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Healing Journeys: dealing with trauma in indigenous communities

FREMANTLE Town Hall will play host to a conference focusing on trauma in indigenous communities on September 11 and 12.

 Presented by the Coalition of Peoples, supported by the City of Fremantle, Healing Journeys will concentrate on healing traumas of the past while moving forward with an action plan to enhance well-being across WA indigenous communities.

Professor Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, a world-renowned trauma specialist from the University of Cape Town, is keynote speaker for the event.

She is a former member of the South African Human Rights Violations Committee of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and is now a senior consultant for reconciliation at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town.

“The way to healing what has happened in our countries is not within private rooms with our private therapists,” Professor Gobodo-Madikizela says.

“Instead it involves ways that our stories can become linked together. We truly know what love is because we know so well what hate has been.”

Also speaking during the two-day conference will be Curtin University’s Dr Joan Winch, University of WA Associate Professor Pat Dudgeon and Coalition of Peoples patron David Malcolm.

Dr Winch grew up in Fremantle and became an Aboriginal health professional, integrating an indigenous approach to healing with western medicine, and has received a World Health Organisation award in recognition of her work.

Pat Dudgeon, from the Bardi people of the Kimberley, is a psychologist and has had significant involvement in indigenous issues for many years, matched with a commitment to social justice.

David Malcolm, former Chief Justice of WA and currently chair of law at the University of Notre Dame, has extensive experience on matters concerning indigenous people.

City of Fremantle Nyoongar Advisory Committee chairman Brad Collard said Healing Journeys was an opportunity for greater understanding about different types of trauma and the best approaches for dealing with them.

“Trauma healing can’t occur in isolation,” he said. “By coming together and focusing on how people may have been affected by trauma, we can work together on reconciling the past and focus on a more positive future.

“The speakers at the conference are experts in this field and they provide valuable insights and advice on what is both a complex and sensitive issue.”

For more information, contact:
• Indigenous Development Officer David Chesson – 9432 9822 or 0404 073 228
• Nyoongar Advisory Committee Chairman Brad Collard – 0427 386 971
• Coalition of Peoples (Marlene Jackamarra) – 0428 362 763