Aboriginal Healing,
Sharing Culture |
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"Now, it’s obvious to me that there are Indigenous Healing Carriers out there, people who are really impacting positively on people around them. We need to seed our communities with lots of these Healing Carriers, so that we can create healing environments and networks."
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Changing the Way We EducateI love watching film clips of the educational ‘guru’ Sir Ken Robinson. He believes that there are major shortcomings in western education systems and that we should be using methods to facilitate curiosity, creativity and individual-isation. I agree wholeheartedly.
I hear politicians moan that too few Indigenous children and youth are attending school and staying on as long as their non-Indigenous counterparts. The children and their parents are blamed. But I ask myself, “Might there be other reasons why this state of affairs exists?” Society is always keen to blame the individual rather than accept shortcomings in the system. I know this full well from working in the addiction and mental health systems. I have to confess that I believe that non-indigenous society is somewhat bigoted at times. We think that things should be done our way and everyone else has to fit in. Might we just be doing the same with Indigenous children and youth? What would happen if we did something a little different? Like make a change so that the education is more relevant to an indigenous context. No surprise - it makes a huge difference as illustrated below. I’ll leave you with these two interesting films. And then you might like to watch the Ken Robinson film to which I have linked. Looking back to the 1950's and 1970's in remote schooling, teacher Chris Garner challenges the way we view success in Indigenous Education, making a powerful case for the role of the educator to evolve - bringing success for students and, ultimately, Aboriginal people's desired outcomes.
Luke Pearson's journey from country NSW to teaching in Sydney, and then to the creation of @IndigenousX on Twitter, is part of a bigger journey to share Australia's diverse, courageous, and inspiring Aboriginal heritage.
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Healing CarriersBill White has introduced an interesting concept in the addiction recovery field: ‘Recovery carriers are people, usually in recovery, who make recovery infectious to those around them by their openness about their recovery experiences, their quality of life and character, and the compassion for and service to people still suffering from alcohol and other drug problems.’
Recovery carriers share three interesting traits:
It’s important to emphasise that we need is to create a ripple effect of hope and healing… and make healing contagious. Healing Carriers can play an important role here. Now it seems to me that both Luke and Chris from this page are Healing Carriers - I hope they don’t mind me saying that. Here are two others. Don Coyhis started The Wellbriety Movement amongst native North Americans.
Michael Redhead Champagne, aka North End MC, describes
himself as "a 24-year-old Cree guy." By night, Michael organizes AYO!
(Aboriginal Youth Opportunities), a youth-led antigang
organization committed to breaking stereotypes
and creating opportunities in the community.
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