Working with Families Archives - ...metaphorically speaking

Collective Narrative Documentation: My experience capturing the Hard Won Skills and Wisdom of the Tiwi People

May 8, 2019

by metaphor with No Comment Collective Narrative Documentation Community Work Culturally sensitive therapeutic tools Group work Healing from Trauma Narrative therapy Narrative work with Aboriginal communities Practice tools Social Work with Indigenous communities Storytelling Working with Families Working with Women

Drug and alcohol misuse, neglect and abuse, violence and early death, overcrowding and ill health. It is a story that is all too well told and re-told about remote Aboriginal communities.

But it is just one story.

The methodology known as collective narrative documentation offers an opportunity for communities to voice an alternative story. One of strengths and skills, customs and traditional knowledge, values and beliefs, future hopes and intentions.

During my time on the Tiwi Islands, I had the privilege of hearing rich stories like this and authoring two collective documents. These documents reflect the words of Tiwi people who have been actively resisting the effects of colonisation, and using special skills and knowledge to stay strong in hard times.

In the narrative documentation process, I witnessed for myself the healing power of storytelling on many levels. The first happened as individuals shared their story around the campfire with members of their family as witnesses to their experience. The second was recognising that they were not alone in their experience as stories were gathered and documented into common themes. And the third happened as their exact words were read back to them. In some instances, I witnessed a fourth step when individuals felt the sense of contributing to the lives of others, by sharing their story with others outside of their community who were also going through hard times.

So how does the process of narrative collective documentation actually work? For a full description of the practice, I recommend reading Denborough’s article in Collective Narrative Practice. But I will briefly summarise the process here as it happened for me.

Lighting the fire, the central point for a storytelling circle.

Firstly, you need a gathering of people. For me, the opportunity to collect stories of strength occurred at a women’s healing camp in 2009 and two family bush camps in 2010 and 2011. Next, Denborough recommends a series of questions designed to generate rich content exploring the history of people’s skills and knowledge, and linking this to people and traditions. These are generally as follows:

What is the name of a special skill, knowledge or value that sustains you through difficult times?
Tell me a story about this skill, knowledge or value, when this made a difference to you or to others.
What is the history of this skill, knowledge or value? How did you learn this? Who did you learn it from?
Is this skill or value linked in some way to collective or cultural traditions?

Sometimes I would ask scaffolding questions, or translate these questions into simpler english, as I was working with people whose primary language was Tiwi. I also gained permission to record people’s stories as an audio file, so that I could go back and translate people’s exact words. When working on your own, I find it challenging to facilitate a conversation and record written notes at the same time. Listening back to audio files obviously takes a lot longer, but I felt it was important to capture people’s exact words in the document, so they would easily recognise them as their own.

Once I transcribed the audio files, I used a highlighter pen to identify common themes amongst the stories. Each theme became a different section of the document. I chose to head up each section with a short phrase I had heard which reflected the essence of that theme.

Writing up the document becomes a narrative process in its self by the author. It is good to begin the document with an acknowledgement in the collective voice of the unique knowledge and skills of the storytellers and hopes for sharing the document with an audience that might resonate with its content.

In the main body of the document, I like to use paragraphs incorporating people’s exact words in quotation marks, beginning and ending with a more general reflection in each section which highlights the collective experience. Other writers cleverly weave together third person and first person talk in each section, in a flowing sequence which captures both collective and individual experience. Every storyteller would recognise some of their own words reflected in each paragraph, even though quotation marks are not used. A good example of this is shown in Denborough’s article. One of my documents incorporates photographs taken on the bush camps that express another aspect of the theme.

The first draft was taken back to the participants to check its content for accuracy. At this stage, there was no agreement to share it outside of their community. After making any necessary changes, copies were made and distributed to the folks that participated. Ideally, permission would be gained to share the documents with other communities or individuals who are also going through difficult times. For different reasons, this never happened and time passed.

Until now.

It is now 10 years since my first collective narrative document was written with the Tiwi people. On my recent visit back to the islands, I finally gained permission from the Tiwi women to share them. It means a lot to them that their hard won skills and wisdom may help someone else, particularly as some of the storytellers have since passed away. It brings them comfort to know that their voice lives on.

It brings me great pleasure to bring share with you the following documents:

Healing Our Lives -The Special Skills and Knowledge of the Tiwi people in Keeping Families Strong Download

Sharing Our Stories – Keeping all of us women strong together Download

After reading these documents I invite you send a response back to the Tiwi community. You may like to use the following questions as a guide to formulate your response.

As you read this story about, I’m wondering what caught your attention? Which piece resonated with you?
What image came to your mind as your read this piece? What do you think the storyteller is hoping for, values, believes in, dreams about or is committed to?
Is there something about your own life that helps you connect with this part of the story? Can you share a story from your own experience that shows why this part of the story meant something to you.
So what does it mean for you now, having heard this story? How have you been moved? Where has this experience taken you to?

Collective narrative documentation is a way of responding to trauma that acknowledges the strengths of communities and has potential to build relationships between communities going through similar difficulties. If you are interested in using this approach with your group or community, please get in touch, to see if we can help.

* Please note: this document may contain the names and images of Aboriginal people now deceased.

References: Denborough, D. 2008, ‘Collective Narrative Practice: Responding to Individuals, Groups and Communities who have experienced trauma’, Dulwich Centre Publications.

The Influence of Narrative Therapy in my Work with Aboriginal Communities

August 16, 2018

by metaphor with No Comment Collective Narrative Timelines Community Development Community Work Counselling Cross Cultural practice Culturally sensitive therapeutic tools Metaphors Narrative therapy Narrative work with Aboriginal communities Practice tools Reflective social work practice Social Work with Indigenous communities The Tree of LIfe Working with Children Working with Families Working with Metaphors

I was first introduced to Narrative Therapy in 2006 after graduating with my social work degree in Brisbane. But it wasn’t until a few years later in Darwin that the penny dropped on how this approach might actually sit comfortably alongside the worldviews and cultural perspectives of Aboriginal people whom I was working with. A one week intensive at the Dulwich Centre in Adelaide introducing me to Collective and Community practices from a narrative approach was the start of a journey of sharing these ideas with my Aboriginal colleagues and ‘having a go’ to see what works.

The following reflections show how my practice approach has been influenced by narrative therapy ideas.

Double Listening

The problems that affect the lives of Aboriginal people can often be presented in a way that is disabling or weighing them down heavily; for example, domestic violence that has gone on for many years or issues associated with poverty that affect people’s stress levels. This negative story can come to dominate people’s lives so that it is the only one they come to believe about themselves and other people tell about them.
However, people have many story lines running through their lives. Perhaps they have simply lost touch with the things that are important to them and they give meaning to? In a process of ‘double listening’, we are continually looking for doors into the alternative story, as the problem-dominant story is one that Aboriginal people can fall back into again and again.

Externalising

An externalised problem in play doh.

The person labelled as ‘angry’ or ‘naughty’ by others can sometimes internalise this view about themselves. The process of externalising helps us to “separate the problem from the person”. A lot of my counselling work has involved externalising the feelings of children who have been labelled by their communities or families as angry, naughty, bad, lost, lonely, no-hoper, mad and stupid. Through exploring the “strong story” using things like drawing, painting, clay, puppets and story writing children come to see that ‘the problem’ they are experiencing does not reside inside themselves, but is external to them, possibly as a result of someone else’s problem behaviour in the family. Children have such amazing imaginations when it comes to naming the problem and can articulate the ‘monster’, ‘devil’ or ‘alien’ as no longer having hold over their lives.

Eunice and Elaine share their ‘strong story’ of going to school.

Resistance

Aboriginal people who have experienced trauma are often overwhelmed by feelings of shame, thinking somehow they are to blame for their problems or perhaps they invited it. However, no‐one is a passive recipient to trauma. Even in the most difficult of circumstances when it was not possible to avoid the trauma, people still take positive steps to stand up against it, resist it or protect themselves from its effects (Yuen 2009). However small these steps might be, they indicate people are responding because it challenges their values and who they are. What is it they hold precious in their life that they would respond in this way? What is it they strongly believe in, that has been threatened? By exploring and thickening the strengths, skills, values and abilities that help them through difficult times, Aboriginal people reclaim strong stories of hope and resilience and move towards healing. The narrative approach gives Aboriginal people a safer place to stand to explore their experience without having to re-tell any traumatic details.

Collective Narrative Documentation

The Tiwi developed their own Ripples of Life story.

Narrative practice is interested in linking the individual experience to the collective; our individual problems are instead viewed as social issues. When listening to Aboriginal people’s experience of trauma, we are not only listening for individual accounts of how people responded to hard times and developing a rich narrative together, but looking for opportunities to link their life to some sort of collective experience. In this way, people speak through us, not just to us (Denborough 2008). Some of the children I worked with wanted to share their stories of living with violence or bullying with children from other communities. I became the deliverer of special messages between children who willingly offered up their stories if it meant it would help someone else. They often reflected “I am not alone in this” or “My experience is helping someone else”.
When people have an opportunity to anonymously share their stories with a broader audience, like another community, they gain a sense of contribution to the lives of another who may also be experiencing hard times. In my work with Tiwi at Family Healing Bush Camps, community members were invited to share what skills, knowledge and abilities they used to get through difficult issues such as family and domestic violence, substance misuse in the family and having their children taken by welfare. A written collective document was given back to the participants to share with other communities. Such documents can be powerful methods of generating a social movement towards change, healing whole communities of people who share stories with each other.

Tree of Life

Tree Of Life

Collective methodologies such as the Tree of Life and Team of Life have shown to be extremely effective at allowing children and young people who have experienced trauma or significant loss to speak about their skills and knowledge in the comfort and security of peers. These metaphors offer Aboriginal people safe ways of exploring the difficult events of life like “the storm which hit our family” or “having to defend oneself from attack”. Family members and Elders who act as outsider witnesses to children’s experience are valuable players in validating these stories. The artwork generated from this group-work can also be shared as a collective document of children’s resilience, knowledge, hopes and dreams with other groups around the world.

Collective Narrative Timelines

Collective Narrative Timelines are also a well documented narrative practice for using with groups. I used this methodology during groupwork with Aboriginal women to help them reflect on their own childhood experiences and how these memories have impacted on their own parenting. Collective narrative timelines are great for the beginning of groups to help participants develop a connection very quickly around a shared theme, while also acknowledging the diversity of experience in the room. You can read about my process of using Collective Narrative Timelines in a previous blog.

For more resources and ideas on narrative practice with Indigenous communities, explore our Direct Practice and Professional Development Libraries.

References:

Denborough 2008, Collective Narrative Therapy: Responding to individuals, groups and communities who have experienced trauma.

Yuen, A. 2009, Less pain, more gain: Explorations of responses versus effects when working with the consequences of trauma.

The painting created by Yolngu communities for FAST NT

‘Knowing your Why and Finding your How’ with Malcolm Galbraith

May 2, 2018

by metaphor with No Comment Community Development Community Work Cross Cultural practice Management Podcast Remote social work Strengths-based practice Successful programs Talk the Walk podcast Working with Families

In this episode of Talk the Walk, we delve into the working life of Malcolm Galbraith, Manager of Families and Schools Together (FAST) in the Northern Territory. We discover not only what makes FAST one of the most successful strengths-based programs in remote Australia, but what drives the man behind the project. A man of strong Christian faith, Malcolm admits some of his ideas might be controversial, yet the evidence speaks for itself – Yolngu people love it! Before you scoff at the idea of bringing an American-based program into an Indigenous Australian context, listen to this story. As intriguing as it is thoughtful, this behind the scenes tour of FAST NT may just turn your worldview on its head.

In episode 21 of Talk the Walk, we explore:

The underpinning principles which contributes to the success of the FAST program working across cultures
Essentials for engaging vulnerable Aboriginal families successfully
The stories and symbols of meaning in the painting (pictured here) symbolising the work of FAST in remote communities, developed with Yolŋu staff of NE Arnhemland
Malcolm’s journey from tradie, to youth worker, to heading up a Family Strengthening program in the Northern Territory
The good old fashioned family values inherited from early life experiences that Malcolm brings to his Management role
What values mean to Malcolm and how these spill over into workplace relationships, negotiating boundaries and understanding cultural differences
The challenge of the concept of equity and how this plays out in the lives of people Malcolm works with
What sets FAST apart from other NGO and Government service providers which has earned them respect from local communities
The importance of self awareness when things don’t go as planned (because they won’t) and strengths-based routines with staff that bring out the best in each other, to promote the best outcomes for clients
Indicators of success from FAST parents and teachers
Malcolm’s influencers and how his Christian faith has shaped his life’s work and developed his “why’
Malcolm’s disclosure around qualifications on paper versus good practice, and traversing the space between academia and field work
The sorts of transferable skills, knowledge and values that is essential to this work
And much, much more

The painting was created by Yolŋu communities for FAST NT

To listen to this episode simply click on the Play button below or listen via the Stitcher App for iOS, Android, Nook and iPad.

You can also subscribe to podcast and blog updates via email from the Menu on the Home Page.

Don’t forget, if you or someone you know would make a great interview on ‘Talk the Walk’, send us an email from the Contact Page.

Things to follow up after the episode

Viktor Frankl

Urie Bronfenbrenner’s theory of ecological development of children

FAST Northern Territory website

FAST Australia website

FAST International website

Email Mal at mal.galbraith(at)fastnt(dot)org(dot)au

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Why I do Learning Workshops, not training in Aboriginal communities!

December 14, 2016

by metaphor with No Comment Community Work Cross Cultural practice Learning Workshops (aka "Training")Nurturing Children wheel Practice tools Social Work with Indigenous communities Strengths-based practice Two way learning Violence and Abuse Working with Children Working with Families

A Learning Workshop on the Tiwi Islands

One of the aims of the Healing Our Children project in which I work involves “building up the capacity of the community to respond to domestic and family violence”. One of the issues I have with this statement is that it assumes that people don’t already have capacity. Having worked on the Tiwi Islands for almost 10 years now, I know that there are many people in community actively responding in protective ways and resisting the effects of violence in their families.

So how do we honour what it is that people already know and do, when our aim might be to contribute to the conversation with new knowledge and skills? My preference is to facilitate ‘Learning Workshops’, however to satisfy the needs of funders and other service providers I find myself using the language of ‘training’ with them.

Perhaps I fell into the concept of ‘two way learning’ because it fit with my values and ethical ways of practising, but there is also a lot written about this from the field of education. The two way or both way learning approach grew out of the work of Mandawuy Yunupiŋu and Nalwarri Ngurruwutthun in Yolŋu schools in the 1980’s. Indigenous culture and language was taught alongside the Western curriculum, acknowledging the value and worth of both world views.

One of the strongest beliefs for me is that I have just as much to learn from Indigenous folk as they may learn from me. By introducing a concept from the Western knowledge system and inviting dialogue about it amongst the workshop participants, so much more can be gained from the experience. In fact, the results can be quite surprising.

What would this look like exactly? Well, here’s one example of a simple activity I conducted in a recent learning workshop on the Tiwi Islands.

You may be familiar with the widely used Abuse of Children wheel and the corresponding Nurturing Children wheel developed by Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs (DAIP). As you would understand, a learning workshop on abuse of children can get quite heavy, so I am always interested in lightening the conversation and focusing on the strengths, skills and abilities of communities. I decided to cut up the different parts of the Nurturing Children wheel, a bit like slicing up a pie. Each participant took a piece and talked with a person next to them about how they see this aspect of nurturing children happen in their own community. Coming back to the bigger group, after clarifying what some of the Western ideas and words meant (some of them were unfamiliar), we came up with a list of ways Tiwi people are nurturing children.

This represented ‘Caring for Children – Tiwi Way’ and it looked something like this.

Out of this grew a conversation about the importance of Tiwi culture in growing up strong kids. There was a strong sense of needing to do something for the children and families who had been affected by violence.

The Elders of the group then started sharing stories about the ceremonies and traditional practices they had used for healing and had been taught about by their ancestors. These included smoking ceremonies for healing the good spriit and releasing the bad, and the use of white clay for strength and vitality, applied to the body in the bush and left there until it wore off. They reflected that occasionally the traditional practice of applying white clay to the grieving widow was still happening, but there was a sense that these practices were slowly disappearing. The women began talking about how they might bring traditional healing practices back, to take the children and families affected by violence out bush and to pass on this knowledge.

From learning to dialogue to action. This is the power of the ‘two way learning’ approach.

I employ the same approach for everything, whether it be sharing new ideas from the field of neuroscience or introducing people to modalities of narrative therapy. Oh, and another very important thing. I develop the content and process of the workshops alongside a cultural adviser, and where possible they are employed and co-facilitating the workshops with me. This ensures the whole things is culturally-safe! It means a lot of work has already happened behind the scenes sharing the knowledge with the cultural adviser first!

The process is a piece of pie really! Take a piece of Western knowledge and serve it up in a digestible way, break it up into bite-size pieces, allow people to chew it over and add their own flavour, and see what is spat out. You are likely to uncover some precious tried and true recipes of community knowledge, skills and values!

References

Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs (DAIP)

‘About Both Ways Education’ at The Living Knowledge project

…metaphorically speaking

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