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Humane Global Transitions
Mutual Help and Self help Networking,
Therapeutic Community, and Peacehealing
Posted: Dec 2000. Last updated: Oct 2019 The wisdom on the Laceweb website
has been drawn from the grassroots people of the East Asia Oceania
Australasia Region. Consistent with their way, this wisdom is freely
available on the Laceweb Internet site. Now a simple secure process has been
set up, so people reading and downloading this wisdom from the Region may
contribute financially if they so desire. You may send a tiny amount or as
much as you desire. AN OVERVIEW This page reports on qualitative
Ph.D. research in progress into psychiatrist and humanitarian law barrister,
Dr. Neville Yeomans' life-long action - extending into the margins of wider
society the healing ways from Fraser House, a 1960's innovative therapeutic
community founded by Yeomans. A brief overview of the research
methods, findings and discussion is provided, including a brief sketch of
Fraser House's structure and process, and the processes supporting the
emergence from this Unit of a grassroots self-help/mutual-help healing
network called the Laceweb. This matrix is evolving among
indigenous and disadvantaged minority psychosocial healers throughout the
S.E. Asia Oceania Australasia Region. Laceweb's enabling of small
possibilities for grassroots energised humane global transition is outlined. From Therapeutic Community to Global
Reform This paper reports on Ph.D.
qualitative research into Dr. Neville Yeomans (All references to 'Yeomans'
refer to Neville T. Yeomans unless specified otherwise ) work in combining
therapeutic community with self help networking. Yeomans pioneered
therapeutic communities in Australia as founding director and psychiatrist of
Fraser House, a therapeutic community he established in 1959 in the North
Ryde Mental Hospital, in North Ryde, Sydney, Australia (Clark and Yeomans,
1969; Yeomans, 1980 From
the Outback.;
Yeomans, 1965; Yeomans, 1961a; Yeomans, 1961b). Although based within a mainstream
mental hospital, the Unit was a self-help community with residents evolving
well-being together. For Yeomans, Fraser House was part of a wider life-long
quest to ease cultural transition towards a more humane caring world. This
paper is a preliminary report on research into the unfolding processes of
this quest. More specifically, it looks at the
history, theory, practice and healing artistry (Cultural Healing Action) of Fraser House and its extension
in the Laceweb, a little-known therapeutic community centred social movement
started and named by Yeomans, and emerging amongst an informal network of
indigenous and disadvantaged minorities in the S.E. Asia Oceania Australasia
Region. (Origin
of Laceweb name) For background refer Community Ways for Healing the World
Yeomans modelled Fraser House
structure and process in large part upon indigenous socio-medicine. Yeomans
had close childhood relationships with nurturing indigenous women and their
communities through his father's work as a remote area gold and tin mining
assayer. On two occasions Yeomans personally experienced childhood near-death
traumas. In both the above cases, Yeomans was cared back to psycho-emotional
health by indigenous women. Through these experiences, Yeomans had first-hand
experience of indigenous sociomedicine and socio-healing for social cohesion
(Cawte, 1996; 1974). With his quest in mind, Yeomans
evolved Fraser House from the outset as a micro-model of a dysfunctional
culture - comprising the mad and the bad. For this, Yeomans arranged for
prisoners to be released to Fraser House under license. Feeling Influences In evolving both Fraser House and
the Laceweb, Yeomans was guided by the feel of visions, ideas and action. For
Yeomans, corrective emotional experience is at the heart of psychosocial
change. Yeomans particularly drew on insights from Firth's anthropological
writings relating to the social cohesion practices of the Tikopia people of
the Solomon Islands (Firth, R. 1936). Firth was one of many
anthropologists Yeomans read during his anthropological/sociological studies
into small village life. Fraser House was modelled on a Tikopia Village and
associated social cohesion ways. Yeomans discussed this with me in a series
of in-depth interviews in Yungaburra in 1992 while we were preparing for a
1992 gathering about indigenous people establishing therapeutic communities.
That gathering was held at the aboriginal elder Geof Guest's therapeutic
community at Petford, North Queensland, Australia - (Developing Aboriginal and Torres
strait Islander Drug and Substance Abuse Therapeutic Communities). One aspect of Tikopia way was
embodied in Firth's concept 'cleavered unities' (Firth, R., 1936). Firth
speaks of unifying processes among the Tikopia that recognise, acknowledge,
play with, respect, celebrate and maintain cleavages (difference/diversity) -
that is, 'unifying cleavage'. One example of the concept is that
Tikopia marriage was between those most different - those on the opposite
side of the Island. Matrilineal land and the custom of the bride living with
her husband's family meant that morning and night would see a two-way flow of
couples across the Island, going to and from their gardens. As community
walking over the ridges - to and fro - passing those opposite to themselves
in friendly banter - the Tikopia people were cohesively embodying their way
of life - a mindbody synthesis with their people, their place and their
world. The Fraser House infrastructure was
originally designed by the Health Department - contrary to Yeomans' intention
- as separate male and female units with separate dining rooms at either end.
Yeomans saw this separation of the sexes as isomorphic with cleavered
dysfunctional community. Once the Unit was started, Yeomans interspersed male
and female dormitories and turned the female dining room into a lounge. The 250-metre walk through the Unit
from the shared dining room to the shared lounge became a metaphorical
Tikopia mountain trail for co-reconstructing their shared realities and each
other. The walk (along with the rest of Fraser House) became 'public space'
(Ireland, R. (1998) for enriching and sustaining community. Firth makes no
comment about the potential of the Tikopia way of life as a practical working
model for restoring psychosocial health and well-being in dysfunctional
people, families and communities. Yeomans' realised that potential. Yeomans' aim was to create 'small
village' living within the Unit that may impact upon and create shifts away
from isolation and destructive intra and inter-personal cleavage. Fraser
House interventions made intentional functional cleavage in entangled
pathological networks. The intentional cleavering created potential
psychosocial spaces and places for corrective emotional experience - so each
cleavered pathological network may have scope to come together in more
functional unity. Another major influence on Yeomans
was his father P. A. Yeomans, the founder of the agriculture practice,
'Keyline'. Neville Yeomans extended an underlying Keyline theme - community
cooperation in using Keyline practices for sustaining social, habitat,
economic and environmental well-being (Yeomans, A., 1993 The
Late Percival Alfred ("P.A.") Yeomans; Yeomans, P. A. 1976; Yeomans 1971,
Collected
Papers;
Yeomans, 1965; Yeomans, 1958; Yeomans, 1955). In evolving Fraser House, Yeomans
wove together influences from his father's work and indigenous
understandings, especially relating to socio-geography, context, location,
place and placemaking (Concepts and Frames). Another influence on Yeomans was
psychosynthesis (from a 1998 interview). Assagioli hints at 'cleavered unity'
in giving a big picture of psychosynthesis: 'From a still wider and more
comprehensive point of view, universal life appears to us as a struggle
between multiplicity and unity - a labour and an inspiration towards union
... uniting all beings ... with each other through links of love...'
(Assagioli, 1965, p. 31)(my italics). In 1999 during an in-depth interview,
Yeomans identified Humberto Maturana's paper, 'Biology of Love' as seminal
(Maturana & Verden-Zoller, 1996 Biology
of Love).
The article suggests that perhaps our species name should be called Homo
Sapiens Amans (lover). Love is central to Laceweb well-being action. An Insider Looking In In a 1980 article in the first issue
of the International Journal of Therapeutic Communities, Yeomans referred to
the need to have social research into the evolving Laceweb social movement in
Far North Queensland. One of our major next steps is to
bring together a psychosocial evaluative research team to monitor the
development of this regional community movement. Such may take some time as
social scientists are fairly uncommon in the area (Yeomans, 1980 From the Outback.). In evolving Fraser House and the
Laceweb, Yeomans continually catalysed tentative possibilities. My
interaction with Yeomans is a case in point. At my first meeting with Yeomans
in Sydney in the mid-Eighties we talked about my psychosocial studies and my
eligibility for consideration as a Ph.D. candidate. From the outset, and without
informing me of his wider aspirations, Yeomans mentored and co-evolved me
along side indigenous Laceweb enablers through shared sociotherapy,
psychotherapy and enabler experience within Laceweb contexts (Yeomans, 1974a On Global Reform and International
Normative Model Areas (Inma)). Yeomans slowly added bits to other's
understanding on a 'need to know' basis. Confidentiality regarding Laceweb
links was one of his concerns. In some contexts in the Region, healing can be
a subversive activity - as in the recent East Timor experience. Another reason for 'drip feeding'
information is to prevent overwhelm and scepticism. Some indigenous and other
natural nurturers, especially those who are traumatised are already extremely
cautious and easily 'put off'. Yeomans' did not arrange for me see his
'Global Reform' article until July, 2000 (Yeomans, 1974a On Global Reform and International
Normative Model Areas (Inma)). In 1997, Yeomans inspired me to do
Ph.D. research into Fraser House and the Laceweb. As a potential precursor to
my being part of Yeomans envisioned 'psychosocial evaluative research team',
he had engaged me in prolonged in-depth and long interviews for ten years. My research challenge is that of the
insider looking in. Since commencing the Ph.D. in 1997, and following Lincoln
and Gubba (1985), further in-depth interviews with Yeomans and persistent
participant observation of Laceweb action have been carried out. Material
obtained from Yeomans has been triangulated with material from a series of
in-depth interviews with each of three professional people who worked with
Dr. Yeomans as senior staff at Fraser House in the Sixties. Other enablers of the Laceweb have
been interviewed. All of these interviews were in turn triangulated with
Fraser House and other archival material (Yeomans, 1965; Iceton, 1970-1976).
As my Fraser House interviewees are all researchers, my data and analysis has
been cross-checked with each of them - in their dual roles of interviewee and
peer. Fraser House ex-residents are also being interviewed. Fraser House Structure and Process Margaret Mead spoke of Fraser House
as 'the most total therapeutic community' she had ever been to (Yeomans, 1965,
V.12, p. 69). Maxwell Jones, a UK pioneer in therapeutic communities,
suggested that the carefully worked out Fraser House social structure would
have 'evolution as an inevitable consequence' (Clarke & Yeomans, 1969, p.
v-ix). Yeomans, my three ex Fraser House interviewees and an outpatient
confirmed that this 'inevitability of change' applied to residents and staff
alike. In keeping with Yeomans' indigenous
frame, as soon as the first intake of residents occurred, Yeomans
successfully sought transfer of all indigenous people in the NSW mental
asylum system to Fraser House. This information came from a 1998/9 interview
with Yeomans, and a 2000 interview with a former outpatient (Yeomans, 1962). Yeomans' writings provide glimpses
of his process. A key aspect of the current Ph.D. research involves
identifying and specifying the therapeutic and healing 'elements' used at
Fraser House and the processes used to extend these into the Laceweb. Fraser House elements included:
During resident intake, steps were
taken to have gender and age balance and all diagnostic categories
represented. Balance was also sought between married/single, socio-economic
status and mad/bad. In balancing over-controlled/under-actives and
under-controlled/over-actives, typically, two pairs of each type would share
a bedroom. This provided scope for a shift away from behavioural extremes to
a more normal centre. A 'resident committee' based
resocializing process was evolved and all aspects of Unit administration were
devolved to these committees. Residents and outpatients always outnumbered
staff on any committee and every committee member had one vote. Residents
would often out-vote staff. Yeomans had a veto power which he rarely used. On
Yeomans' call, the residents typically made the ecological decision. They
were the ones most embedded in the community, and Yeomans operated on the
premise that, 'the locals know what is missing in their own well-being'. He
acted on this premise in his subsequent Laceweb enabling. An endeavour was also made to
maintain the above balancing within committees. Nurses wrote a handbook on
Fraser House Committees and other structures and processes (Yeomans, 1965).
There were other handbooks written. As everything at Fraser House was under
continual review, structure and process were continually changing. In using work as therapy, tasks were
assigned to those who could not do them. A social recluse was put in charge
of purchasing for the kiosk. A compulsive thief was placed in charge of the
kiosk, stole funds and had to face the transforming pressure of the total
community - the mad and the bad. He became meticulously honest. Residents
managed their own accounting for the kiosk, with accounts presented to the
residents' parliamentary committee. That committee was made up of members of
all committees and reported to Thursday Big Group, so all residents and
outpatients became exposed to learning about ecological money use. A example of the Fraser House use of
slogans is, 'No one is sick all through'. In the early days of Fraser House,
permissiveness within the staff-resident relation was embodied in the slogan,
'We are all patients here together'. The best advice that could be given a
resident was, 'bring it up in the group'. As an example, a notorious bank
robber along with other former prisoners, in Fraser House on license from
Long Bay Prison, were planning to use Fraser House as a base for a major
robbery. Fraser House was not secure and residents typically had weekend
passes. One resident revealed the plans in a very tense Big Group. The bank
robber reformed. He became a research assistant to the Director of the
Australian Institute of Criminology in Canberra for many years. Fraser House
slogans became a simple shared language and set of beliefs that were easily
taught to new arrivals. Within the Fraser House Therapeutic
Community, 'community' was the primary therapy. Big group was held morning
and early evening on weekdays for exactly one hour. Knowing this rule, from
the moment that Big Group commenced, varying residents were invariably
clamouring to get collective interaction focused on their concerns. Strict
time keeping helped sustain a mood of, 'let's get on with it'. Residents
could only stay six months. This was reduced to three months. Two return
stays could be negotiated. These protocols also conveyed, 'Get on with
transforming your life - now!' Small therapy group membership was
based on a number of sociological categories. Both the sociological category
and the composition of small groups varied daily and membership in all the
groups at any one time were based on the same category. The social categories
were: (i) age, (ii) married/single status, (iii) locality of domicile, (iv)
kinship, (v) social order (manual, clerical, or
semi-professional/professional) and (vi) age and sex. People in pathological social
networks would be all together with everyone else in Big Group. However,
because of the continual changing composition in small groups, the members of
these pathological networks were regularly split up (cleavered) for the small
group sessions. For the small groups based on
locality of domicile, Sydney was divided into a number of regions. In most
cases, groups of people came regularly on the same trains, buses and each
other's cars so they all got to know each other. Mutual travel was fostered
by the Outpatients, Relatives and Friends Committee, one of the resident-run
committees. This committee would arrange the matching up of attendees to
maximise car-pooling and people travelling together creating networking
possibilities. Residents would attend the locality
group for the region they would be returning to. Typically, by the time they
were to leave, they and their family friendship network would have expanded
to a functional network of around seventy people. This means people, who may
have previously had a dysfunctional social network that was smaller than
those typical in society, ended up having one that was typically larger in
terms of the number of people in the, 'closely known and regularly
interacting' part of their social network. As well, these people had all of
their rich Fraser House experiences in common, and a common set of
communication and mutual support skills. There are reports that Fraser House
ex-residents did keep in contact with each other and get together for
friendship, mutual self-help and support. One such group helped in evolving
the self-help group, 'Recovery' that later changed its name to 'Grow', now an
international organisation. Without being accompanied by staff,
residents made suicide prevention and domiciliary care interventions in the
wider community using a vehicle purchased and funded from profits from the
resident run kiosk. Residents who were almost ready to leave Fraser House
would provide domiciliary support to those who had already left. There were many successful field
trips by the resident-run suicide prevention group at all hours. As an
example, the high cliffs at the Gap on Sydney Harbour's South Head is a well
known suicide spot. Fraser House residents on the suicide prevention group
would volunteer at short notice to travel from the Unit on the North Shore
and cross Sydney Harbour Bridge to reach the Gap. This Fraser House outreach
was a precursor to Lifeline, a well known Australian telephone crisis support
line. In the early Sixties when Yeomans
was completing postgraduate studies in psychology and sociology he started
the Psychiatric Research Study Group. It was a forum for the discussion and
exploration of innovative healing ideas. Margaret Mead chaired the group when
she visited Fraser House (Yeomans, N., 1965, Vol.12 page 68). It met at rooms
adjacent the Unit. The study group networked for, and
attracted very talented people. Students of psychiatry, medicine, psychology,
sociology, social work, criminology and education attended. Prison officers
and parole officers with whom Yeomans had been working within the prison and
corrective system also attended along with Tony Vinson, who became Director
of Corrective Services in NSW. Any promising ideas raised in the
group tended to be tried out in Fraser House and adopted if fitting. One of
Yeoman's concepts is, 'the survival of the fitting', a Yin adaptation of the
original emphasis on 'the fittest'. This group was an early example of
Laceweb informal healing networking. Yeomans wrote of cost-benefit
analysis research into Fraser House: Some years ago, I
arranged a cost-benefit analysis of Fraser House, compared first with
traditional Admission unit in another psychiatric hospital, and second with a
newly constructed Admission unit which some felt might be a pseudo
therapeutic community. Somewhat to my surprise Fraser House was not only more
effective but also cost less than the other two. The traditional unit was
next cost-effective and the 'pseudo' unit least (Yeomans, 1980 From the Outback.). Fraser House experience supported
Yeomans premise that traumatised and dysfunctional people could evolve
themselves through self help and mutual help towards their own well-being
together. The next step in his quest was to widen therapeutic community
concepts into the wider community. Osmosis into the Wider Community While Fraser House did have enduring
legacies, in the late Sixties, mental health system-based pressures skewed
Fraser House's structures and processes towards mainstream practice. Yeomans
had recognised that this would happen from the outset, and had commenced
specific steps to extend the Unit's influence into the wider community
shortly after the Unit started. The above-mentioned suicide
prevention and domiciliary outreach and other community outreach were
examples. Another example was that in 1962, Yeomans took time away from
Fraser House to search the World for the best place to evolve what Yeomans
called, an 'International Normative Model Area' (Inma). For Yeomans, an Inma was a region
where ways of humane living together could be explored with a minimum of
interference from dominant society. Yeomans was aware that the term 'Inma'
had sacred significance - being the corroboree of the Aboriginal women of
Central Australia; in ma, as 'in the mother' - the mother nurturing. He went to the most oppressed people
- the Indigenes and the disadvantaged/oppressed micro-minorities in a number
of places around the World and asked them, where would be the best place to
commence global humane change. Consistently the answer was given, 'The best
place is in the remote regions of Far North Australia'. Yeomans' outlined a rationale for
this choice and made plans to establish a base in the region (Yeomans, 1971 Collected Papers). Yeomans wrote the poems, 'Inma'
and 'On Where' to encapsulate his healing aspirations, and the place
identified by the oppressed people he had spoken to (Yeomans 1974b Inma; Yeomans, 1974c On Where). Yeomans extended the ideas in a
monograph entitled, 'Global Reform - International Normative Model Areas',
written as a humantiarian law barrister in 1974 for the Australian Humanitarian
Law Committee (Yeomans, 1974a On Global Reform and International
Normative Model Areas (Inma)). Yeomans was exploring tentative
micro-models for peace-healing( dysfunctional conflict ridden societies and
the whole world. Refer: Carlson & Yeomans (1975) Whither Goeth the Law - Humanity or
Barbarity; Peacehealing is a Yeomans' concept
embracing healing ways - including mediation therapy - that may heal and
foster respectful relationships between previously conflicted people. Yeomans, in talking of INMA’s
potential role in cultural transitions wrote: The take off point for
the next cultural synthesis typically occurs in a marginal culture. Such a
culture suffers dedifferentiation of its loyalty and value system to the
previous civilisation. It develops a relatively anarchical value orientation
system. Its social institutions dedifferentiate and power slips away from
them. This power moves into lower level, newer, smaller and more radical
systems within the society. Uncertainty increases and with it rumour (my
italics). Also an epidemic of experimental organisations develop. Many die
away but those most functionally attuned to future trends survive and grow. Information typically passes along
Laceweb networks as rumours, 'We heard this works. You may want to adapt it
in your place' (Informal
Networks and New Social Movements).
Yeomans wrote about indigenous
people's choice of Far North Queensland as the better place to establish
Inma: 'Australia exemplifies
many of these widespread change phenomena. It is in a geographically and
historically unique marginal position. Geographically Asian, it is
historically Western. Its history is also of a peripheral lesser status. Initially a convict
settlement, it still remains at a great distance from the core of Western
Civilisation. Culturally it is often considered equivalent to being the
peasants of the West. It is considered to have no real culture, a marked
inferiority complex, and little clear identity. It can thus be considered
equally unimportant to both East and West and having little to contribute. BUT - it is also the only
continent not at war with itself. It is one of the most affluent nations on
earth. Situated at the junction of the great civilisations of East and West
it can borrow the best of both. Of all nations it has the least to lose and
most to gain by creating a new synthesis (Yeomans, 1974a On Global Reform and International
Normative Model Areas (Inma)).' In extending Fraser House into the
community, three of Yeomans' premises were (i), that natural nurturers exist
in any culture; (ii), that through enabling support and osmosis, the healing
ways that were evolved at Fraser House may be spread among these natural
nurturers and (iii) that diversity may be accepted, respected and celebrated
among cleavered unities. From the outset Yeomans viewed
Fraser House as one small step towards humane caring global transition. He
envisioned this epochal change towards a more humane intercultural
social-life-world process taking perhaps three hundred or more years
(Yeomans, 1974a On
Global Reform and International Normative Model Areas (Inma)). In keeping with his humane values
and frames, Yeomans starting place for evolving the Laceweb was with the most
oppressed - the indigenous and oppressed small minorities. The humane change
process envisioned is of a pervasively Yin nature; the Inma energy of the
Central Australian Aboriginal Women - nurturing caring energy and
spirituality. It is a positive energy - for well-being. It is not against
anything. It does not counter culture. It does not resist or oppose (Concepts and Frames). In summary, the following is a list
of some of the processes used in evolving the Laceweb:
Yeomans sought to foster transitions
away from service delivery by dominant structures that control and impose
process. As a move towards community self help, Yeomans was a primary
influence in the setting up of the Australian Community Mental Health system
in the late Sixties. Yeomans was a prime energiser and
the first Coordinator of the New South Wales Community Mental Heath Section.
He set up Australia's first Community Mental Health Clinic in Paddington, NSW
(Yeomans, N., et al 1993 Governments and the Facilitation of
Community Grassroots Wellbeing Action).
Three family friendship network
groups started by Yeomans in the late Sixties were Mingles, Connexion and
Nexus Groups - all with a focus of linking people together for well-being (Mingles ). As one process for enabling the
growth of mutual-help networks, in 1968 Yeomans and others energised the
Watson Bay Healing Festival, perhaps Australia's first multicultural
community festival. The Festival included the music and healing artistry of
people from over 30 countries (Watson Bay Festival). In October 1969, Yeomans and others
energised the Centennial Park Healing Festival for community building (Sydney
Morning Herald, 1968). Through Yeomans, the Paddington Community Mental
Health Clinic led to the holding of the Paddington Festival in the early
Seventies. Paddington festival and Paddington market were energised by
Yeomans and others to surround the Community Mental Health Clinic and provide
a community (village) space and context (Mangold, 1993, p.4). Paddington
Bazaar remains as a Sydney icon to this day. In a resonant vein, Yeomans later
evolved the Rapid Creek Project in Darwin as a possibility for linking the
indigenous Larakia people's healing networks into community markets,
environmental restoration action, the long-grass people (indigenous street
people), and other community wellbeing actions. The festivals were followed up with
the Campbelltown Festival around 1971/2. Yeomans attended the 1979 Cooktown
Arts Festival which was energised by a Fraser House ex-outpatient and others.
Yeomans had researched mediation
practices around the world as part of his (humanitarian) law degree. Yeomans
was a key enabler in developing the Divorce Law Reform Society of NSW.
Branches of the Society spread to other states. Yeomans prepared a series of
mediational submissions (Carlson & Yeomans, (1975) Whither Goeth the Law; Yeomans, 1974d Humanitarian Law) - particularly the desirability of
setting up family and individual counselling and family mediating processes.
These writings, along with other submissions from the Society, became a basis
for submissions to Justices Evatt and Mitchell and played a substantial part
in the formation of the new Family Law legislation. From these beginnings,
the use of mediation has been growing in Australian society. In the early Seventies, Yeomans and
others used the Fraser House Big Group collective therapy model for a series
of annual gatherings in Armidale and Grafton, attended by a balance of
indigenous people and Anglos (Kamien, 1978; Iceton, 1970-1976; Franklin,
1995). Many indigenous attendees now play significant community roles. Eddie
Mabo, a Torres Strait Islander who was to play a crucial role in land law
reform in Australia, attended the Grafton Gathering. The theme for these gatherings
was, 'Surviving Well in Relating to the Dominant Culture'. In speaking of humane transition
Yeomans wrote: 'It
is submitted that consciousness-raising would occur firstly among the most
disadvantaged of the area, including the Aborigines. Thus human relations
groups on a live in basis could assist both the growth of solidarity and
personal freedom of expression amongst such persons. In initial experiences
along this line (speaking of the Armidale and Grafton Human Relations
Gatherings) the release of fear and resentment against whites has led to a
level of understanding and mutual trust both within the aboriginal members
and between them and white members (Yeomans, 1974a On Global Reform and International
Normative Model Areas (Inma)).' These gatherings were often very
'wearing' for attendees. At the Armidale and Grafton gatherings, Anglos who
attended reported that the first day was taken up with Aborigines working
through their fear and resentment. Most of this was directed at the Anglos
present at the Workshop. On the following days mutual
understandings and trust began to emerge. Because of floods delaying some
Aboriginal and Islander people's arrival at the Grafton Gathering to the
second, third or fourth day, the group was processing anger and resentment
introduced by these late arrivals for a number of hours following each
person's arrival. Laceweb action is not always all love and sweetness. Often it is very heavy going for all
concerned. Max Kamien, a psychiatrist, wrote about attending the Armidale
healing gatherings with Aborigines from the remote NSW town of Bourke. Upon
their return home, the Bourke Aborigines immediately set up similar regular
healing gatherings in their own community leading to well-being change
(Kamien, 1978.; Iceton, 1970-76; Franklin, 1995; Widders, 1975 Black Alternatives: Aborigines in
the Seventies and Beyond).
The Friendship Networks Connexion and Nexus Groups at different times
produced the Aboriginal Human Relations Newsletter that emerged from the
Armidale and Grafton Indigenous Gatherings (Iceton, 1970-76). Yeomans wrote in the first issue of
the International Journal of Therapeutic Communities about actions inspired
by Fraser House (Yeomans, 1980 From the Outback.). These actions were spreading
Fraser House ways through evolving and enabling Australian Outback indigenous
self-help networks. Through the Seventies, Eighties and
Nineties, Yeomans engaged in co-learning co-mentoring exchanges with
indigenous and disadvantaged minority Laceweb enablers (An Example of Enabling Indigenous
Well-being).
Yeomans wrote of proposals evolving in the late 1970's for a safe haven on
Palm Island, North Queensland for indigenous and disadvantaged people from
the Region (Yeomans, 1980 From the Outback.). Yeomans started small indigenous
therapeutic community houses in Mackay, Townsville, and Cairns in Northern
Queensland (Yeomans, 1980 From the Outback.; Wilson, 1990, p. 71-85). Yeomans
and others enabled gatherings and other contexts for sharing of therapeutic
community healing ways among indigenous and small minority family-friendship
networks (Sharing
therapeutic community healing ways).
In the early Eighties, Yeomans and
an Aboriginal person who had co-enabled the Armidale and Grafton Gatherings
with Yeomans, enabled Aboriginal and Islander Well-being Gatherings in Alice
Springs and Katherine in the Northern Territory. Evolving Laceweb links in
those areas continue. In the late Eighties, Yeomans, with
the same Aboriginal person and others, enabled a dispersed urban Laceweb
therapeutic community that evolved in the Bondi Junction area in NSW. About
145 people were involved in regular healing gatherings and other linkings.
Most of the attendees were linked into the process by receiving phone calls
from Yeomans. Yeomans became a co-enabler and
co-learner with Geoff Guest, the Aboriginal healer elder of the aboriginal
therapeutic community at Petford, 180 kilometres inland from Cairns in Far
North Queensland (Geoff
Guest Salem Camp).
Geoff has supported self-transformation among indigenous and other youth over
the past 20 years. Over 2,000 were supported in the middle ten years. An indigenous Laceweb person and
Yeomans were granted observer status at Unrepresented Nations and Peoples
Organisation (UNPO) meetings in The Hague. That indigenous person became
involved in UN Working Groups. Both roles enabled networking among indigenous
and disadvantaged minorities in the region. Yeomans was the only
non-indigenous main platform speaker at the Indigenous Section of the UN Rio
Earth Summit. Yeomans worked on the wording of an
Indigenous Treaty with NGO's, and a Young Persons Healing Learning Code
(Yeomans, 1992a Inter-people
Healing Treaty Between Non-Government Organisations and Unique Peoples; Yeomans, 1992b The Young Persons Healing Learning
Code). Yeomans and others pioneered
mediation therapy among indigenous networks around the Atherton Tablelands -
extending mediation practice towards healing relating. In 1992, Yeomans
enabled a Mediation Therapy Gathering at Lake Tinaroo. Attendees included
local indigenous women, as well as a number from remote communities in the
far North. An example of the interplay of
Laceweb processes is when Yeomans used conversations at the local monthly
Yungaburra Market to energise a fortnight of activity featuring two camp
outs, a survey of 12 possible festival sites on indigenous and other land,
and a New Years Eve party that energised the evolving of a youth network in
Yungaburra called Funpo (One fortnights action). During the Nineties, the dispersed
intercultural therapeutic community that Yeomans had been co-enabling has
been evolving safe-havens in Australia around the Atherton Tablelands, North
Queensland, and the Northern Territory Top End (Yeomans et al, 1997a). The
Atherton Tablelands is evolving as an International Normative Model Area
(INMA). Related humanitarian initiatives are
evolving possibilities in the Region (Yeomans et al, 1998b Self-Help Action Supporting
Survivors Of Torture And Trauma In S.E. Asia, Oceania And Australasia - Small
Generalisable Actions).
For example, small micro projects for supporting survivors of conflict in
East Timor, Bougainville, and the Solomon Islands are evolving. Refer:
Everything is inherently tentative.
Nothing happens unless locals want it to happen. The Laceweb model now extends to
renormalising societies following complete collapse based on local grassroots
self-help/mutual help rather than via top down distant expert driven
processes. The Laceweb model is an isomorphic reversed reframe of the
mainstream model. In the Laceweb model, social
wellbeing may become the primary focus, then local humane law/lore, then
local democratic self governance addressing local wellbeing. Other
normalising may follow from this. Typically, mainstream sets up the political
structure, then the legal system, then the people come last. Even then,
typically the hundreds of thousands of traumatised people tend to remain so
because of expert trauma services being stretched beyond capacity (Yeomans et
al, 1999 Extegrity
- Guidelines for Joint Partner Proposal Application ). Information and a timeline has been
posted on the Internet relating to the evolving Laceweb networks among
indigenous and disadvantaged minority self-help healers in the SE Asia
Oceania Australasia Region (Community Ways for Healing the World
).
(Also refer the homepage: Future Possibilities). In July 2000 there was a series of
gatherings celebrating (i) the sixth anniversary of the 1994 Gathering, (ii)
the UN Day in Support of Torture Survivors and (iii) the UN Peace Week (A series of gathering
celebrations). One example of linking with global
bodies with a humane ethos was the 1994 UNHRC funded Laceweb gathering in the
Atherton Tablelands, in Far North Queensland (Working Group, 1994 Report to the United Nations on the
Small Island Coastal and Estuarine People Gathering Celebration - 1994). This gathering was positioned by
Yeomans as a follow-on gathering to the UN Small Island Gathering in the
Caribbean. At that Atherton Tablelands gathering, Yeomans handed out a page
listing all of the resonant UN and Global gatherings in the next three years.
He suggested indigenous attendees endeavour to attend these gatherings. It is understood that, evolving from
the interplay of the above forms of enabling action, there are now Laceweb
links embracing around half of the indigenous people of the SE Asia Oceania
Australasia Region (Sociograms). This Region contains around half of
the World's indigenous people both in terms of numbers and different
indigenous peoples (Down
to Earth Auspicing Motion).
Yeomans quest is now shared by many. Future papers will expand on other
aspects of Fraser House and the Laceweb. References
Homepage references:
Self Help Action Rebuilding
Wellbeing in the East Asia Oceania Australasia Region |
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