Guest Post by CuriousWorks Chair: Rebecca Sng

The Road To Hell…

Whitney once famously sang, (before rehab presumably), “I believe the children are our future”. Well, I believe the children are the present. I’m certainly not alone in believing that how we look after our children is one of the central indicators of the health of our society. Not just because they’ll grow up to be adults one day, but because of who they are right now. I mean, let’s face it, my dreams for our children aren’t even all that grand - adequate nutrition, basic literacy and numeracy, safety from abuse, neglect and easily preventable disease. Of course, this has a bearing on the choices available to these children in the future, but mainly I just dream of kids being ok right now.

If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably pretty supportive of this idea. However, they do say that most of the evil in the world is thought up by a couple of evil-doers and done by a lot of do-gooders. So with all our good intentions, it seems to make sense to take a little time out and consider what we, as an organisation, have been doing in Roebourne or Liverpool and what we hope to achieve by working with those communities.

In thinking about this, a couple of concepts came to mind. If you can bear with me, I think they’ll allow me to talk about some of the things I’ve been thinking.

Firstly, let’s consider some of the concepts of systemic theorists. These guys say that when thinking about things, it’s good to think about the whole, not just the parts of the system. The system can be as simple as a basic circuit board or as complex as a remote Indigenous community. Because the parts interact with each other, looking at each part in isolation will not give you a good understanding of what’s really going on.

So, let’s start with a “reinforcing circle”. This is simply a system where change happens. This can be either a “vicious cycle” or a “virtuous cycle”. Usually, intervention programmes try to change vicious cycles into virtuous ones. One example might be a relatively poor community such as the ones CuriousWorks has been working in. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that there is a vicious cycle in that community which includes being financially stressed, which leads to substance abuse, which leads to unemployment and low income as well as high expenditure on alcohol/drugs. This, of course, leads to more financial stress and so on.

Now it would seem simple in this system to intervene by injecting a large sum of cash into the system, decreasing financial stress which should lead to less substance abuse, leading to less expenditure and a chance to be employed and earn an income, further reducing financial stress.

But it’s never simple, is it? And actually what is more likely to happen is that this change process is limited by a hidden “balancing circle”.

A “balancing circle” is a system that seeks to maintain the status quo. In this case, the balancing circle may work a bit like this: The extra injection of cash actually increases the substance abuse problem in the community because now the community members have greater means with which to buy alcohol/drugs. This means that whatever temporary gains were made by the emergency cash donation quickly disappear and we are back to the place where we started.

But why? What is it that is limiting the growth of our well-intentioned intervention? The more complex the system, the more factors are probably involved in holding the status quo in place. However, it’s important to stop to consider what these factors might be, because without removing them, any help we intend to give, will be doomed to failure.

Many limits to growth have suggested by analysts far more knowledgeable than I, such as high rates of unemployment, low literacy rates and poor physical health. But I want to suggest a different kind of possibility. One that is hard to measure on paper but is perhaps more powerful than all these factors and explains why attempts to address employment, literacy and health are still so unsuccessful in these communities.

Could it be, that the limit to growth in these communities is the lack of voice to tell their own stories? What an artsy, hippie thing to say…. Typical of that community theatre rhetoric that doesn’t really mean anything.

Actually, we know that people’s state of mind makes a difference. Even the most ancient of war generals knew it. They called it “morale”. They knew that what fighting men believed about themselves, their purpose and their hopes of success was vital in any military campaign. In modern times, even in our privileged country, 42 people a week are so overcome by the “purely psychological” phenomena of hopelessness and helplessness that they take their own life. What people believe about themselves, the stories they own about themselves and their past inform their present quality of life and their actions in the future.

So what kind of stories have the Indigenous communities of Australia been told? Well, let’s not even consider their past experiences for a moment. Let’s look only at the present. Right now, in NSW, you are six times more likely to be told by the state that you are unfit to parent than non-Indigenous parents. In Macquarie Fields, not far from Liverpool, nearly one third of Indigenous residents are unemployed and all over the country you are likely to die 7 years earlier than non-Indigenous Australians.

The psychologist, Beck, a pioneer in depression research, noted that the two most prominent features of the mood disorder were hopelessness and helplessness. I wonder how many more statistics we could quote that would tell a story of Indigenous communities as both helpless and hopeless.

Let’s then consider a different story. One told by a 13 year old girl called Shannen Koostachin. Shannen is in Year 8 in Attawapiskat School, a rural Indigenous school in remote Canada. Some years ago, the school had a diesel spill all over its playground which made the school unusable. So Shannen goes to school in a demountable. Something that is perhaps not so uncommon in Australia. Only, in Attawapiskat, it’s 40ºC below freezing. Every year the grade 8 students organise the campaign for a new school and this year Shannen went to Ottawa to meet with the federal Minister for Indian Affairs. The minister told Shannen and her supporters that they were a shining example and an inspiration for their excellent work. He then told them that their government, unfortunately, did not have the money to build Attawapiskat a new school. After listening politely, Shannen simply said to the Minister, “I don’t believe you” and walked out of the meeting.

The campaign for Attawapiskat school has become huge in Canada. There were over 150 local and national news articles written and educators and human rights professionals offered their support. In an amazing example of what First Nations campaigner, Cindy Blackstock, calls “reconciliation”, hundreds of school children of all races write letters of support. This year Shannen was nominated for the Children’s Peace Prize.

What makes this story so inspiring? It is certainly not that the children have got a new school - they are still waiting. What is it then?

Is it that a 13-year-old girl was able to look at the story of herself and her worth that was being offered to her by a man far above her in wealth, power and education, and say simply……. “I don’t believe you”?

Perhaps when I invest in CuriousWorks, I invest in that.

Who knows what stories the kids of Liverpool and Roebourne may tell? Part of giving them a voice is that we have no control over what they may say. Perhaps they will be stories of hopelessness, trauma or even vicious anger. Perhaps there will also be stories in there of normality, ambitions and contentment. But whatever it is they have to say, I hope somehow telling their own stories will help them to look at the old, limiting, problem-saturated stories that have been told to them in the eye…. and that they might say to them, “I don’t believe you”.

Perhaps then, our best of intentions will be realised.

And we will see change.

——

Rebecca Sng is the current chair of CuriousWorks’ Board. She is a clinical psychologist working with at-risk young people.

http://www.attawapiskat-school.com