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Contemporary experiences of ‘non-medical healing’ among Aboriginal women in a rural Victorian community: Insisting on improved wellbeing, cultural involvement and community-building. Dr Tass Holmes* University of Melbourne – Anthropology. School of Social and Political Sciences. Level 4 office, John Medley Building, West tower, Grattan St, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia. *Corresponding author: [email protected].

Abstract Australia’s colonial history caused significant dispersal of people with Aboriginal heritage throughout Australian society. The present research suggests that Aboriginal people who were prevented from retaining strong ties to ‘traditional’ communities often willingly embrace opportunities to perform or participate in ritual activities and diverse healing methods associated with Aboriginal traditions. This paper presents incidental findings from recent ethnographic research about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use by rural Victorians. The research revealed a reliance on non-medical therapies among several Aboriginal-identified Australian women participants. These women incorporated what they considered to be Aboriginal health concepts and methods of healing – referred to nature-based and community-focused beliefs – into a self-selected group of CAM practices they chose for holistic wellbeing maintenance. Activities described included immersion in nature, using CAM for wellbeing, attending indigenous healing workshops, recalling and self-interpreting ‘witch-doctoring’ and ‘energy healing’, providing elder care or health advocacy, and political involvement. Such cultural healing may be as important for overall wellbeing as distinct individual therapies, facilitating construction of identity, cultural continuity and belonging. For four women whose narratives are included below, use of unconventional approaches to wellbeing coexisted with emotionally-charged understandings of the challenging circumstances still faced by contemporary Aboriginal Australians, who often live within or at the margins of a dominant culture, whose primary values are determined by structural racism. Following a background literature summary, narrations about health by these four consumers and service providers are discussed. Their stories unearth alternative-minded opinions concerning the nature of healing. Particularly, they espoused spiritual meanings, popular non-medical healing methods, reactions to existing policy-based approaches to health, and a need to employ more Aboriginal healers. Keywords: Traditional Aboriginal healing, marginalisation, cultural identity, holistic wellbeing, rural health, women’s health.

Introduction Looking down at my feet, I’m amazed to notice the timber of the [hall] floor is so old that the grain is worn and textured, in a shallow way, but three dimensional, with sculpted gutters running along the grain of each board. Briefly, I’m conscious of the history of Sephirah township – the white history, I remind myself – timber-cutters, gold-diggers, religious settlers. As Sage said, there are Aboriginal people living in the area, but for one reason or another they aren’t very apparent in the community (Journal entry, February 2012).

A recent ethnographic research project documenting complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) used by low-income rural Victorian people in Australia (Holmes, 2015, 2016), inadvertently revealed a © LCS-2016 Issue 41

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recurring theme of ‘Indigenous healing’. This theme was based on the broad scale popularity of Aboriginal healing, of both Australian and Native American origin, and pressing non-medical aspects of Aboriginal health, of concern to participants. While at the commencement of the research there was no intention to describe issues of specific relevance to Aboriginal health, the theme of Aboriginality and healing emerged strongly from several interviews and participative activities in the community. This paper focuses, accordingly, on a view of Australian Aboriginal wellbeing and healing, based on the voices and interpretations that informed this strand of the research findings, by presenting narratives about four women. The paper opens with a summary appraisal of relevant literature. Effectively this serves as a statement regarding the prevailing ‘position’ or ‘outlook’ towards traditional Aboriginal healing, and the value of ritual practices, followed by a concise review of CAM use and social healing among Australian Aboriginal people. It next engages topics of relevance to many Aboriginal people’s wellbeing and identity, by drawing from the words and healing experiences of several research participants, who were low-income Aboriginalidentified women, or women who regularly worked with Aboriginal people. They resided in the innerrural-zoned small town of Sephirah1, approximately two hours driving distance from Melbourne. The current standing of traditional Aboriginal healing in academic writing Of relevance to the rural location of this research’ fieldwork, approximately 65 percent of Australia’s Aboriginal people reside in non-urban areas, including almost 44 percent in rural and regional (nonremote) places (ABS, 2013). Yet engagement with Aboriginal health in Australia today occurs mainly in clinical consulting environments, modelled on those in urban or peri-urban clinical and public health domains. It is geared primarily toward challenging health issues, of acute infection, chronic disease, high mortality rates, substance abuse, suicides, reduced lifespan, community violence, and trauma (AIHW, 2011; Hoy, Davey, Sharma, Hoy, Smith, et al., 2010; Phillips 2003; Plani & Carson, 2008). Secondarily, health care aims to address access factors, including poverty, the rigours of remote distance for pregnant women in small population groups with high infant mortality, limited access to medicines and health services, inadequate geographic distribution of medical doctors and nurses, and educating with the goal of future health statistics successes (Zhao, You, Guthridge & Lee, 2011; SCRGSP, 2014; Gilles, Wakerman & Durey, 2008; Humphreys, Jones, Jones & Mara, 2002). The concept of ‘Aboriginal (or Indigenous) healing’, in contrast, has anthropological connotations. It is associated with ‘social phenomena’, such as community-administered smoking or steaming pits (into which the patient may be placed, buried to the neck2) (Clarke, 2008, p.15; Cowper, 2007), and descriptions of traditional ‘sorcery’ or ‘witchcraft’, as practised by individual witch-doctor curers or clever men. For example, Hume (1999) discusses ritual ‘dreaming’, or supernatural transcendence3 of ordinary concepts of time/space and self-hood; Panzironi (2013) describes ngangkari spirit healers in Central Australia; and McCoy (2008a-b) cites traditional healers, maparn, in Western Australia. Contemporary anthropological studies of Aboriginal Australians are holistic in viewing the role of cultural traditions and their disruption, sustaining or impacting community wellbeing, although some avoid specific or detailed discussion of health or healing (for instance, see: Pannell, 1994, re sacred identity objects, called ‘tjurunga’ in Aranda language; Schwarz, 2010, re accusations of sorcery and its social impacts in a Yolngu community; Pearn 2005, p.288, re ‘smoking babies’, as a ritual body fumigation practice; Rose, 1992, re ‘born on country’ naming rituals; Clarke, 2008, re Australian plants used as Aboriginal herbal medicines; McCoy 2008a, 2008b, re traditional concepts of men’s wellbeing; and Poroch, Arabena, Tongs, Larkin, Fisher, et al, 2009, re Aboriginal spirituality and emotional health). Due to the urgency of establishing developmental, economic and biomedical imperatives, cultural contexts of traditional healing occupy a diminishing zone (Panzironi, 2013, pp.34-38). This nevertheless serves partly to preserve, within narrowed parameters, the validity of specific cultural beliefs and practices, often being both locationally-identified (Graham, Haslem, Marika, Wanambi, Deveson, et al, 2006; Pannell, 1994), and unable to be generalised from anthropological literature and applied to spe1

A pseudonym. Hebrew meaning: the emanant rays of the infinite or divine (Shorter Oxford English Dict., 2007). An Aboriginal woman friend described to me one such ceremonial body-smoking cure, administered to her by tribal elders of parental-relative origins, to treat cancer. This treatment dramatically improved how she felt about her life, her body and her sense of wellbeing. 3 Hume 1999, describes such transcendence, for personification of ancestor spirits in ceremonial dance in Central Australia. 2

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cific locations (Maher, 1999, p.230). Such traditions are not usually included with everyday behavioural practices that support general wellbeing, such as diet, physical activity and social connection. In consequence, both community-based and individual Indigenous healing practices and ‘cultural knowledge’ are often perceived or portrayed as inadequate or inappropriate for healthcare (Cass, Lowell, Christie, Snelling, Flack, et al, 2002, p.468). Health is now mainly viewed as clinical in nature. Despite a careful nodding of heads to express respect for elders’ ways, traditional healing knowledge is poorly supported by policy (Panzironi, 2013), and continues to be eroded alongside language, which is under substantial pressure from dominant educational and medical culture. As a result, the extent of Aboriginal people’s reliance on ritual healing, ‘witch-doctoring’4 and other strands of traditional ethnomedicine is evaporating (McCoy, 2008b, p.229-230), and a sense of the waning significance of traditional healing is evident, whether for specific local-culture contexts (Schwarz, 2010, p.72), or for a more general ‘pan-Aboriginality’. A limited academic literature describes the ongoing use of traditional Aboriginal healing. This focuses mainly on remote communities, and the incorporation of traditional healers’ work into ‘programs’ of non-Aboriginal origin (Oliver, 2013; Williams, Guenther & Arnott, 2011, p.4), or documentation of traditional ethnomedical plant use (Tucci & Wilkens, 2016; Devanesen, 2000; Packer, Brouwer, Harrington, Gaikwad, Heron, et al, 2012). For instance Packer, et al. (2012) provide a detailed review of ethnobotanical plant use by Yaegl people of New South Wales’ northern coastal region informed by interviews with elders, and later examine the potency of native plants against disease pathogens (Packer, Naz, Yaegl elders, Harrington, Jamie, et al, 2015). Tan, Konczak, Sze and Ramzan’s (2010) work is infused with excitement, of their attempt to discover new ethnobotanically-sourced phytochemicals for pharmaceutical drug development. Packer et al. (2012) and Tucci and Wilkens’ (2016), more recent efforts give credence to traditional medicine use of indigenous Australian plants. Such (latter) acknowledgement has increased of late. The search history for literature background for this paper illustrates the paucity of information about Australian Aboriginal healing traditions available in academic databases (see Appendix 1), reflecting the inadequacies of electronic databases that fail to list many older and hard-copy anthropological books and chapters, and the limited research focus in general on this topic. Hoskins-McKenzie and Dyson (2010, p.158) argue that Aboriginal people have been deliberately ’information starved’ by the government (ostensibly to be addressed by the current NBN roll-out). Conversely, health academia is impoverished by its lack of Aboriginal cultural information. Williams and colleagues (2011, pp.3, 4) state that, despite incorporation of cultural awareness, culturally appropriate methods and ‘both ways learning‘ into areas of education, community policing and ecological management, …[i]t would appear from the literature that there is far less consideration given to use of Traditional Knowledge in health and social welfare programs. Despite this, numerous papers and several theses discussing Aboriginal wellbeing, including cultural and anthropological studies, are publically available either via the internet (such as: Clarke, 2008; Williams, et al, 2011; Panzironi, 2013; Devanesen, 2000; Poroch, et al, 2009; Oliver, 2013; Cameron, 2014; Suggit, 2008; Saunders, 2014) or as ‘open access’ publications in journals or relevant repositories, including Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet (such as: Berry, Butler, Burgess, King, Tsey, et al, 2010; Kingsley, Townsend, Henderson-Wilson & Bolam, 2013; Love, Moore & Warburton, 2016). The contemporary significance of ritual healing In popular articles, worldwide, the word ‘witchdoctor’ is lately presented as suspect, and is used by the mass media to inspire fear and reiterate normative dominant culture messages (with ‘medicine man’ having been more popular in any case in Australian history). For example, one not atypical news article promotes biomedicine’s saving graces, in Australia, following an African case of desperate abuse by a purported witchdoctor (Fallon & Corderoy, 2012). Despite the genuineness of abuse, false accusations of witchcraft are rife in developing countries (Shaffer, 2014). An unconceding fear of witches or witchdoctors usually derives from cultural misunderstanding. The potential for this is historically apparent in old-timer anthropologist Alfred Howitt’s (b.1830–d.1908) chapter about Australian ‘Medicine Men and Magic’, also called blackfellow doctors (1904). Howitt describes curative and protective practices of medicine men (1904), but pre-empts this with a lengthy passage detailing enchantments and violent Witchdoctor – means: ‘a person who professes to cure disease and counteract witchcraft by magic arts, especially a tribal magician among primitive people’ (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 2007). 4

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activities Aboriginal tribespeople relied on to cause illness or death, by methods that were mainly incomprehensible to Anglo-European immigrants. Nevertheless, there are reasons to respect the ‘power’ and cultural sway of genuine healers and their ritual practices, and to perceive that they offer nurturance to those seeking healing that is in harmony with an Aboriginal identity. In recent years, several newer publications recognise traditional ritual practices as both healing and culturally important (Pawu-Kurlpurlurnu, Holmes & Box, 2008; Poroch, et al, 2009; Cameron, 2014; Goreng Goreng, 2012). A ‘deviant’ reading of traditional healers’ roles is mediated somewhat by recent anthropological studies, such as by Clarke (2008). However, these now originate from cultures that have already shifted irrevocably towards incorporating Western beliefs and practices (McCoy, 2008a, p. 74). Schwarz (2010) narrates how accusations of irresponsible use of sorcery have increased, and are now prevalent in the community of Galiwin’ku, a Yolngu island community, in East Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. These require religious, biomedical or respected traditional ritual remediations. Such accusations culminate in gossip that helps to make sense of challenging situations, such as the frequency of life-threatening illnesses, and reinstates normative moral expectations regarding kin and community relationships and social responsibility (Schwarz, 2010). McCoy (2008a, 2008b) similarly details a coincidental reliance on traditional, biomedical and religious healing among Western Desert Puntu people of the Kutjungu region of the Kimberleys, in Western Australia. Schwarz states (2010, pp.77-78): [I]ndigenous people under duress in Australia engage with processes of cultural reproduction and transformation to create a semblance of control over their lives. [Their] use of healing practices and sorcery doctrines to rearticulate their kinship relations provides a means to cope with the fragmentations of person and community with which they are confronted daily. Martin (2011), referencing his own community work with Wik people of Aurukun, Western Cape York Peninsula, highlights a persistent intellectual cultural diversity among Aboriginal peoples, that encompasses distinctive values, worldviews and practices, influencing their contemporary engagement with society. Martin claims (2011) the imposition and enforcement of ‘white’ policy solutions negates an Aboriginal cultural stance, ignoring participative decision-making and important cultural value systems. He claims this ‘white’ position is of itself illusory or magical, indicating (p.202) that: [not only traditionally-oriented Aboriginal people but also non-Aboriginal people] subscribe to the power of seemingly irrational transformative social techniques. He cautions, however, that some Aboriginal people remain over-reliant on sorcery and ‘pay-back’, thereby avoiding what appear to be more evolutionary or democratic solutions to problems. McCoy suggests (2008a, p.73) Western Desert Puntu women are more likely to use ‘bush medicine’ (mainly plant-based) (Shahid, Bleam, Bessarah & Thompson, 2010; Clarke, 2008) and to provide healing as a group in conjunction with women’s ceremonial business. In contrast, maparn healers, which remain popular in the Kimberley region, are more often men (Clarke, 2008, p.9). A review by Maher (1999) emphasises widespread retention among Aboriginal people of diverse supernatural and gender, land- and kin-connected beliefs, including re sorcery, as a ‘reality’ of Aboriginal life and cosmology, that contributes to enmeshed cultural observances and passive resistance to cultural change. The use of CAM and ‘social healing’ Descriptions of CAM use by Australian Aboriginal people appear only occasionally in academic literature, although non-medical community-based health practices are strongly emphasised in ‘social health’ contexts. Relevant CAM- or alternative medicine-focused research is scant, and may be problematic. Some authors decry the opportunism inherent in Westerners’ ‘co-opting’ of Aboriginal healing methods, when seeking the novelty of alternatives. Welch (2002), for instance, accuses ‘new age Pagans’ of appropriating indigenous sacred (including healing) traditions. In contrast, Paterson and colleagues (2008) utilised participative ethnography to analyse community and individual health effects of massage therapy for aged-care, among Guugu Yimithirr people in Hopevale, a remote Far North Queensland Aboriginal community. The elders’ massage program facilitated emotional release and narrative-based acknowledgement for participants, of their difficult socioeconomic, cultural and historic circumstances, bringing about improved health, and preventative strat© LCS-2016 Issue 41

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egies. Also, Goreng Goreng (2012), a Queensland Murri woman, describes very personally her experience of post-traumatic dissociative identity disorder, arising from abuse and inter-generational impacts of colonisation and racism. Goreng Goreng’s recovery process depended on both Western psychotherapy and ‘magical’ ngungkari spiritual medicine from traditional healers, which she portrays as essential and profoundly healing. Socio-cultural traditions of Aboriginal health are viewed as ‘authentic’, and may be accorded anthropological significance, or greater centrality for health contexts. Pearn (2005) describes ongoing use of sophisticated orally-transmitted ‘medical ethnobotany’ in Central Australia, including by traditional nungungi healers, as part of holistic tribal child-care and health practices that predate Western medicine by millennia. Clarke (2003), presenting examples of bush tucker from historic, scientific and anthropological sources, links Indigenous ethnobotanical knowledge to spiritual beliefs, medicine, seasonal calendars and sustainable land management practices, and invites Westerners to become curious, due to the alarming speed at which information about native plants is being lost. Brady (1995) reviews culture-based wholeness and spiritual healing methods for treatment of addictions among Aboriginal people. Tynan and colleagues (2007), researching health and identity among Aboriginal ‘Koori’ people in Shepparton and surrounding communities of the Goulburn-Murray regions of Victoria, discovered themes within situated concepts of holistic wellbeing, of individual and community identity and belonging, and relationships with mainstream society, that permeated ideas about health. Daniel and colleagues (2006), studying Yolngu people in a remote Northern Territory community, linked personal mastery to distinct adult age-groups and young men’s risk-behaviours, revealing influences on psychosocial wellbeing, diet, and activity, and significant reductions in perceived stress. Overall, recent research papers describing either CAM or social or traditional medicine used by Aboriginal people are few, particularly if focused on health and wellbeing rather than anthropology and cultural integrity. Recognition of everyday healing experiences and the often Westernised or amalgamatedculture contexts of health that preoccupy Aboriginal-identified Australians (including many living in urban or regional/non-remote places) (Cameron, 2014, p.55) who are not regularly involved with originalculture practices, such as community-based rituals and ‘witch-doctoring’, are much neglected for all spaces beyond the borders of biomedical care, or trauma and grief counselling.

Methodology This paper represents part of the findings of a broader, encompassing anthropology research project about CAM. The methodological aim of the greater project was to explore patterns of CAM use among impoverished rural Victorian people, due to their limited access to private-sector CAM services. Fieldwork for the research took place in an inner-rural community, named Sephirah, a composite fictitious town two hours from the major metropolitan city of Melbourne. The fieldwork was approved by the University of Melbourne Health and Research Ethics Committee in 2011, and continued until 2013. A snowball recruitment method was used, mainly based on word-of-mouth recommendations, in order to interview low-income health consumers who regularly used CAM for healthcare including selftreatment. The researcher conducted over 50 formal in-depth interviews with signed consent of informants, and also collected data using a ‘participant observation’ method, which involved taking part in a wide range of community-based activities. The four women whose narratives are included below, and a fifth (visitor) to be described elsewhere, either identified as Aboriginal Australians for genetic/familial or social reasons or worked regularly with Aboriginal people and felt they were ‘embraced’ by the Aboriginal community. They provided formal and/or informal permission for their stories to be published. For the purpose of maintaining anonymity in publications arising from this research, all informants’ names were changed, and pseudonyms are used. The women whose narratives are included in this text each grew up in Australian majority-white communities, rather than predominantly Aboriginal communities. Yet each of them – excepting Isabel, who discussed the ramifications of government policies on Aboriginal health – expressed considerable respect for, and belief and interest in ritual forms of traditional healing, and some type of either ‘witch-doctoring’ or ‘shamanic healing’. Their personal investment in non-material, spiritual, social and unconventional healing activities provided an escape from their own sense of trauma, burnout and marginalisation. Furthermore, these beliefs validated their search for meaningful personal and professional identity in relation to Aboriginal communities to which they had varied historic and familial, and/or employment-related ties.

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The relevant research data, as reflected in the subsequent sections of this paper, is presented using an ethnographic narrative style that contrasts with the literature summaries above, in order to emphasise the participants’ perspectives. The diverse Aboriginal health concepts, stories, approaches to healing and opinions summarised below, comprised part of the life experiences of these women participants, and emerged due to interactions with them in interviews and/or in social spaces. The ethnographic approach adopted here particularly evokes the various healing practices recollected by two women with Aboriginal family heritage, Layla and Pearl5. These women were health consumers of CAM, who occasionally or often self-provided, and active community members. Their health practices included rituals intended to protect them, and improve wellbeing. Two other women, Sage and Isabel identified as associated with local Aboriginal community for differing reasons, and contributed insights, experiences and critical understandings, as employees with Aboriginal health and advocacy roles. Without an initial central focus on ‘Aboriginal health’, the research that informed this paper offered only simple ethnographic narratives about personal experiences of ‘consuming’ or ‘providing’ Aboriginal wellbeing and healing activities, using the voices of these few Aboriginal and associated women. This attempt to ‘tell their stories’ however may in part address a gap in representations of the junction between non-mainstream healing experiences and a contemporary identity that includes Aboriginality. Encompassing an inherent spirituality that overlaps with healing and religious beliefs generally, the cultural healing beliefs expressed by these participants is consistent with a political ‘decolonising’ research agenda (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999). It also finds a parallel and common ground with the alternativity and holism often ascribed to CAM. Furthermore, consideration of the tenacity of Aboriginal traditional healing beliefs and practices was invaluable in helping this ‘CAM researcher’ to develop a clearer understanding, throughout the overall research process, of the meaningfulness of CAM as an amalgamated body of largely traditional knowledge, the original value of which has been substantially displaced and attenuated by the prevalence and spread of biomedicine.

Results: Participant stories The following narratives reflect content from fieldwork observations and interviews in Sephirah. These women’s life stories and opinions each offers a unique perspective, showing varying degrees of enmeshment with Aboriginal community, personal interpretations of CAM and social healthcare, and distinct health issues in each case. These included the influence of trauma, which triggered some to seek alternative health solutions. Their preferences encompassed diverse non-medical treatment approaches and unique versions of ‘Aboriginal healing’, ‘traditions’, ‘spirituality’, and criticisms of policy. The women’s opinions were at times openly political, and included awareness of the limited extent of appropriate non-medical health support services provided to Aboriginal people by paid professionals. Their comments about unfair treatment of Aboriginal people ‘by the system’ permits a realisation of the construed marginality, especially in healthcare domains, of culturally-associated beliefs and Aboriginal worldviews. The first two stories are from ‘health consumers’ Layla and Pearl. They highlight a disjunct between their actual experiences and their beliefs, as individuals who cultivated a strong sense of their own Aboriginal identity, and attributed great significance to rituals for healing purposes, despite mainly feeling disconnected from designated Aboriginal tribal groups associated with their family heritage. The two later narrations are from social health practitioners with close ties to Aboriginal community through their employment, Sage and Isabel. Each of them worked in conventional social healthcare and advocacy domains. These two women emphasised the inadequacy of existing health support networks and policies to provide for the needs of Aboriginal Australians.

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Layla, Pearl and Sage each provided interviews and signed formal consent for publication of their data. Isabel provided informal written and verbal consent, and Isabel, Pearl and Sage each took part in further consultation about the manuscript. Another – 5th – Aboriginal woman visitor from interstate, who was a community-taught healer and elder, conducted ‘Aboriginal healing’ workshops in Sephirah which incorporated both traditional and contemporary elements. One of these workshops will be described elsewhere (forthcoming). © LCS-2016 Issue 41

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Aboriginal health consumers: Layla and Pearl Layla – Contact from the spirits Layla Kirralaa6 is a 40-year old single woman without children, who lives in Sephirah with her elderly father, one of several local Aboriginal households. Her mother is deceased. She receives disability support pension (DSP) for a long-standing diagnosis of depression-anxiety, has multiple chemical sensitivities and chronic fatigue, and has been single since her mid-twenties. Layla’s family history revealed her descent from an Aboriginal woman of Hunter Valley region, six generations ago on her mother’s side. This woman ancestor was removed from her parents by age 4, and sent to boarding school for 10 years. Married at 14 to a white man, she subsequently had several children. Family connections with Aboriginal community were discontinued in later generations. Layla’s attempts to understand her Aboriginal family history were part of an overall quest for personal wellbeing. In her family’s church community, she experienced difficulty conforming to expected behavioural norms, after being sexually assaulted several times, as a child when at school, in her teens while in a city, and later as a young adult working on boats with an all-male crew. This led to an intensive search for meaning and identity. To honour her Aboriginal heritage, Layla assumed the surname Kirralaa, meaning ‘star’ in a central-NSW language. She said: Once I left [the church] and explored different cultures and religions I learnt a lot about Wicca, and connecting with earth, the elements, spirits, and … my own Aboriginal heritage, my identity. That clarified a lot of ‘communication’ I’d been receiving from … ah … ancestor spirits. Layla refused anti-psychotic medications for depressive illness, despite receiving a pension income for disability. Instead she sought ‘social’ and psychological counselling, both through the public mental health system and privately. Unable to afford CAM practitioner consultations, Layla self-medicated with herbal medicines (St John’s Wort, Valerian), nutritional supplements (vitamins, SAMe, Omega 3), vegetarian diet, meditation, time spent in nature, and other lifestyle changes, to support her wellbeing. Layla’s depressive illness occasionally ‘shuts down’ her ability to respond adequately to normal social stimuli. She interprets the depression diagnosis as representing a psychically-located impact or sense of despair about the destruction of natural environments and habitats, occurring on a global scale. In conjunction with environmental concepts, she believes ‘aural phenomena’, such as ‘hearing voices’, to be within the normal range of human experience. Regarding CAM, Layla claimed: [CAM is important] because it’s healthier, it feels wholesome, it’s pure, [in harmony] with my spirituality. … I [need] these lifestyle choices and supplements to maintain a relatively healthy mind. It gives me strength to get through each day. I’d be very sick [otherwise] … and [suicidal] again. I know these things are maintaining my mental health [and] the correct chemical reactions in my brain, without the need for drugs. The only woman in [Sephirah] providing alternative therapies [charges] a minimum of $60 an hour, which I can’t afford. … [But] what I’m doing at the moment works well for me. I consider it alternative medicine, because it’s not mainstream, not pharmaceutical. Doctors don’t necessarily agree with it, or aren’t interested, but it works, and most of it is free. In narrating her story, Layla highlighted her alternative beliefs, and connections between a panAboriginal cosmology, and a non-indigenous ‘new age’ philosophy and Buddhist beliefs. She understands animals and trees are sentient, and the earth is a living place. She likened this concept to traditional Aboriginal spiritual views of the world, and reminisced about experiencing a meditative personal ritual space, which she cultivates as ‘Aboriginal’ in connection to land and outdoor environments (see: Rose, 1996; Somerville & Perkins, 2010). Layla stated forthrightly: I have [an] Aboriginal connection to land. There’s something about me that encourages Aboriginal spirits to speak to me regardless of their nation, [or] their place. … I’ve travelled around Australia and Aboriginal spirits contact me where[ever] I go. I’ve spent a lot of time out in the wilderness or the bush, or on the coast, by myself in nature. I will have a spirit of some sort, whether a spirit of the land, or of the dreamtime, a spirit of the ancestors, someone, will contact me and show me something.

This is a pseudonym which approximates Layla’s chosen name. Source: Thieberger, N., & McGregor, W. (2005). Macquarie Aboriginal Words: words from Australian Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Languages, p.29. 6

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I get pictures, [or] feelings of energy, when I pass through certain places, [and if] I shouldn’t be there, then I go ‘round. … I’ve written down [my experiences], and Aboriginal contacts for me are very important. [Although] some groups don’t believe someone from another group would be contacted by a spirit from their land, [that is my experience]. Pearl – Energy-protection and the persistence of old ways Pearl Palmer is a poet and grandmother in her mid-fifties, living alone in Sephirah. She is descended from a Wiradjuri7 great-grandmother, and strongly identifies as Aboriginal. Long aware of her Aboriginal heritage, Pearl was given an Aboriginal skin name8 when she lived for two years with a tribal group in the Tanami Desert. During that time she provided unpaid social assistance for elderly women, after a friend employed there had become ill. She later won a literary competition for a story she wrote about an ‘amazing’ traditional healer she witnessed, who she called a ‘witchdoctor’ and a ‘sorceror’. Regarding CAM use, Pearl stated in an interview that she’d taken the herb St John’s Wort for depression for many years, as it helped with mood and energy. She frequently consumes low-cost herb supplements, and occasionally nutritional supplements, in conjunction with mainstream drugs. Pearl enjoyed describing how the older women of the Tanami desert group regularly requested her help collecting wild herbs for treatment of sicknesses, and for social and ceremonial purposes. She laughingly recalled: Sometimes if they had something wrong they’d decide it was something a traditional remedy would cure. They’d get me to drive them god only knows where in the desert, to find a particular bush. I said, “Why are they always prickly, and why do you always make me go and cut it?”, and they’d just laugh, ‘cause it was the older women, the old women. They’d say, “Ah Nampitjin”, cause that was my Aboriginal [skin] name. They’d be, “Ah Nampitjin, you funny one”. They’d be sitting in the truck going “Wey, ah, no, not that one, that one, that one” [fake shouting, gesticulating], getting me to cut the bloody branches off, and “Ow!” because they were always prickly [laughs]. [I don’t] have a clue [what the plant was], because they had their own [language] names. It was mainly the women who did that [herb collecting], and obviously, you know, it was something that was dying out. They … showed me what to do, boil it up into something that smelt revolting on my stove for two days, then give it to them. The older ones still smoked the babies when they came home from hospital, ‘cause they all got born in Derby. Young pregnant women’d be flown out, when they were about eight and a half months pregnant. They’d have their babies there, then come back. Some old women’d get me to drive them out and get whatever [plant] it was, for whatever skin group the baby belonged to. I only know the one for my skin group, because it [meant] wattle, well Mulga, which is wattle anyway. One old woman in particular would get me to go. She’d sit in the truck and point to branches she wanted me to break off. They love white people waiting on them. It used to crack me up. Like Layla, Pearl had the traumatic experience of being raped, in her case by a (non-Aboriginal) expartner in Sephirah. Following this experience, she used certain personally-adapted healing practices, based on Aboriginal and Native American rituals, that allowed her to feel protected from the inroads of his violent energy. Describing how she made herself well, Pearl first swore bluntly, and then said: I suppose I’ve done lots of things. First I set up a spiritual circle, out on the verandah, and did a circular ritual every morning for about six months, til suddenly I didn’t need to do it any more. I did a cleansing ritual of the whole place, burnt stuff he’d given me [or] had left, about a month after the rape, at dark of moon. Just burnt [heaps] of stuff. I initially tried to get people to come and do it with me, but nobody would. They were either not in town, or didn’t want me to do it then. I said, “No I want to do it at dark moon, that’s the right time”. In the end I did it by myself, a lot of chanting and burning things. I got a gum tree branch and did what the Aboriginal people do when someone has died, they drag it through everywhere the person has been, to get rid of any traces of them. So I dragged it everywhere he and I had ever been on the property, [then burnt it]. I took half [the ashes], put it into the river 7

Wiradjuri people traditionally inhabited south-central NSW. Pearl’s skin-name originates from the Tanami desert, rather than from genetically-related people. Believing it was inappropriate to change this name, she asked for her skin name to remain unaltered in publications. 8

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off the bridge, so it would go down the river and out into the ocean, and posted the other half to him. Scared the shit out of him I hope! Pearl’s ‘spiritual circle’ was a ritual based on the cardinal compass points, which she learned from ‘spiritual work, years ago’ with a Native American woman who had lived in Sephirah, who ‘always made sense’ to her. Pearl placed [symbolic] objects in alignment with the four directions, which possess energetic properties. She explained: I [honour] each direction, then ask for qualities associated with that direction. We inherit things like eye colour, skin-tones, and physical and emotional characteristics from our ancestors. We also inherit strengths, of how to deal with horrible things. It’s a matter of calling on that, and putting myself in touch with my own strength. It’s an internal thing, a way of tapping into it. There might be spirits of different people out there, I don’t know. In case there are I’m respectful, but I haven’t seen them. … I’m into spirituality. Not esoteric, but a fairly earth-bound spirituality. Not airy-fairy wishful thinking. She described indigenous ritual healing as effective in ‘showing ways for us to be in touch with ourselves, each other and the earth’, and was supported by a local friend of Native American origin, who comforted her when she ‘was freaking out, [as] the rapist was still hanging around’. He suggested Pearl could ‘go to [her] ancestors’. She claimed: ‘It was his ancestors too, ‘cause he’s got Native American, I’ve got Aboriginal, so I sort of went to both’. She interpreted this as ‘going back to basics … to connect with everything, especially the earth’. She stated: That got me through a very bad time; and then I started going to counselling at CASA9, and I’m still doing that. Practitioners in Aboriginal health and advocacy: Sage and Isabel Sage – Employ more Aboriginal health-workers Sage Wijelda is a semi-retired social worker and grief counsellor in her early 60s, who lived and worked in Sephirah for over 15 years. Mainly, Sage was full-time employed as a conventional social worker supporting Aboriginal community members. Sage spoke at length about the nature and impact of her work, being challenged by stress-levels often bordering on burnout. She struggled coping with many clients whose experiences of trauma (like those of Layla and Pearl) were overwhelming, and with feelings of futility and frustration arising from ‘the way the system works’. She perceived there was a failure to adequately address ‘even the basics’ of community-based problems. Sage frequently self-prescribes CAM, mainly folk herbal cures and flower essences, and has a love of herbal medicine and women’s healing traditions. Doing her best to occasionally incorporate art therapy and alternative psychotherapy into her social work consultations with Aboriginal clients, Sage said she also tries to ‘infuse a bit of culture’ by encouraging traditional Aboriginal healing approaches when possible. She said: Like any other people, some just go to doctors, while [others] have an interest in pursuing [health strategies, or traditional healing processes]. But everything is context-based, so, [while] they might have an interest, they might not have an interest with me. If a family member later on brings up the same thing, they might have an interest [at that later time, among community members]. … You have to be sensitive to that. During an interview, Sage emphasised her respect for Aboriginal elders’ knowledge, and a willingness to defer to elders if making decisions involving clients. She explained: I don’t presume [to use traditional Aboriginal healing methods with clients independently, although] I might [have] kindly been told [certain] things. As a white woman … if the relationship [with a client] is good, I may suggest something, but … it’s their place to bring it up or talk about it. I can’t initiate cultural stuff. ... [If someone asks about it], I refer them to an elder or senior family member. I say: “Have you asked so and so? Or how ‘bout ringin’ up elder so and so?” That’s the protocol, and there’s good reason for those protocols. Bush tucker’s one example. If I know the person’s interested I might just say, “Oh, any bush tucker you know of that might help with that?” That’s about how far I go. 9

CASA – Centre Against Sexual Assault, in Australia, provides free counselling for rape victims.

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Sage complained that local health services fail to prioritise employing Aboriginal people to undertake supportive work in community health services (essentially social work, and other support and advocacy roles). She stated that she had urged the local community health service to increase relevant employment opportunities for local Aboriginal people with community ties and cultural knowledge, in order to better provide for real community needs. She believes Aboriginal community members’ needs are effectively misrepresented and portrayed as remediable by reference only to ‘white people’s ways’. Isabel – There’s no consistent policy approach Isabel Mortia, in her 40s, was employed as an advocate in the arena of Aboriginal legal and social support services, and is a passionate activist in favour of Aboriginal rights. Isabel enjoys folk music, home-made crafts and a peaceful lifestyle. The researcher bumped into Isabel at a weekly ‘free food’ morning at Sephirah’s Community Centre, and she came to sit and chat among a group of friends, perched in the spring sunshine. Through complete overwhelm and disillusionment, Isabel had recently quit her Aboriginal support and advocacy job. She was frustrated by clients’ inability to get the help they needed to resolve problems. She had experienced extreme stress and a feeling of futility in her work through being unable to effect meaningful changes. Isabel’s sentiments mirrored Sage’s reflections about the inadequacy of the professional sector geared to supporting Aboriginal health and social wellbeing. Physically exhausted, and complaining and debriefing about complex emotions, Isabel fought back tears as she said: The problem is policy. It’s just so racist! The racism is enshrined in everything they do. Policy only serves its own bureaucratised ends. It marginalises people further, and fails to meet real needs. The lack of continuity in Aboriginal health policy – completely polarised, with the two main political parties having a completely different take on it, and swinging from one extreme to the other every few years following changeovers of government – ensures that many good plans are never applied, or that good programs get folded early, or aren’t refunded after the first funding round closes. (Paraphrased conversation, of November 2012, used with permission). Isabel’s sense of personal burnout and despair was very strong. She described the incidence of people being traumatised ‘by the system’ as widespread, and compounded by inadequate planning and the ‘racist insult’ of the paternalistic way policies are delivered. Victorian Aboriginal people, she stated, were being administered at that time, incongruously, within the same system used to administer refugees. Isabel described Aboriginal people’s comprehension of and responses to what was happening as ‘capable and articulate’. Yet, from her perspective, there appeared no practical recognition of Aboriginal rights to make informed decisions about how their needs could best be met, and no in-depth preparedness on the part of governments, departments and agencies to resolve problems.

Discussion As evidenced by participant stories in this paper, individual experiences of Aboriginal healing in contemporary guise – being at times disconnected from deep enmeshment in Aboriginal community – may cross over traditional boundaries. The women consumers’ interpretations of Aboriginal healing were borrowed from traditional Aboriginal ritual and cosmological beliefs, and incorporated their own felt connections to natural environments. Other influences included Native American lore, Western alternative medicine, educational health promotion concepts, and both Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. Their narratives support a contention that traditional Aboriginal healing is very much alive and widespread in attenuated forms, and is in use among contemporary Aboriginal people, many of whom have been unable to retain clear connections to ‘traditional’ communities. This ‘folk-process’ (Davey & Seal, 2003, p.2) of eclectic adoption and incremental adaptation of healing traditions, alongside other non-medical and medical forms of healthcare, also parallels other multiethnic or post-colonial cultural health contexts (Golomb, 1985; Burns-McGrath, 1999). Yet Aboriginal practitioners are grossly unsupported by policy or suitable funding provision, as was apparent from narrations by Sage and Isabel. This fact is apparent in many communities. For example, at a 2012 ATSI ‘Practitioners Workshop’ at the University of Melbourne, it was stated that Shepparton

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(another Victorian rural town), has 3.4% Aboriginal population, but only four Aboriginal Health Workers (AHWs) and Aboriginal Liaison Officers (ALOs) including white people, for an Aboriginal healthcare population of approximately 2000 (personal communication, Ferguson, 2012). Shepparton has 20.1% Aboriginal unemployment (vs. 5.5% non-Aboriginal unemployment), with many providing unpaid care and assistance to disabled community members. 36.7% of Aboriginal families with children in Shepparton are headed by sole parents (vs. 11.5% sole-parents among all Shepparton families with children) (Greater Shepparton, 2015). Poverty is widespread, as is the case in most similar communities with Aboriginal members. Some of these problems could be alleviated, as in Sephirah, by providing training and employment for more local Aboriginal AHWs, ALOs, general wellbeing practitioners, and the neglected ‘modality’ offered by traditional-style Aboriginal healers. In 1978, Reid (p.97) predicated her ethnographic description of ‘marrnggitj’ healers of the Yirrkala community of Eastern Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, by stating: [Their] services are culturally nondisruptive, well understood by community members, supportive, protective, and integrated into the ceremonial and social life of the community. She observed further (Reid, 1978, p.107) that: [a traditional healer’s] ministrations reassure the patient, explain his plight and generate the confidence necessary for recovery. Although there has been considerable recent encouragement for Aboriginal people to become medical doctors (such as: Ewen, 2011), gross shortages of suitably trained ‘middle level’ qualified Aboriginal practitioners persist. This includes social workers (Peeters, 2010; compare Rabson, 2007, in Canada), AHWs, and Aboriginal ALOs, who could provide services of greater relevance to community members (Brown, 2011; Rose & Pulver, 2004). At present AHWs are, in general, inadequately supported, not well trained, and do not receive standard professional pay rates (Genat, 2006).

Conclusion By retaining elements unique to Aboriginal-specific contexts, and perhaps largely due to the importance accorded to traditional ceremony generally (Graham, et al, 2006; Maddocks & Rayner, 2003), Australian Aboriginal healing remains culturally-entwined, and continues to be honoured for cultural and community-building roles in addition to health benefits. This paper has reiterated the importance of traditional concepts of culture in some healing processes preferred by contemporary Aboriginal (or Aboriginal-associated) women in Victoria, and highlights their acknowledgement of the limitations of mainstream services that support Aboriginal wellbeing. According to these women’s health interests and suggestions, many more Aboriginal people, including ‘traditional healers’ and community-trained workers, could be purpose-educated and employed in professional and allied health support roles.

Acknowledgements I acknowledge the Aboriginal owners, both past and present, of all the Victorian places where I conducted fieldwork for this research. My heartfelt thanks go to all participants from ‘Sephirah’ communities, without whom this paper and other publications from my research would not have been possible. In this case, I am especially grateful to a small number of Aboriginal-identified women, whose contributions taught me a great deal about the true worth of non-medical healing. I acknowledge that both formal and informal written and verbal consent was obtained, for data from participant observation activities and interview material to be published. Where possible, participants graciously reviewed the manuscript to ensure their stories were appropriately portrayed. Many thanks are also due to the anonymous reviewer for this paper, whose detailed advice helped me to structure the writing more clearly.

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Appendix 1 Table 1: The paucity of academic literature concerning Australian Aboriginal healing traditions Search Terms:

‘Aboriginal medicine man’

Database : Web of Science (WS) / 2016.

4 possibly relevant articles, of 14 returns.

‘Australia’ and ‘witchdoctor’, as separate terms, or combined as ‘Australia and witchdoctor’. 0 returns.

‘Australia’ and ‘traditional Aboriginal healing’ 5 relevant, of 6 returns.

Web of Science (WS) / 2013.

-

0 returns.

-

Informit general (IN) / 2016.

2 relevant, of 7 returns.

0 returns.

-

EBSCO-ERIC (EB) / 2013.

0 relevant.

-

-

EBSCO-ERIC (EB) / 2016.

0 relevant, of 31 returns.

0 returns.

0 returns.

Informit Indigenous (II) / 2016.

Later search: 4 items possibly relevant, from 12 returns.

0 returns.

Later search, 4 items of 13 fulltext returns (approx 20/36 if no limits).

Informit general (IN) / late 2016.

Later repeat search: 4 items /14 returns full-text (approx 30 of 80 if no limits), duplicates removed.

Later repeat search: 1 possibly relevant, of 3 returns.

Later search: 64 returns for fulltext only; 179 returns if no limits. Unsorted for relevance.

‘Discovery’ (EB), via University of Melbourne 2016

-

5 possibly relevant, of 145 returns, after duplicates removed; most returns are in popular media.

About 30 possibly relevant of 119 returns, after duplicates removed, most of these already cited. Most returns are in popular media.

Google Scholar / 2016.

About 41,100 results, using qualifier ‘Australia’. Unsorted.

About 3,230 results, using qualifier ‘Australia’. Unsorted.

About 30,900 results, using qualifier ‘Australia’. Unsorted.

Explanation of Table 1: Searches in three major databases, Web of Science (WS), Informit (IN) and EBSCO (EB), for the term ‘Aboriginal medicine man’ yielded, respectively, 4 articles of direct or indirect relevance (WS, 2016, among 14 returns) (being: Pearn, 2005; Tucci & Wilkens, 2016; Adams, Valery, Sibbritt, Bernardes, Broom et al, 2015; and finally Owen & Pate, 2014, re archaeological finds, the latter not included in the below references list); 2 items (IN, 2016, of 7 returns, including a third with recommendations for improved rural medical care for ATSI) (Howitt, 1904/1996; Tan et al, 2010; and Lawrence, Holden, Snowball, Cheng, Lowe et al, 2008); zero of relevance (EB, 2013) despite public health-focused articles, such as ‘Mental health services for Aboriginal men: Mismatches and solutions’ (Isaacs, Maybery & Gruis, 2012); and zero of relevance (of 31, EB, 2016) excepting queer identity (Bennett, Hill & Jones, 2015). A later repeat search for ‘Aboriginal medicine man’ yielded 4 possibly relevant items (of 12 returns; in Informit Indigenous (II), late 2016) (Tan et al, 2010 (op cit); 2 in popular media: Rothwell’s 2003 profile of Jacky Giles, and Preda’s 1988 ‘Dreamtime medicine’, both not in the below references list; and Owen & Pate, 2014 (op cit)); and 5 relevant items of 14 returns (or an estimated 30, of 80 unlimited to full-text, this group not re-cited here) (IN, late 2016, duplicates removed) (Owen/Pate, 2014 (op cit); Tan et al, 2010 (op cit); Lawrence et al, 2008 (op cit); Howitt, 1904/1996 (op cit); Meyer, 1846). Searches (WS – 2013; WS, IN & EB – 2016) for combined or separated terms ‘Australia’ and ‘witchdoctor’ all yielded no hits. One exception: ‘Discovery’ database (EB, via University of Melbourne), 2016, for combined terms ‘Australia and witchdoctor’, yielded 145 after duplicates were removed, with only 5 of likely relevance [this group are not included in the references list for this paper]: (Ongugo, Hall & Attia’s (2011) journal article, suggesting TB control in Papua New Guinea (PNG) may be hampered by reliance on traditional healers; Pilcher’s article (2009), discussing nocebo effect (belief as illness cause); Horton’s book (1994) Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia; Gumudul’s book (1974) of stories, Djugurba: tales from the spirit time; Rose’s book (1956), re anthropology fieldwork, Living Magic: the realities underlying the psychical practices and beliefs of Australian Aborigines). Later repeat searches for ‘witchdoctor’: in IN, 2016, yielded 1 relevant of 3 items (Gumudul, 1974) (op cit); and II, in 2016, yielded zero. A 2016 search in Web of Science database (WS) for ‘Australia’ and ‘traditional Aboriginal healing’ yielded 5 relevant (of 6 returns): (Pearn, 2005 (op cit); Oliver, 2013 (op cit); McCoy, 2008b (op cit); Schwarz, 2010 (op cit); Shahid et al, 2010 (op cit)). Later searches, respectively in II, IN, & Discovery (EB) in late 2016, yielded 4 relevant (of 13 full-text returns, excluding book reviews/letters) (or approx 20 of 36 unlimited to full-text, not re-cited here) (Oliver, 2013 (op cit); Gorman, Nielsen & Best, 2006; Cawte, 1996; and Dahlstrom, 2005, re drug/alcohol detox, the latter not in the references list); and 64 full-text returns (179 if no limits) (unsorted for relevance); and 30 of possible relevance, most already cited (of 119; not re-cited).

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