A cry for self-determination

I have recently been thinking about parallels between healing from individual trauma and from collective trauma.

We know that the impact of colonisation and the ongoing impacts are about trauma. That is what is happening when white supremacist colonisers come to dispossess you of land, and culture, and lives, while pretending to help you, to civilise you. It is incomprehensible that this would happen to you, and leaves you living in a world of unimaginable cruelty.

How do we heal from such things? Our experience of de-colonisation over the past few decades has re-enforced the importance of self-determination. The need to be able to tell our own stories. Including stories about our tupuna and their courage in the face of unimaginable cruelty. Their courage to continue to exist, to protest, and their courage to hold onto hope for better futures. The courage that we still carry.

I see de-colonisation as a process of re-imagining how we would have been living in this country if Te Tiriti O Waitangi had been honoured. And about allowing that collective imagining to influence how we choose to live now.

But our mana-enhancing stories are hidden because we have been bringing up our tamariki in a society where other people’s stories about us dominate. For example, stories about our warlike ancestors who were always fighting amongst tribes, and remember the story about the warrior gene? These are stories that everyone in NZ has heard. What they do is re-enforce the impacts of colonisation and the assumption of Maori cultural inferiority that came with it.

And if we were to write stories ourselves about inter-tribal relations, they would be very different. Who has heard the stories about how our ancestors were much better at making peace than war? We have stories of whakapapa relationships between the tribes over generations. And many stories of the travels that our Rangatira ancestors went on around the country to re-enforce those relationships. It’s almost as if it is written in the job description for an up and coming Rangatira to go forth and make good relationships everywhere. Those are mana-enhancing stories that connect us.

Self-determination over our own stories is essential because our stories are the ones that we own and can carry with strength. They connect us to wairua and whakapapa. Other people’s stories about us re-enforce colonisation even when those stories are nice, and positive, it is disempowering when they dominate our own stories.

So why is it important to also talk about healing from individual histories of trauma?

From 15 years of working as a counsellor, mostly with our people with histories of significant and on-going childhood trauma, I can see that self-determination is just as important for healing in that space.

When I was starting out in counselling, I was lucky to get into a training program based on very radical paradigms. They stand in opposition to the dominant mainstream professional ones. One way they do that is ask professionals to give away the power to interpret a person’s experience and to let people make sense of their own experience from their own context and perspectives and worldview. Theory, or life experience, can still give them ideas of what to enquire about, but the act of interpreting what you find is left with the person. That is where self-determination comes in.

If you go for help to someone who works from one of the dominant approaches. They have been primed to look for what is wrong with you and to interpret that. They are likely to be looking for how the trauma distorted your thinking patterns and getting you to practise thinking differently. They might give you a story that contradicts your thinking patterns, for example that it is not your fault, then it is your job to take that story on board and to change your thinking.

Now instead of that, imagine sitting with someone who is helping you to search amongst your memories for moments of hope and moments of mana. And looking for what or who you were connected to in those moments that made hope and mana possible for you. Even for the most severely traumatised, those moments are there somewhere in their history. Something kept them alive in the face of unimaginable cruelty. Those are the connections they need to re-discover.

From those moments and those connections, re-discovered within someone’s memories, you can together build stories that can be lived out, and celebrated until they become dominant stories about themselves and the world. Those mana enhancing stories have been hidden, but the power of them is that you don’t have to take them on board, they are already there.

If you give someone a story pre-written, it does not have the same power. If you get it wrong, you have let them know that you don’t understand what they have been talking about. Or you could get it right and the person could grab your story and run with it. But then they will see you as the source of good stories about them. And will come back for more. It is the old saying of give a person a fish, versus giving them the tools to fish, versus, in this case, helping them to remember their experience of already knowing how to fish.

So as a collective, we need to learn how to find and celebrate and nourish and practice our mana enhancing stories for ourselves. Therein lies healing. As individuals we need to be able to do the same.

I do not in any way want to take away from the work of our tohunga and healers. There are so many ways and settings in which healing occurs and is advanced. Wairua is always a part of it. I believe that the work that I did with people was unblocking things that prevented them from taking up healing. It was one small part, but often a beginning. The unblocking would then see them setting off on a pathway to healing that would often include mirimiri, Rongoa, whanau, te reo, marae and all connections with te ao maori. Transforming someone’s world view to include the right to belonging and to feel deserving of the good stuff in life, is a good start to opening them up to the hidden connections, and thus healing. However that is done.

So, what has been holding us back? We could say that it is the same old story of someone else’s hierarchies being imposed on us.

We have to realise the historical context of the different professions involved in mental health, psychiatry, psychology, counselling, social work, nursing, support workers. From their beginnings, the professions have competed over territory of expertise and territory of funding. That competing has evolved into the hierarchy of professions that exists today. That is what is imposed on us when we send our people off to train in those professions, for them to come home and fit into the hierarchy. And imposed on us when Whanau Ora workers were slotted into the lower end of the hierarchy next to support workers.

Psychiatry and psychology have won the right to sit at the top of the hierarchy, and from there, to define or tell the stories about what we are suffering from and what the treatment should be. And the right to write reports about us for the justice or other systems.

Aspects of the radical therapies are now taught in clinical psychology training programs; however, they are taught as techniques rather than as a paradigm shift. For the profession to give up their power to interpret and to define would mean giving up their position in the hierarchy. I suggest that we can’t overcome the obstacle of unwillingness to give up that power. But we can step outside that disempowering and divisive system to bring together our own ways.

I am challenging professional hierarchies and ideas here. Not the important work that our Maori professionals have done within the system. Their work has been important in expanding the focus. But the power of the psychiatry and psychology professions has not shifted. Any good work from within those professions happens despite the system rather than as a result of it.

But we don’t actually need that expertise. We can build our own paradigms and practices that our people can use to support our own. And develop our own ways to allocate people to helping roles, to build our expertise, and our own ways to keep everyone safe. To become our own profession rather than be an add on to someone else’s professions.

This is the sort of work that will be more effective when done, in a place where self-determination can flourish, namely, outside of the dominating system. I write this in the hope that many of our people who are disempowered in the current professional hierarchies can be empowered to be therapeutic practitioners in our own ways. For example, Whanau Ora workers could do much more, if given the support and license. We don’t have to send them off to do a clinical psychology degree for them to be the most awesome therapists.

Just as we have been de-colonising our stories and world views as a people, we can be applying the same paradigm to supporting our people to heal from the sort of childhood trauma that our tupuna didn’t see before colonisation. We can be imagining how they would make sense of and heal from such trauma, and allowing that imagining to influence how we choose to support healing now. Self-determination is at the heart of it, but we can’t do it one self at a time, we need to do it together.

Who is Telling This Story?

What does trauma have to do with either colonisation or mental illness? And what does self-determination have to do with healing from trauma, as a people, or as an individual? It is time to take self-determination seriously as a source of healing.

We know this at a collective level from our experience of de-colonisation over the past few decades. Self-determination is so important to recovery of our mana from the impacts of colonisation. The need to be able to tell our own stories about our tupuna and their courage in the face of unimaginable cruelty. Their courage to continue to exist, to protest, and their courage to hold onto hope for better futures. The courage that we still carry.

At times I have found strength in stories of my great grandmother. Stories that tell me that she didn’t just let colonisation happen to her. She didn’t give up her language, her culture, her right to be Maori and to associate with Maori, nor her right to pass those aspects of her being on to her tamariki.

Those rights were taken from her with violence. Despite the violence, she did resist and protest in the only way that she could in that context. She used to run away. The stories of her tell me of her courage and tell me that her connections to tikanga and to being Maori were so strong that she kept running back to those whenever she could. And that gives me strength to hold those connections myself to honour her. You will have your own stories that illustrate courage and identity and honour. And you will know the ones that give you strength.

Self-determination over our own stories is essential because our stories are the ones that we own and can carry with strength. They connect us to wairua and whakapapa. Other people’s stories about us re-enforce colonisation even when those stories are nice, and positive, it is disempowering when they dominate our own stories.

So why am I also talking about healing from trauma? I want to state that self-determination has the same level of importance in healing from the impacts of trauma on individuals.

From 15 years working as a counsellor, working mostly with Maori and mostly with people with histories of severe trauma, I fundamentally believe that self-determination is essential for healing from traumatic histories for the individual. For very similar reasons to why it is essential for healing as a people from traumatic histories of colonisation.

When I was starting out in counselling, I was lucky to get into a training program that was based on postmodern, collaborative, and narrative paradigms. These ideas and practices were in opposition to the dominant mainstream professional ones. I am not advocating here for those paradigms, however they did implore me not to follow models. It allowed me to relate to people in real ways that made sense, without having professional theories or models in the room with us. And allowed me to develop my own stories about trauma and healing.

I do not in any way want to take away from the work of our tohunga and healers. There are so many ways and settings in which healing occurs and is advanced. Wairua is always a part of it. I believe that the work that I did with people was unblocking things that prevented them from taking up healing. It was one small part, but often a beginning. The unblocking would then see them setting off on a pathway to healing that would often include mirimiri, Rongoa, whanau, te reo, marae and all connections with te ao maori.

But let me be clear, when I am in a room with someone helping them, I do not give them my stories about trauma and healing as a way of describing what is happening for them nor do I give them a predetermined process for healing. That is where the self-determination comes in. If you are doing the work together and they are finding the words and they are doing the interpreting of what you find, rather than you, then you will arrive at stories that are theirs. Stories that have come out of the talking together rather than coming solely from you and have come from their own memories and connections.

Imagine that instead of sitting with a professional who has been primed to look for what is wrong with you, so that you can challenge that, you get to sit with someone who is helping you to search amongst your memories for moments of mana and moments of hope and the connections that enabled those moments to exist in amongst trauma. Even for the most severely traumatised, those moments are there somewhere in their history. Something has kept them alive in the face of unimaginable cruelty.

From the moments of mana and hope, re-discovered within someone’s memories, you can together build stories that are supportive of them and that are theirs. Stories about their relationship to mana, and their relationship to all of the good stuff of life that the trauma taught them they didn’t deserve. And stories about their connections. Instead of trying to uncover their true self or their true identity, trying to uncover stories about their relationship to mana and to life.

If you give someone a story pre-written, even where you think it may reflect that person, it does not have the same power. And that person will see you as the source of good stories about them. And will come back for more. It is the old saying of give a person a fish versus teach a person to fish.

Why do we need to get out from under the dominance of western professional ways of thinking and working?

We have to realise the historical context of the different professions involved in mental health, psychiatry, psychology, counselling, social work, nursing, support workers. The professions have competed over territory of expertise and territory of funding. That competing has evolved into the hierarchy of professions that exists today. Those hierarchies are imposed on us when we send our people off to train in those professions, for them to come home and fit into the hierarchy. And imposed on us when Whanau Ora workers were slotted into the hierarchy next to support workers.

Psychiatry and psychology have won the right to sit at the top of the hierarchy, and from there, to define or tell the stories about what we are suffering from and what the treatment should be. And the right to write reports about us for the justice or other systems. It is offensive to me that a dominating relationship is offered to a dominated people as a vehicle for healing.

To give up that power to define would mean giving up their position in the hierarchy, and potentially losing funded territory in the system. I suggest that we can’t overcome the obstacle of unwillingness to share power. But we can step outside that disempowering and divisive system to bring together our own ways.

I am challenging professional hierarchies and ideas here. Not the important work that our people are doing. There have been challenges to the dominant professional paradigms from our Maori professionals within the system. Their work has been important in expanding the focus of the professions. But the power of the psychiatry and psychology professions has not shifted. Any good work from within those professions happens despite the system rather than as a result of it.

But we don’t actually need that expertise. We can build our own paradigms and practices that our people can use to support our own. And develop our own ways to allocate people to helping roles, to build our expertise, and our own ways to keep everyone safe. To become our own profession rather than be an add on to someone else’s professions. The sort of work that will be more effective when done, in a place where self-determination can flourish, namely, outside of the dominating system.

I write this in the hope that many of our people who are disempowered in the current professional hierarchies can be empowered to be therapeutic practitioners in their own ways. For example, whanau ora workers could do much more, if given the support and license. We don’t have to send them off to do a clinical psychology degree for them to be the most awesome therapists.

To collectively develop self-determined stories and ideas and practices from our own world view that will support our people to do the work of opening us up to healing. Stories derived from our collective worldview, based around relationship rather than individual identity. Derived from what we can re-imagine of how our tupuna might address the sort of trauma occurring within whanau that they never had to deal with before colonisation. We do need to develop our own stories. And to make those stories more intricate and practical and applicable and comprehensive. Stories that take us places together.

ki te whaiao

i have done a lot of bumbling around in my lifetime. trying to understand the world. knowing fundamentally that understanding will always be around the next corner. Always feeling lucky that i am a born explorer, drawn to keep trying to get around the next corner to understand more. but never discovering enough to convince me to stop looking.

Lately i don’t know whether i am going a bit nuts from trying too hard, or is it that the world itself is going nuts. Either way, it is becoming more non-understandable.

Maybe my becoming pretty much a hermit, in these my older years, is putting pressure on me. there are not that many corners left to get around. that can make you a bit nuts.

but i know there are bigger pictures out there. Pictures that can only be seen when you look around multiple corners at the same time.

And so this page is my version of trying to discuss things with you. instead of going around too many corners by myself.

I hope to meet you around a corner as a fellow explorer.

ki te whaiao. emerging from darkness.

🙃

this was me trying to understand economy this week:

Neoliberal economics is dead!

I am not sure that our government has heard yet but neoliberal economics has had its time. A place is being found for it on a shelf in a back room where all wrong ideas go.
A new wave of economic thought is emerging from economists who have been in the background figuring out how to bring down neoliberalism.
They are now communicating their ideas more widely.
They are not all new ideas. For those who have been arguing against neoliberalism for some time, the economists’ critique of it is not new.
But what is new is that it is economists who are giving us the ammunition. The ammunition to call bullshit on neoliberal arguments.
So let’s use this ammunition.
It is called Modern Monetary Theory.
This is not new un-tested theory.
It appears to be Keynesian economics updated for how financial systems are currently structured.
The foundation for this new wave is the economic thought that got us out of 1930s depression, rebuilt economies after the war and had us at full employment during the 1950s and 1960s.
New Zealand economists like Geoff Bertram from BERL, are publishing about this:
https://berl.co.nz/…/employment-and-skills-gdp-and-inflatio…
Here is a brief outline from an Australian economist Steve Hail, with references to important books. https://www.linkedin.com/…/tackling-deficit-myth-steven-ha…/
And some more detail from him in this talk. https://soundcloud.com/anz-institution…/we-re-already-in-mmt. Enough detail to make your eyes glaze over!
And to turn it into ammunition, see this from Australian economist Bill Mitchell. On how to call bullshit on “the lying metaphors” of neoliberalism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vNURrebGxw&feature=share
And for some inspirational policy proposals, check out publications from http://www.levyinstitute.org/.
But pay particular attention to the Public Service Employment program or job guarantee. http://www.levyinstitute.org/…/public-service-employment-a-….
http://www.levyinstitute.org/…/guaranteeing-employment-duri….
And this important and timely talk about employment guarantees (from June 13th). https://rokfin.com/post/13263
Imagine a world where anyone who is unemployed can voluntarily sign up to become a public service employee, for a living wage, administered at local level e.g. councils. This could operate as a gateway to employment for young people, a gateway to on the job training. Other benefits include that all of the precarious jobs would disappear as employers would have to compete with public service wages. It could also operate as a gateway towards self employment or small business.
This would be an alternative to throwing money at the problem of unemployment by throwing jobs at the problem instead.
Let’s do it!
And in response to the usual lie that we can’t afford it, see Modern Monetary Theory. And the lie that it would replace market driven economic activity which would be inefficient. It is targeted at underutilized resources in the economy, i.e. spare capacity and see Modern Monetary Theory for the benefits of doing this and the absence of inflationary consequences.
There are more fundamental economic changes which could be made, and probably will eventually be made. Changes that would move us towards living in the best of worlds. For example the Resource Based (or money free) Economies.
Modern monetary theory is not bringing down capitalism.
But it is offering steps that can be taken now. Steps to again contain the boom and bust cycles of capitalism and ameliorate much of the suffering. With the death of neoliberal economic policy, we can then be dreaming of more wonderful ways of providing the economic infrastructure within which we can all live with compassion for people and planet.

Week Two: Appropriate Technology and How Not to Blow up a Water Tank

Yaah the Appropriate Technology course started this week. For Appropriate Technology think low-tech, do it yourself, keep it simple technology. There are six of us on the course with Tim Barker from Queensland as our teacher. We started with solar thermal dynamics this week. Heating and cooling systems. And we have been building a solar oven.

I have time to do the animals before breakfast and at afternoon tea break. Then after class set the rat and mice traps before dark. Then other chores before dinner. It makes for a very full day and I spent a fair bit of Saturday catching up in the garden.

The course is very practical. We briefly went through principles at various points during the week but spent most time in the workshop building stuff.

I am so enjoying using power tools. Even when it takes a few goes to get the hang of it.

All we are building so far is boxes with glass sheets on top and wool lining in the walls. For a solar oven and a solar hot water system. Yes it’s that simple. Well it is in principle. In practice not so simple when there are six of us with very little or no experience with tools and building. On day one we had measuring and cutting hiccups and the glass sheets cracked as we tried to fit them into a too tight box.

Since then we have been so careful! Checking our measuring four times before cutting.

The solar oven is nearly finished. Just painting and putting the glass sheets in when the new ones arrive. And bolting it to the lid of a barrel. The barrel is a stand so the oven is at a good height for putting heavy pots in. and the barrel can be rotated around to follow the sun during the day if needed. Apparently a well-insulated box with double sheets of glass can reach up to 140^◦C. enough to slow cook anything including roasts.

This week we also we started designing and planning for the bigger project of a solar hot water system for the house. Same principle – two glass sheets on an insulated box but this time with a water cylinder inside. And with copper pipe coiled inside the water cylinder so that pressurized water in the copper pipe has a higher boiling temperature that the surrounding water so that it never boils. Apparently that stops the water cylinder from exploding! Without the need for thermostats or valves to shut things down if the water gets too hot. But you do need an outlet vent for steam from the hot water around the pipes.

Tim explains it better than me in his blog: http://permaculturenews.org/2012/11/23/rocket-stove-hot-water/

Next week we look at principles of combustion. We are building a rocket stove and linking it to the hot water system for the rainy winter season when there’s not enough sun to heat the water.

So we get to play with fire…..

A Season as a Backyard Farmer: Week One

All I can say is WOW! I’ve arrived for my adventure of 4 and half months as a backyard farmer. I met the animals that I will be looking after. There are rabbits, including one that is probably pregnant. There are a rooster and seven hens in the chook pen. And soldier fly larvae growing up in an old bathtub full of kitchen scraps. They become chook food once they crawl out of the tub.

Oh and I nearly forgot to mention the worms in the bin under the rabbits cages. They live on rabbit poo. I don’t have to do anything with the worms. Except feed a handful to the chooks some days. And empty the bucket of worm juice regularly. The same goes for the juice that drains out of the soldier fly farm. It gets diluted and fed to the trees. Spreading the love around.

But it’s the rabbits and chooks that need the most attention morning and afternoon. (I don’t know how they feel about being called chooks?)I am starting to get a sense of their different personalities and what they do with their days and nights. The chooks are hilarious. One of the rabbits is a bit of an escape artist and will try her luck while I am cleaning her cage. She is looking to see what better food might be lurking around on top of the cages. Always on the lookout for treats even though there is always food in the cage for her. Lucky she hasn’t got far yet. It would be embarrassing to lose a rabbit in my first week.

The other rabbits seem content to sunbathe or jump playfully on the brush as I am cleaning.

Oh and I did forget to mention the guinea pigs. They live in a movable pen and get moved to fresh grass each day and get fresh vegies or fruit, and they get a muck out of their nesting boxes some days. It is hard to get to know them as they run and hide. Skittery things that I’m not really looking forward to eating.

Did I mention that all of the animals have at least one purpose. Some are for me to eat, some become food for other animals and some create food for the vegies and fruit trees in the garden.

Each day this week, I’ve also been helping out in the other gardens here. With about eight hours of weeding. That’s where the sore muscles have come from.

I’m eating super healthy food here. My body is re-mineralising. I’ve also learnt how to use a sewing machine so I could sew curtains for the caravan I’m staying in. an attempt to lift the internal temperature one or two degrees above the outside frosty air. There have been a couple of frosty mornings freezing my fingers as I pick half a sack full of grass and leaves for the rabbit’s breakfast.

The big thing about this week has been getting used to being busy with one thing after another and most things being new to me. I’m looking forward to some of the work becoming routine. So I can enjoy the surroundings more as I saunter through the work. I’ll let you know how that goes….