Spirit Festival on Kaurna country (Adelaide) 2008

The photos say it all…Proud young Black Australians dancing in the Spirit of New Dreams, celebrating the Old Ways…as the healing and restoration unfolds…..

Family, song , dance, connection, Culture and open spaces without walls….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EarthSong Aboriginal Healing Pathways Foundation is Incorporated…

We are very pleased to announce that EarthSong is now officially incorporated as of September 8th 2008.

Here are two of our founding members Misters John Hartley and John Williams holding our certificate of Incorporation.

If you are interested in learning more about EarthSong, who we are and what we are doing, please checkout the Facebook EarthSong Aboriginal Healing PathwaysFoundation group here:
EarthSong….Putting Action to the shared Vision for Change…

Photo update on our first working bee….

Makinti Napanangka wins top Indigenous art prize

Winner … Makinti Napanangka (AAP: Paul Exline)

An artist from the Kintore community west of Alice Springs has won the country’s richest Indigenous art prize.

The winners of this year’s National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award were announced at the Museum and Art Gallery in Darwin last night.

Thousands of people converged on the gallery to celebrate the award’s 25th anniversary.

Makinti Napanangka from Kintore won the top $40,000 prize for her painting on linen.

The $4,000 general painting award went to Doreen Reid Nakamarra from Western Australia for her painting about a rockhole.

Last year’s top award winner Dennis Nona from the Torres Strait Islands won the Works on Paper prize.

More than 300 art works were entered in this year’s award and around 100 pieces which made the final cut are on display at the Museum and Art Gallery in Darwin until October.

Hetti Perkins from the Art Gallery of New South Wales helped judge this year’s collection.

Ms Perkins says the winning painting has a lot in common with the artist.

“It’s very dynamic and charismatic and I have to say that she, from what I know about her, Makinti is very like that,” she said.

“She’s quite elderly now but I think her enthusiasm for art making remains undiluted.”

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/16/2337310.htm

NAIDOC 2008 – Adelaide

Here are three gorgeous gals who caught up with one another during the NAIDOC march and Family day on the banks of the River Torrens.

Katrina Power, Pilwauk White and Jo Rigney…

The heART of the Apology …

We are having the launch of the heART of the Apology exhibition on Wednesday.

There were 11 posters created during the Apology at Elder Park here in Adelaide in the ‘heART’ Space that we established as a way to give ordinary Australians, of all colour, culture and creed a place to express their thoughts and feelings in a way that was divorced from the political footballing and rhetoric that was flooding the media in the months….and years … leading up to the Apology.

 

There was sadness and there were years and there was joy…

My buddy Katrina has worked for justice for many years and like so many other Aboriginal Women. her courage and resilience in the face of systemic racism have been out standing.

“I AM at Home with Peace and Prosperity”

This was the theme for our empowerment art work this week…to become comfortable with Peace and Prosperity when there has been a history of chaos and poverty….

I am ever amazed at the completely individual and unique creations that emerge from the same black and white template……..

Shirley- Big Heart Big Smile

Relationships change and friendships come and go. Family is not always defined by those who swim in the same gene pool and although many years have passed since Shirley and I were in close and regular contact, when we get together those years melt into the ether…

Shirley has a big heart and has walked a big journey. She is a Woman who is never happier than when she is surrounded by family and friends and laughter.

Adelaide’s Central Fountain…

This fountain sits in the centre of the City…

The plaque reads:
This fountain is based on the three rivers from which Adelaide draws its water. The Murray-Aboriginal Man and Ibis…The Torrens- Woman and Black Swan and The Onkaparing-Woman and Heron

The Aboriginal Flag was blowing in the wind behind the fountain…the flag was raised in that very spot for the first time over 30 years ago….

I came across the following interesting info on the Beacon of Light page [click here]…
Recently the Adelaide Fountain Group sought to establish a beneficial lift in the energies over Adelaide starting by focusing on a sacred site in Victoria Square. The intention was to use this as a focus, linking out to problem areas to create change. Their work was developed from the original Fountain Group, based in Brighton, England, whose work had created a reduction in violence. The effects of that work are properly researched and documented.

The Adelaide Fountain Group was founded by Roger Brown, who has, unfortunately, now passed over to spirit. This group worked tirelessly, to create community healing, through the use of visualisation techniques to generate positive energy flows in Adelaide.

Tandanya (Adelaide) is a beautiful City that sits on the traditional Aboriginal (Kaurna) Land…

Tandanya is the Kaurna Aboriginal name for the Adelaide city area and was for many, many thousands of years, a place for special ceremonies connected with Red Kangaroo Dreaming. Adelaide is built on Kaurna (pronounced Garn-na) land.
Source -Tandanya Web Page

The older I get the more I am able to appreciate the simple things in life…like living in a city that has a river flowing through its center…and many black swans, pelicans, ducks, galahs, cockatoos and rainbow lorikeets swimming, flying and nesting along the river banks…

i took some photos today as we walked a few kilometers from Bonython Park into Elder Park (cappaccino break)…and back again. (Just realised I can’t spell cappaccino properly!)

Beautiful day out in the city that recently endured over 2 weeks of 100oF + wether, months of no rain…but is now green and moist again, true to the elemental cycle of a City in the desert.

Beauty from the deep sadness- a ‘post Sorry Day’ story….

My very dear friend was deeply affected by the Apology Day to the Stolen Generation of Aboriginal Australians as the high profile, political build up brought to the surface many things that happened to her that still have impact today.

It was not a celebratory week for her and she refused the offer to go to Canberra as part of the group representing the Stolen children who have survived.

For those outside of Australia who do not know, Australia had a rigorous, uncompromising White Australia policy in place for many years of the 20th century and Aboriginal children were taken from their Mothers and Fathers, forcibly removed, with no reason other than they were Black children. Many of the survivors of the child-removals refer to ‘when I was kidnapped’ and it is a term that is very fitting regardless that they were removed by ‘authorities’ who gave themselves the power to subjugate Aboriginal people for many years. Kidnapping of children is none the less serious or devastating because it is a ‘policy’ by the government.It is the ultimate abuse f human rights, to take a child from his /her mother and refuse any more contact.

The grief and trauma is still very current in many people’s lives today so the  Rudd Governments pledge to “Apologise” was presented as a gesture of healing and reconciliation – although it was made clear there would be no compensation or legal recourse available to the children who survived the kidnappings. Many white Australians have been compensated for far lesser injustices .

My beautiful friend is one of those survivors along with her Sisters. She is a counsellor and healer herself and knows better than anyone what it takes to survive such widespread child theft and disintegration of Family, Aboriginal Law and Culture by the European arrivals who believed the Aboriginal people to be inferior and were often referred to as ‘savages’. Removing people from their homeland also meant that land could be stolen for grazing sheep and mining. This Land Rights based on thousands of years of occupation  continues in the courts  today in Australia.

On the weekend after the Apology my friend spent a couple of days with Sal and I and I invited her to create a piece of empowerment art to honour the Mother she never knew and the Sisters who were lost to her. The Apology opened up old and deep wounds, the death of her Mother who was never reunited with her Children is a pain my friend lives with in spite of her years of healing and recovery. It runs too deep to ever be completely free of the heartache of losing ones right to grow u with the Woman who gave you birth and loved you deeply. I understood that what my friend needed was not more talking about it all but an opportunity to give shape and form to her sadness and release the anguish from her body in a physical, palpable way.

 

We created the ‘base’ beads using arir-drying clay, they had a Mother / Goddess theme you can see here:

We painted the base coat and then she took the beads home with her after we spent a bit of time in the market picking the black and orange ‘filler” beads:

Words could not express the joy in my heart when my friend came to see me yesterday on the way back from a gathering of her colleagues who work with the Stolen Generation and she showed me her clay “Empowerment Necklace” in progress…

As I held the amazingly energised, vibrant beads in my hand I knew beyond any doubt that “creating” offers avenues and pathways that ‘counseling’ rarely travels along.. Creativity shifts the energy outside of the body bringing both release and the ‘alchemy’ of making something tangible from something unseen yet profoundly strong in the mind /body /Spirt  /emotional circuitry system.

My friends Mother, Sisters, Daughters, Aunty and Grandmothers were all there in this beautiful strand of ‘story beads’..

I love my friend…her resolve not to let the shocking events of her childhood overwhelm her never ceases to amaze me…

Here we are wearing our beads that honour the Mothers whose children were snatched from their arms because the white people in government believed they were inferior to Europeans and needing to be controlled.

Honouring the Fathers, Uncles, Brothers, Grandfathers and Sons also is another chapter of the healing journey unfolding…