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The Bougainville Survivors of Trauma
Association Inc.
Written 1997. Latest update August
2014. Enabling wellness support to Bougainville
People. CONTENTS
WHO WE ARE
The
Association has been formed by Bougainville people and other interculturals
who are studying, or who have studied, in Australia. The Association is not
connected with any political group, faction or religion. It respects
spiritual and cultural diversity. It was formed to enable possible support to
Bougainvillian torture and trauma survivors and to receive funding. The
Association links closely with the enabling action of the Laceweb and the Intercultural
Wellbeing Foundation. The
focus of the Association's action includes all forms of wellness including (in no particular order) cultural, clan, personal, family, mental, interpersonal, spiritual,
emotional, psychological, physical, communal, inter-family, habitat, village,
inter-village inter-religious, inter-clan, environmental, inter-factional,
economic, and inter-cultural wellness. SMALL
EVOLVING POSSIBILITIES
Since
the early 1990's, the Bougainville founders of the Bougainville Survivors of Trauma
Association Inc., with other intercultural healers, have been linking with
Bougainvillians in Bougainville exploring and enabling trauma support. ISSUES
The
consensus of action is using the local natural and traditional nurturers as
the starting point. Locals already seek these nurturers out for support. This
communal-centred, self-help, and mutual help, is in keeping with Bougainville
traditional ways. The Association/Laceweb experience is that nurturers can
heal themselves and support others (refer Laceweb experience below). The
Association may set up possibilities for Laceweb 'enabling support' to these
local nurturers. They may energize the evolution of more nurturers, who in
turn may pass healing ways on to others. The self help network! Refer Laceweb Sociograms - Figures Depicting the Evolving of
Indigenous/Small Minority Healing Networks in SE Asia Australia Pacific. SPREADING
HEALING WISDOMS
Founding
members, and other enablers linked to the Association, have been seeking out
the healing wisdoms of indigenous and small minorities, for over fifty years.
An informal Laceweb intercultural healing network has been evolving.
Extensive links have been made with small local well-being action throughout
the Australasia-Oceania SE Asia region. Refer Laceweb -
Self-Help Action Supporting Survivors of Torture and Trauma in SE Asia,
Oceania and Australasia - Small Generalisable Actions Ideas
are evolving for an intercultural healing gathering in a safe haven inland
from Cairns in June 2000. Bougainville people in that locality may join with
refugees from East Timor, West Papua and Vietnam (Hmong) Refer A Micro Project. THE
ENABLERS
Currently
the Association may access a small group of well-being enablers from the
Laceweb as resource people - available as possible support for local
Bougainville nurturers - from possibly the following cultural backgrounds:
Laceweb
enablers have experiences in linking with, and enabling, self help among
disadvantaged small minority and Indigenous people. They combine understandings
in psychotherapy, with traditional healing ways. They have tertiary education
through to the Ph.D. level. One is both a psychiatrist and a barrister. THE
BOUGAINVILLE TRAUMA SUPPORT PROPOSAL AND MICRO-PROPOSAL
Over
the past seven years the Association, in dialogue with people throughout
Bougainville, has been evolving a project for extending self help healing
wellbeing networks on Bougainville. Details of this project may be found at Laceweb - Self-Help Action Rebuilding Well-Being .
POSSIBLE
ACTION
As
a small micro-project, ideas are evolving for Laceweb enablers to join with
both the adults and children of Bougainville families living in Far North
Queensland (FN Qld) in Australia. The gathering in a bush setting may be for
the sharing of healing ways. Approximately 35 may be involved. Additionally,
a small group of East Timorese from the Darwin region have expressed interest
in linking with this gathering. As a possible second stage, some of this FN
Qld group, perhaps with a few of the enablers, may be a resource that may be
available to link with local Bougainville nurturers in Bougainville. (This
gathering in FNQ happened and folk were supported towards increasing wellness.) As
well, extending humane healing links to East Timorese from the Darwin safe
haven may emerge. This networking also occurred, with a Laceweb person
visiting East Timor in 2003 locating natural nurturers and networks of
natural nurturers and linking these together in East Timor and also linking
them into extended healer networks in the Region. These
other healing gatherings may happen in safe places for a number of days. This
may allow respectful exchanges of understandings about what may be possible,
and what the challenges and dangers are. It may also allow the local nurturers
to take back home a few additional healing ways - whatever appeals to them -
from the diverse healing ways available. Refer Trauma
Healing Workshop. These
second stage Bougainville linkings may possibly take place in a rural
camp-out environment, away from Bougainville or possibly within Bougainville.
As well, we may be able to embed a little gathering within a small
therapeutic community rich with healing possibilities. Because of respect and
the possible danger and the precariousness of those involved, everything is
of necessity small and tentative. Sadly,
aspects of the human tragedy of Bougainville are replicated throughout the
Earth. It may be that lessons learned in possibilities for evolving nurturing
energy capable of healing Bougainville people may have Global relevance.
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