lying and of the police conspiring with lawyers to lock him up, I am in this shame. Shoulders slumped, head heavy, I feel the heavy weight in my stomach and the desire to be somewhere, anywhere else. I woodenly ask him follow-up questions, such as why he thinks the police are planning together with the lawyers to incarcerate him and whether he is really sure that there is no other reason for the charges – charges that have been corroborated by close family members of the victim. I try to bring a sense of self-awareness to this young angry and confused man, but the back of my mind refuses to let me or him off the hook. Thoughts like 'how can he be so dishonest' and 'I didn't come here to help DV offenders to dodge charges and responsibility' bounce around my head and I prickle with disgust at the situation.
A deeper cultural shame feeds this agony. A sense of an ancient wrong that has forever tipped the scales of fortune against the indigenous people of this nation. A wrong which we colonials are and will always be responsible for.
And while most of Australia denies or minimises this legacy, an entire industry has developed here in the NT to shape and transform it. Yet despite all our efforts we still cannot sit in it. We are deeply uncomfortable with sitting in the fire of our shame.
Each iteration of indigenous policy - from protection, assimilation, self-determination and now self-management is a link in the same chain of our inability to understand the aspirations and worldview of indigenous australians. Yet we relentlessly forge ahead, in an attempt to escape from our own discomfort with the indigenous other - an other that is often radically different from ourselves. The tendency is always to seek to homogenise the other; the latest 'close the gap' initiatives seek to impose outcomes that the mainstream regard as self-evidently valuable, but indigenous communities continue to reject.
So how do we move this staid dynamic forward? How do we relate on a human level? How do we respectfully negotiate from a place of connected concern and not a frantic and aversive intervention?
I have recently been spiritually resuscitated at a 9 day Nonviolent Communication retreat. One of the workshops that touched me deeply was on the richness of shame – how at the core of shame there is a beautiful need that is not getting met. It is often belonging, dignity or safety, but can be any number of others. What struck me is that to access the rich juiciness of connecting to a core need (i.e. feeling empowered), I had to sit in my shame first. Really be there, sit in it and embrace all the judgments and turmoil that came along with it. And it was unpleasant. Parts of myself that I would label as racist came to the surface. Other parts that I judge as weak or 'difficult' also make their presence known. But sitting in it, embracing it all and allowing it to express shifts something. It shifts the aversion I feel towards the shame; the moment in which it arises and the history which has triggered it. It allows me to be okay with it.
And what is really perverse, is that I am so much more human when I sit in this place and practice self-empathy regardless. I find that all that aversion and judgement is not there anymore. What is there is a human – scared, confused, looking for help and answers. And me, wanting understanding and to contribute. And moving from this place of compassion is the only hope I see of healing any kind of divide - be it personal, interpersonal or cultural.
So I invite anyone who notices shame in their lives to make time to embrace it. Really allow yourself to feel into it and into what you are longing for. Recovering these parts of ourselves makes us more whole, and less likely to react to enemy images and spurt distrust into the confluential network-matrix of human relations that keeps this party going.
Pace out shame-lovers.
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