We're moving out of a sagging, seven story tower in the heart of downtown Liverpool, where CHETRE has been based the last seven years, into a spanking new research compound adjacent to the local hospital. It's definitely an upgrade, but the move has got the office in a tizzy. Yesterday we inaugurated the new site with a traditional Aboriginal smoking ceremony. Around one hundred staff and faculty gathered in the building's lobby for the ceremony. 'Uncle Steve', the local elder, began by acknowledging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders past and present as Australia’s first Peoples and the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which the site was constructed. He then walked through the crowded lobby with an assemblage of smoking green leaves immersing us and the room in a cloud of smoke. Participants were invited to fan the smoke and take in the smoke. The ceremony is meant to cleanse the space, to leave behind troubles and initiate something new. The ceremony reminded me of when, during mass, the priest walks down the aisle swinging that metal box full of incense. The folks I work with were like get the American up there pronto. A lot of picture were taken.
I know Uncle Steve from some work I've done at a local community health center and first met him after he led an invocation to inaugurate a statewide, mandated Aboriginal cultural competency course for frontline community health workers. There are many of these symbolic gestures made throughout Australian society that acknowledge and pay respect to the Aboriginal peoples that I can't imagine occuring in the United States. Before countless television programs I've watched (ermm...research) there are title card warnings to use caution viewing, as it may contain images or voices of dead persons, presumably out of respect for the cultural beliefs of indigenous Australians. It is in fact protocol at public events to first acknowledge that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are Australia’s first Peoples and the traditional owners and custodians of the land.
Given the continued systemic marginilization, the blatantly racist policies of the Australian government (the Northern Territory Intervention being just one deplorable example) and the current status of Aboriginal health, I don't know how to feel about these symbolic gestures. Are they more important now that there doesn't seem to be any structural solutions on the horizon or do they stand-in for and act as a substitute for meaningful strategies addressing economic justice, social cohesion and health equity?
No comments:
Post a Comment