The 'Attachment' Dance
In a Western Sydney community disproportionately affected by child removals, this dance explicitly reinforces elements of social and emotional wellbeing: connection to Country through the sand, connection to Culture through coolamons and Ancestral totems, and connection to Community through each other. Consistent with the lyrics of the song, these hypothesised sources of Aboriginal 'attachment' security may make a Blakfulla "feel like [they're at] home" until such time as proppa reconnection is restored with kin, as represented by the Elders coming searching for us. The Elders had actually been with us all along, tap, tap, tapping away on their clapsticks in the background...if only the children open their minds to the call of their Ancestors.
This dance tells the story of a struggle which affects a lot of light-skinned Blackfullas, hence such a public performance at Yabun (www.yabun.org.au) - Australia's biggest Indigenous cultural festival held annually on Survival Day in Victoria Park, Camperdown. The coolamon (carrying vessel) represents culture, which is taken from me every conceivable way, all the while being watched over by Ancestral Goanna, such that I continue to re-emerge as my nan's Brolga totem. The final sequence with leaves represents Clearing (of bad spirits, memories) towards a better future for our mob. This cultural format where not much is explicitly stated is one of the culturally sensitive ways that I promote social and emotional wellbeing in accordance with Aboriginal ways of knowing, being and doing.
Dance Rites, held at Sydney Opera House, is Australia’s national Indigenous dance competition which aims to ensure that important cultural knowledge including language, dance, skin markings and instruments are shared from one generation to the next. A powerful coming together of traditional customs with First Nations dancers from around Australia.
THE HEALING SNAKE
A graphical representation of a map led by Aunty Rita Wright for disrupting persistent cycles of harm and reclaiming Aboriginal conceptualisation of attachment and belonging, in order to shift to positive cycles of Social and Emotional Wellbeing (SEWB: as described by Gee et al., 2014), grounded in Aboriginal worldviews. Maternal/paternal separation is a Western psychological construct interchangeable with maternal/paternal deprivation, family separation and child removal when discussing disrupted attachment relationships. Aboriginal attachment security, or an equivalent term, is yet to be articulated by Aboriginal communities as part of their reclamation of self-determination and Indigenous Knowlege Systems. Infographic by Lauren Cammack.