UN-INMA ATHERTON TABLELANDS INMA PROJECT
A Fifty
Year Longitudinal
Community
Mutual Help Wellbeing Action Research Project
Supported
by Total Care Foundation and Australian Wellness Foundation
Written Jan 1994. Last Updated Oct 2019
This paper is a brief-narratives based timeline of
self-evolving sustained community wellbeing action
research commencing in the 1950s and sustained ever since within a Project
in the Atherton Tablelands of beautiful Tropical Far North Queensland,
Australia.
In other Laceweb writings this form of
Action Research has been termed Embodied
Transforms Action Research; experiencing difference that makes a difference within one’s body being inherently transforming.
Folk become aware of feeling and
acting in better ways during micro-experiences of moving sensing feeling
thinking and acting. What had been dysfunctionally
integrated is transformed into new
values-guided functionally integrated patterns - embodied knowing
rather than reflective knowing.
The
actions described are evolving mutual-help
based social transforming ways -
including Peacehealing resonant with new forms of social movement focusing on
relating well emerging in South America, SE Asia and elsewhere around the
world.
Peacehealing processes have been evolving through the
Project and its precursors, and these
seem to have resonance with whole-village-to-whole-village relational mediating used for over 250 years in Bougainville.
Laceweb tends to
happen at the margins. This is where transforming tends to happen in nature.
This paper also
replicates and illustrates the nature of the passing on of news of what works in evolving wellness in community through
Laceweb networks. Typically, the focus is on news of actions that work – the processes used. Some things may seem simple
and trivial and their accumulated effect is extremely potent.
At times, precisely
where things happened and who were involved is not passed on. The term ‘rumours’ has been used; these are
functional rumours networks. Folk are encouraged to explore things that have
worked for others in their own lives; adapting these ways to your local
context.
UN-INMA
UN-INMA is one of many
inter-connecting and inter-relating Laceweb self-help
and mutual-help groups in the SE Asia
Oceania Australasia Region emerging from mutual
help wellbeing action in the Region, especially since the 1960’s and 1970s.
UN-Inma became a focus of action supporting wellness in the Atherton
Tablelands.
This action continues to
emerge through folk being self-starters in taking
back ability over their lives with others in community, especially through
everyday acts enriching family-friend wellbeing networks. These folk are taking their own lives into their own hands,
rather than waiting for others to service
them.
Dr Neville Yeomans had written a letter to
the International Journal of Therapeutic
Communities in 1980 providing an overview of his work from the 1950s
onwards. This short letter specifically mentions Neville forming UN-Inma in Far
North Queensland. The letter was published in the International Journal of
Therapeutic Communities. Neville completed studies in biology, medicine,
psychiatry, psychology, sociology, and law.
A quote from that letter is reproduced below:
From the Outback
Dear Sir,
Since A. W. Clark and I produced the monograph ‘Fraser
House’ in 1969, I have moved to private practice in Cairns, North East
Australia. This is an isolated area for this country, but is rapidly becoming
an intercultural front door to Melanesia and Asia.
‘Up North’ the therapeutic community model has extended
into humanitarian mutual help for social change.
Two of the small cities in this region have self-help
houses based on Fraser House.
An Aboriginal Alcohol and Drug hostel is moving in the
same direction, as are other bodies.
These are facilitated by a network called UN-Inma,
the second word of which is aboriginal for Oneness.
The events of this Web
Site occurred in places dotted around the following map.
The above photo shows the hills around
Yungaburra near Atherton in Far North Queensland, Australia. The rainforest
covered ridge line in the distance is where the Tableland drop steeply to the
coastal sugarcane fields edging the sea and Great Barrier Reef. This is an area
of great natural beauty.
The term ‘UN-INMA’
connotes Unique Nurturers –
Interpersonal Normative Model Areas – linking nurturing folk who are very
quietly and gently engaging in wellbeing artistry in everyday life – typically,
simple acts in everyday life that contribute to folk being well; acts emerging
during small and larger gatherings, celebrations, festivals, community markets
and other happenings, or as folk go about everyday life.
Folk dotted through
Atherton Tableland are exploring linking networks and communities for the
Region emerging as a model area evolving wellbeing norms – an Interpersonal
Normative Model Area.
Atherton Tablelands is a
happening place; though you may go to the Region and not notice what this paper is talking about, even while it is happening all around you in everyday
places. One has to learn to notice it.
This is not about a
‘project’ as commonly known; the term ‘project’
is used in its original sense, from the Latin projectum - something thrown
forth – the noun use of the neuter of projectus - from projicere
to stretch out, throw forth, from pro- ‘forward’ plus combining form of iacere (iactus) - to throw.
The Project is about a self-organizing phenomenon. No one
organizes it or runs it. There is no entity to belong to or to be a member
of. It is about folk creating lots of
wellbeing possibilities in one area – recognising that life is full of well
possibilities that may be tapped. It is akin to the free energy of gravity.
It’s about creating wellbeing futures for ourselves - and then supporting each
other as opportunities emerge and unfold
as happenings. Folk are taking their own
initiative in engaging in local wellbeing acts with others.
There are few decisions
ever made. Folk start. A few may share till a sense of action crystallises and
folk know their part in this action. One may use living systems metaphors to
encapsulate what is happening; examples:
o Evolving
o
Fruiting
o
Grafting
o
Growing
o
Healing
o
Renewing
Many of the happenings
outlined here are not known by those
actively engaged in other wellbeing acts in the Project.
Playing with lots of
possibilities and talking about lots of possibilities, and a few extraordinary
happenings tend to emerge. Everything is very loose. Everything is emergent; given
the time and place is right for it – it tends to happen.
INMA acts are a hardly noticed
way of being together with others. There is a playful simultaneity about, so
that all you can have is your experience
of it, and you may hear of something else that happens, or experience the
afterglow of it three or four times removed.
Over the years, quietly and
without much fanfare, many INMA happenings have been remembered and passed on
as stories and formally and informally written up as file notes, published and
unpublished papers, field notes, published and unpublished books, published and
unpublished reports, international and national conference papers, masters
theses, and PhD dissertations. Archival material is in private archives, in the
Mitchell Library in Sydney NSW, and the National Library in Canberra,
Australia.
The social science concepts
‘connexity’ and ‘Cultural Keyline’ have emerged from this action research using
theorein – pre-theoretical theorising.
Timeline of Action
The following Timeline of
Actions outlines just some of the celebrations, events, festivals, field days,
gatherings, happenings, parties, seminars, markets, workshops and other things
linked to the Atherton Tablelands INMA Project since the 1950s.
2014
Two Sydney based artists
evolve the Yeomans Project that is held at the NSW Art Gallery in Sydney
bringing together, members of the Yeomans extended family and others to reminisce
about PA Yeomans.
Lucas one of the artists
evolving the gallery based Yeomans Project with image of Yeomans Nevallan farm
The above photo shows some
aspects of Keyline including the hilltop ring dam above the family home, (half
way to the centre on the diagonal from his left hand) with irrigation channels
and link channels to lower dams, contour tree plantings for wind breaks
minimising water evaporation, and Redbank Creek along the bottom of the
Photograph.
Emeritus Professor Stuart
Hill is a speaker at the Gallery.
Emeritus Professor Stuart
Hill
Neville’s half sister
Wendy is featured speaker on one night along with Neville’s brother Alan and
his wife, and Neville’s son Robert. Alan Yeoman has one of the latest Keyline
Ploughs in the exhibition. Also displayed are videos, photos, art work and
original document displays and Keyline based artwork. A
quote from PA Yeomans writing:
No artist or artisan ever
has such broad control of the medium through which he expresses his own
character and personality as does the farmer and grazier in the control he can
exercise over his land. The landman can create his own landscape, but the
artist gives only his impression of it. (PA Yeomans, 1958 - Challenge of
Landscape).
Neville’s use of Cultural Healing Artistry in
extending of his father’s supporting nature thrive into supporting human nature
thrive was introduced to the 55 present at the Yeomans Project at the NSW
Art Gallery by a Laceweb member who linked this work to the UN-Inma Atherton
Tablelands Project and further outreach through the SE Asia Oceania Region.
2013
Laceweb folk are invited
to participate via the Internet in a Global Psychiatric Conference held in
London on the theme ‘Self-help and Mutual Help Wellbeing Ways Supporting Folk
with Mental Strife in Low and Middle Income Communities and Countries.
Experience from the Atherton Tablelands Project and other Laceweb Action
Research informs the content.
Laceweb folk informed by
the Atherton Tableland INMA Project provide support to folk in Kinglake,
Victoria massively affected by the 2009 bushfires.
Understanding from Laceweb
INMA Project field days during 2012 in Yungaburra and Koah on the Atherton
Tablelands inform action research into evolving new soil generating and food
forests in peri-urban areas around Melbourne.
2012
UN-INMA through Total Care
Foundation Inc. and the Keyline Foundation Inc., with behind the scenes support
from EESOS (self-help group) and the Australian Wellness Association Inc.
enables a series of eight wellbeing seminar-field days-workshops on the
Atherton Tablelands; one at Malanda, three at Yungaburra, and four at Koah (refer map at start of this web-page).
These workshops are towards sustaining wellbeing in all its forms including
bodymind, communal, environmental, familial, habitat, inter-personal, personal,
social, and soil. One of the Koah
workshops combined vital immunity in soil and
body while evolving well community. 25 people helped create new soil and then others arrived and we
all helped in preparing and making a feast of life food – foods that still
contain life force that are warmed not cooked. Locals are linking together in
buying home-delivered organic vegetable packed boxes from a growers
co-operative.
Laceweb
E-Books are launched at Koah, ‘Coming to One’s Senses – By the Way’ (Volumes
One and Two), and a biography titled ‘Cultural Keyline – The Life Work of Dr
Neville Yeomans’ (Volumes One and Two). The ‘By the Way’ books contain 130
stories linked to the UN-INMA Project and its precursors, rollout and outreach,
and outlines aspects of the Way being used in wellbeing action. Complementing
the Laceweb website, these six volumes are a significant resource relating to
Laceweb Way.
A
series of Wellbeing Networking Gatherings takes place at Geoff Guest (OAM) and
Norma’s Petford Aboriginal Training Farm (refer map at start of this web page)
as well as at Koah and Kuranda - exploring possibilities for further extending
and enriching Wellbeing-Networking between networks in the Atherton Tablelands
Region. Geoff Guest and Alex Dawia’s links into PNG are explored. This
seminar-workshop-field day series is modelled upon, and continues the Ways
emerging through the fifty years of the INMA Project.
Wellbeing
Networking takes place informally in everyday life including during the Mareeba
Market and Kuranda Market days. A commitment made at a workshop to follow up a
theme with someone takes place the very next day by good fortune as they meet
up at Mareeba Market - because someone from the workshop had passed on word at
the Market that the person was there sitting and talking with the Speaker of
the Queensland State Parliament at the Speaker’s ‘meet-the-people’ booth.
Alex
Dawia arranges for a very experienced peacehealer mediator from Bougainville to
fly down and link with Islander folk in Cairns before flying on to Melbourne
for over two months sharing and co-learning with Laceweb folk in the networks.
This visitor completes Transformational Course in Integral Human Transforming through the Total Care Foundation
Victoria’s Learning Centre for Integral Human Transforming. Videos Audio tapes
and photos are made of the healing exchanges. The visitor shares healing
wellbeing ways that he has been using among warring factions and parties
throughout the Bougainville Conflict and during the post-conflict era. Others
from UN-Inma share healing ways with this person - ways gathered from healer
networks throughout the SE Asia Oceania Austrasia Region during the past fifty
years. The stories told by the visitor are recorded for potentially creating
resources for others to use within Bougainville, the Atherton Tablelands Inma
Project, throughout the Region, and wider a field. News of the healing
exchanges in Melbourne are passed onto Laceweb folk in the UK linked to The
Community of Communities and Enabling Environments. Bougainville folk consider
possibilities for evolving Total Care Foundation Bougainville. Experiential
learning themes and experiences are written up on the themes:
o Life
skills
o Healing
Wellness Ways
o Relational
Mediating
This
material is made available as hints for possible action in Bougainville in 2014
with discussing going on about this alongside other rollout among African and
other refugee communities in Melbourne, Victoria.
An Example of Longer-Term Communal Wellbeing Action Influencing
2012 Action
During 1970’s-1980’s, Dr
Neville Yeomans’ visits Atherton Tablelands linking into Aboriginal and
Islander family and community networks. Neville meets Norma and Geoff Guest at
Petford Aboriginal Training Farm. Geoff and Norma are also very well known in
these INMA networks. A number of Laceweb folk meet Dr Neville Yeomans in
Balmain Sydney in August, 1985 just after he returned from the States after
participating in Sensory Submodality Workshops with Steve and Connirae Andreas
in Boulder Colorado.
During 1991, Laceweb
person from the SE Australia visits Neville in Yungaburra, and Neville takes
this person out to Petford to meet Norma and Geoff. Neville also takes the
person around the Atherton Tablelands region linking the person into many
Aboriginal family-friend community wellbeing networks while visiting their
communities in Atherton, Kuranda, Malanda, Mareeba, Mona Mona, Ravenshoe,
Tolga, and other places in the Region.
During 1993, a Laceweb
person’s son on his own initiative travels and stays for ten months with
Neville at Yungaburra and Neville introduces the son to the UN-Inma Project and
to some of the Region’s wellbeing networks.
2012 That person and son
visit Geoff and Norma at Petford Farm with a local enabler and meet an extended
family – an Aboriginal mother, son, daughter, and two grandchildren who are
staying at Petford Farm.
That person and son hold
eight seminar, field days and workshops through the Atherton Tablelands. A
local enabler invites along an Aboriginal Elder to the Koah seminar/workshops.
The Laceweb person had first met this Elder when the Elder was a youth in 1993
when the Laceweb person and Neville visited the Mona Mona Community exploring
for potential festival sites. The Elder experiences the processes being
explored at the 2012 Koah workshops as well as the communal wellbeing ambience
in being with the other attendees. The Elder is well used to communal ambience.
A local enabler has
invited the extended Aboriginal family staying with Geoff and Norma to the Koah
workshops and they are all present and meeting all of the other participants.
The Laceweb person and son
are making a second visit to be with Geoff and Norma on their property way out
in dry rocky country 16 kilometres out of the very small town of Petford (three
houses) – beyond Dimbulah. A local enabler brings along the Elder and an elder
aboriginal woman to Koah to go with the Laceweb person and son to Petford. Both
these aboriginals had known Neville. The elder women is very good friends with
Norma and really enjoys the day sharing news of family friend networks.
The
extended family
are back at Geoff and Norma’s. There is also an Aboriginal father who has come
down from the tip of Cape York around 1100 kilometres away. He had been with
Geoff and Norma as a young Adolescent. He has brought news of many of his
friends and their children who have been among over 3,500 youth supported by
Norma and Geoff over the past thirty years. He has also brought a lawn mower,
and he and his children cut all of the lawns around the house at Petford for
Geoff and Norma.
Another two fellows turn
up who have heard that Geoff’s ride-on-mower has broken and they take the
ride-on-mower to pieces to find out what parts they need to fix or replace. A
few weeks early one of these fellows had asked Geoff in Mareeba if he could
borrow Geoff’s four wheel drive vehicle for about half an hour and Geoff lets
him use it. Half an hour later the fellow returns Geoff’s vehicle with four new
tyres.
Another person is staying
with Geoff who has a background in tertiary teaching and is a qualified vet. He
is helping Geoff voluntarily.
There had been 26 people
at Geoff and Norma’s place that day. The Laceweb person from SE Australia
observes and records the life transforming processes used by Geoff in engaging
with others as this person has been doing on regular visits since 1992. These
processes are available to pass on to others.
Altogether there were over 100
people linked into this wellbeing networking at very short notice during
January 2012, and a number of these were linked into networking back in the
1970’s, 80s, and 90s. All of these people are currently sharing news of good
things that happened through their own nested networks.
During engaging with the Inma Project
in Jan 2012 folk are engaging in what has been termed Cultural Healing Action or Cultural Healing Artistry. All
forms of artistry are embraced for supporting transforming towards wellbeing.
Cultural Healing Action has emerged from Vanuatu and other Pacific Cultures as
well from Australian Aboriginal people and is now spreading through the SE Asia
Oceania Australasia Region. Philippines Educational Theatre Association (PETA)
is one foci of Cultural Healing Action. Contexts are set up where people can
explore aspects of their own wellbeing together with others towards enriching
wellbeing in family and community life. Throughout remote areas of Northern Australia
and the SE Asia Pacific region, indigenous, small minority, and intercultural
people have a long history of using Cultural Healing Action towards fostering
and maintaining all aspects of wellbeing. Many processes have evolved and are
being documented as an integral aspect of the Inma Project.
In Dr Neville Yeomans On Global Reform 1974 paper he
writes of:
a relatively brief
consciousness raising program with the more reformist humanitarian members of
the national community, i.e. largely based on self-selected members of the
helping and caring professions plus equivalent other volunteers. However their
consciousness raising is mainly aimed at realizing the supportive and protective
role they can play nationally, in guaranteeing the survival of the Inma beyond
their own lifetimes, rather than trying to persuade them actually to join it by
migration
In November 2012,
consistent with Neville’s On Global Reform Paper Laceweb folk from SE Australia
visited Cairns and the Atherton Tableland to coincide with the Total Solar
Eclipse and held the Total Care Foundation Eclipse Silent Disco Celebration on
the Cairns Esplanade adjacent the swimming pool area. They also visit Koah, Kuranda,
and stayed out at Geoff and Norma’s Healing Farm at Petford evolving a cold
compost and a bush materials vertical vegetable and herb garden.
Similarly, Laceweb folk
from the South East including a Laceweb person from the Kinglake Region in
Victoria, an area affected by the massive fire storm that devastated that
Region in Feb 2009, visited Cairns and the Atherton Tablelands in February,
2013. They were linking with folk experienced in Permaculture and a range of
healing ways on innovating properties in Kuranda and Ravenshoe. They also had a
walk over a substantial landholding acquired by a Community Group in the
Atherton Tablelands. They offered this group support towards energising
wellbeing festivals on their property.
2006-2011
With
enabling support from self-help groups Connexion, EESOS, Extegrity, Inma Nelps,
Keyline, Family Nexus, Mediation Matters, as well as Nexus Groups, UN-INMA
energises a series of small gatherings in Cairns, and at various places on the
Tablelands on Wellbeing Networking. These gatherings are supported by the
following entities: Australian Wellness Foundation (Inc.), Keyline Foundation
(Inc.), and Total Care Foundation (Inc.).
EESOS
and the Keyline Foundation draw upon the Atherton Tablelands INMA Project in
evolving and using Extegrity (see later) an extensive model of Wellbeing
Artistry Action for re-constituting collapsed and collapsing societies and
their way of life and livelihoods following man-made and natural disasters.
This is extended when Laceweb folk, with the support of over fifty academics,
evolve a Aus$380 million model project for the reconstituting of livelihoods
and village wellbeing of a collapsed States modelled on Extegrity (see later)
and the Inma Project and its outreach.
Laceweb
folk from the South join Alex Dawia and others and have highly sensitive
meetings in Cairns with significant parties involved in Peacehealing and
reconciliation in Bougainville PNG following the ten year conflict and evolve a
recommendations document that was commissioned by one of the parties and
distributed to significant parties.
Dr
Rex Haig - psychiatrist with the UK Community of Communities, the Community
Psychiatry body of the UK College of Psychiatry - meets and has discussions
with Alex Dawia, Geoff Guest, and David Cruise, one of the directors of Down to
Earth Victoria (Inc.) and other Laceweb folk in Melbourne, Victoria, who all
brief Rex on the history of the Atherton Tablelands INMA Project.
Dr
Haig also briefs the above folk on the resonant role of the Community of
Communities and other resonant bodies in the UK, Europe and wider a-field. Dr
Haig stays in contact with Laceweb folk in sharing news of the rollout of the
Atherton Tablelands Project, which is evolving as a model of global
significance.
2003-2005
Through
experience gained and written up with Dr Neville Yeomans in action researching
the Atherton Tablelands INMA Project, a Laceweb person through UN-INMA is
engaged by the Centre for Integrative Development Studies in Manila,
Philippines through non-UN funds auspiced by the UN, to travel through seven SE
Asia countries to find and link up wellbeing natural nurturers among indigenous
and oppressed small minorities. In this role the Laceweb person finds natural
nurturer networks through SE Asia. Experienced gained in action research with
Dr Neville Yeomans is used in finding and linking up natural nurturers through
the Indigenous and small multicultural minority communities on the Atherton
Tablelands. Two hundred and forty people and Forty-Nine Natural Nurturer
Networks through the SE Asia Oceania Australasia Region are found and formed
into a network of networks with links evolving and continuing with Australian
Top End self-help groups and networked networks.
Through the Philippines University
Psychology Department’s Centre for Integrative Development Psychnet[1]
Project, a UN-Inma person engages in Cultural Healing Arts in sharing healing
Ways in Baucau, East Timor using experience gained through the Inma Project.
Through
UN-INMA and Extegrity (see below in 1999), Geoff Guest from Petford and Alex
Dawia from Cairns are invited to attend a Wellbeing Gathering held in the
Philippines of 49 wellbeing healers
from eleven countries organised by SE
Asia Emergency Response Network with its Secretariat in the Centre for
Integrative Development Studies in the University of the Philippines – now an
independent institute.
This
gathering is co-facilitated by Professor Elisabeth De Castro, University of the
Philippines, Ernie Cloma Philippines Educational Theatre and a Laceweb person
from UN-Inma to evaluate resources developed for the Network by Laceweb. These
resources were for evolving culturally sensitive psychosocial support in the
context of man-made and natural disasters. The resources enabled the evolving
of rapid response teams able to rapidly assess local psychosocial resources and
resilience. University of the
Philippines, Centre for Integrative Development Studies has been working
through UN-INMA. Laceweb folk share their experience of the Atherton Tablelands
INMA Project with the other attendees of this International Wellbeing
Gathering.
Through UN-INMA and Extegrity (self-help group) - with
support from Down to Earth Victoria (Inc.) - people come to Australia from
Cambodia and the Philippines, including Professor Violetta Bautista – world
renowned for her work on resilience in children under stress, for firsthand
briefings on the UN-Inma Project and to attend gatherings for sharing healing
ways and to attend ConFest and participate in the workshop scene there.
Laceweb
person is a speaker at the Asia Pacific Social Psychology Conference in Manila
on the Atherton Tablelands on Laceweb and the UN-Inma Project.
Laceweb
person completes a PhD that has UN-INMA Atherton Tablelands INMA Project and its local, regional
and international outreach as one of its main themes.
Laceweb
people fly in
to Cairns Atherton Tablelands Region to be with Geoff Guest and one of them
records Geoff Guest telling healing wellbeing stories that form a potent aspect
of Geoff’s supporting at risk adolescents transforming their lives. Geoff also
takes these Laceweb people to
Kowanyama Aboriginal community up on Cape York and the group meet up with 12
young men who had all been through Petford and their stories post-Petford are
shared. The group also meet up with a father who had been to Petford who had
also sent his son to Petford to have Geoff and Norma’s transforming influence.
A Professor at University
of the Philippines, writes a paper called ‘Exploitative Work – Child Labour’
(2003) that uses UN-INMA’s work in the Laceweb new-form social movement (Evers,
1985; Ireland, 1998) in the SE Asia Oceania Australasia Region, including the
Atherton Tablelands UN-INMA Project, as a model of Global Wellbeing Action.
Book Launch in Brisbane of
a collection of over 1,000 poems written by Dr. Neville Yeomans, two of which,
‘INMA’ and ‘On Where’, are expressly about the Atherton Tablelands UN-INMA
Project and a number of which gives hints of the transforming Ways used within
the Project.
1995-2002
In 2002, a Laceweb person
linked to UN-Inma is invited to participate at an Experts Meeting auspiced by
the Regional Office of a UN Agency in the Region. Through sharing about the
Atherton Tablelands Inma Project and natural nurturer networking in public
places, The Laceweb person is invited to travel through seven SE Asian
countries to link up indigenous and small minority natural nurturers into an
extended network in the Region towards locals supporting grassroots locals in
culturally appropriate ways following manmade and natural disasters.[2]
Over the next 18 months that Laceweb person finds 240 people in 49 networks and
links them together into Psychnet.
In 2000 and 2002,
gatherings energised by INMA Nelps and UN-INMA are held in Cairns titled
‘Self-Help & Mutual-help Action Supporting Survivors of Torture and Trauma
in SE Asia, Oceania, and Australasia’. These gatherings are attended by folk
from East Timor, West Papua, as well as PNG mainland & Bougainville.
Aboriginals and Islanders and resonant others from Australasia and overseas
also attend. As well, these Gatherings are used to evolve experiential
resources for training people in psycho-social-emotional response to man-made
and natural disasters, and for supporting the evolving a SE Asia Pacific Self
Help Trauma Support Intercultural Network engaging in mutual-help. Inma Nelps
and UN-INMA support folk at the above gatherings signing the UP & UYP
Treaties.
A Laceweb person holds
different prolonged co-learning healing wellbeing discussions with a number of
Bougainville people who had been caught up in the conflict in Bougainville and
who had travelled down to Cairns..
2001 A Laceweb person and
Professor Stuart Hill from University of Western Sydney (now Emeritus
Professor) visit the Yeomans Keyline farms Nevallan and Yobarnie in North
Richmond, NSW – a precursor to the Inma Project.
2001 Laceweb people
(including one of Sri Lankan background) travel 3,500 kilometres from Melbourne
to Cairns to stay with Geoff Guest and Norma at Petford inland from Cairns and
observing Geoff’s processes while he’s working with young men using engaging
with wild horses as a primary transforming agent; also listening to and
documenting Geoff’s healing storytelling processes.
During 1999, Dr Neville
Yeomans with other Laceweb input write the Extegrity documentation relating to
local and lateral grassroots processes using self-help and mutual help for
re-constituting collapsed or collapsing societies, a reversed isomorphic
reframe of top down processes invariably implemented by the dominant system –
elect a nation government, set up a legal system, court system, and a police
and prison system and look after common folk last. Extegrity way reverses this
- supporting locals in peacehealing while locals are together reconstituting
their way of life together in their place – reconstituting their way, their
values, their culture, and their lore. From this lore emerge local norms and
eventually their law which spreads to re-link local communities and evolve
local governance, and this local-laterally spreads to embrace regional
governance, which further local-laterally spreads in reconstituting global
governance of their society.
Extegrity (extensive
integrity) evolves as a self-help group energy enabling Extegrity review of
action research in the networks of wellbeing networks if locals want this;
Laceweb folk with others in the Region and internationally are providing
support.
Alex Dawia - a Bougainville
person living in Cairns who is founder and director of the Bougainville
Survivors of Torture and Trauma Foundation - is invited to participate in a
Training Seminar in Denmark on Supporting Survivors of Torture and Trauma.
1998 Alex Dawia becomes a
PhD candidate at James cook University with the theme ‘Therapeutic Community
Wellbeing Processes and Aboriginal Communities’.
1998 – Another Laceweb
person commences a PhD on Dr Neville Yeomans’ including ongoing action research
on precursors to the Atherton Tablelands INMA Project. This Laceweb person
introduced into the Atherton Tablelands Region by Dr Yeomans in 1991.
Alex Dawia is invited to
Israel to provide background to the Atherton Tablelands Inma Project, and to
study their community approaches in working with at-risk youth.
A Laceweb person meets
separately with Professor Alf Clark and Dr Terry O’Neill, in researching the
precursors to the INMA Atherton Tablelands Project.
Professor Mulligan with
Professor Stuart Hill, a world renowned ecologist and social ecologist,
publishes a book ‘Ecological Pioneers: A Social History of Australian
Ecological Thought and Action’ that also explores precursors to the Atherton
Tablelands INMA Project in the work of the Yeomans family relating to their
developing of Keyline, and Neville’s evolving of Cultural Keyline processes
from the 1950s onwards.
During
1999-2002, Follow-On Gatherings to the Small Island Coastal and Estuarine
Gathering Celebration at Lake Tinaroo on the Atherton Tablelands in June 1994
are funded by the Jesse Street Foundation in NSW, and energised and held by the
Self-help Group INMA Nelps. That Gathering Celebration was funded by the UN
Human Rights Commission in Geneva. Treaties are signed regarding relating with Unique Peoples and Unique Young Peoples.
A
series of gatherings take place in Petford and Cairns on sharing wellbeing ways
energised by Nexus Groups and Inma Nelps (self-help groups).
Experience of Aboriginal
and Islander women in attending the 1992 Gathering at Petford (see below)
inform and energise their engaging with other locals in urban renewal in
Mooroobool and Manunda in Cairns enabled by Akame (self-help group – with the
Islander term ‘Akame’ meaning ‘grandmother and me’); examples of wellbeing
action – firstly, a group of elderly Aboriginal and Islander women carry out a
community safety audit in the early hours of the morning, and secondly, local
at-risk aboriginal and Islander youth devise a rescheduling of bus services in
a report to council. A park that was a hangout for drug takers is transformed
into a delightful child play space and floodlit at night. Group public housing
without a hint of greenery is transformed with full participating of residents
into a resort like atmosphere.
UN-INMA enables a number
of Bougainville people to come to Australia to share in healing gatherings in
the Atherton Tablelands, and to attend ConFest, and have briefings and sharings
of healing ways, including experiential workshops on Bougainville whole-village
to whole-village mediating processes. One of these is a member of the PNG
national parliament representing Bougainville. Another held a masters degree in
psychology from an American university. This Bougainville whole-village to
whole-village mediating processes and many other healing ways were also
real-played with 35 healers by Alex and myself down in Hobart Tasmania over
three days. The woman who drove me back
to the Hobart airport said that she and many of her friends were massively
influenced by Dr Neville Yeomans and Fraser House in the 1960s.
Dr Les Spencer uses NLP
modelling experience in modelling Dr Neville Yeomans and others who facilitated
Big Groups (180 people) at Fraser House. This modelling especially extended to
exploring firstly crowd and audience effects; secondly, the role of the group
leader-facilitator during Big and Small Groups at Fraser House Therapeutic
Community, particularly in drawing Group attention to role-specific functional-in-context
behaviours within the interactions; thirdly, evolving models of excellence in
NLP of Groups, NLP of Social Networks, and NLP of Community. Dr Spencer experiences using these audience
and crowd processes during over 200 experiential workshops with between 150-180
folk attending (over 30,000 attendances) and writes up this experience. These
models and processes are rolled out within the Atherton Tablelands INMA Project
and through UN-INMA and other energies through the SE Asia Oceania Australasia
Region.
A Bougainville person
completes his PhD on exploring mutual-help and self-help processes for
reconstituting societies following Conflict. Les Spencer travels to Armidale in
North East NSW to have discussions with this Bougainville person and reads his
PhD in the late afternoon and through the night so as to be able to discuss the
PhD with him before his imminent departure. Les mentors him while sharing ways
of the Inma Project and its precursors. This person then takes these
understandings into supporting integrative reconstituting of Bougainville
cultural life-ways following the Bougainville Conflict.
1994
During
a fortnight of intense Networking Action in January 1994 energised by Mingles
(self-help group) and INMA Nelps, many happenings, events and gatherings take
place in the Atherton Tablelands Region including (i) FUNPO (self-help group)
enabling nearly all of the young people of Yungaburra preparing Dr. Yeomans
house at Yungaburra for a New Years Eve party; (ii) INMA-Nelps staging of that
party, (iii) Mingles (self-help group) energising a three-day dance and party
on Neville’s property in the rainforest at Kuranda.
Down to Earth Victoria,
organisers of ConFest, the Conference Festival first held in 1976 with Deputy
Prime Minister Dr Jim Cairns’ support, send four of their folk (experienced in
Festival site selection and setup) who visit 15 sites owned by Aboriginal
Groups and others on the Atherton Tablelands as potential sites for the
proposed ‘Small Island Coastal and
Estuarine Gathering Celebration’ proposed for June 1994.
DTE (Vic) Inc. also
provide funding for an Aboriginal woman and an Islander woman who are potential
hosts of 1994 Festivals up North to attend the Easter 1994 ConFest at Tocumwal
in NSW to explore ways of evolving and hosting Festivals, as both had no prior
experience of doing that.
.
DTE (Vic) Inc. also send
many thousands of dollars in seed money as well as equipment, when the UN money
from Geneva is late arriving, and the funds and equipment are returned to DTE
after the Gathering Celebration.
Following
UN-INMA enabling Action, the UN Human Rights Commission agrees to provide
Aus$15,000 to support the ‘Small Island Coastal and Estuarine Gathering Celebration.
Local Aboriginal and Islander women agree to evolve this Gathering Celebration
and be the hosts. None of them had any experience in evolving or running a
Gathering Celebration which takes place at Barrabadeen Scout Camp at Lake
Tinaroo in June 1994.
Barrabadeen
Scout Camp on Lake Tinaroo.
600
folk attend including Islander women from Torres Strait Islands, Aboriginal
women from One Arm Point 200 kilometres North of Broome in Western Australia,
Ceduna in South Australia and other places. The son of Eddie Mabo, the Torres
Strait Islander who was responsible for major land reform challenging Terra
Nullius in Australia, also attends.
Through
profound under-standing of local Aboriginal and Islander networks, a host of
the Gathering Celebration – who had travelled down to the Down to Earth Easter
ConFest - hears the stories of a member of the Stolen Generation who is
attending the Gathering Celebration from South Australia, and reconnects her
with her family in the Atherton Tablelands Region after over 30 years of
separation. One hundred and ten folk from the Byron Bay - Lismore area in NSW
also attend. These folk had heard about the Gathering from Dr Les Spencer who
expressly stayed in that region for six weeks prior to the Gathering
Celebration inviting people with healing artistry experience to attend the
Gathering Celebration. Dr Spencer had sought funding for a 30 seater bus and
when this funding action failed, around 110 made their own way north and
surprised Les when he met them all one evening doing fire twirling and drumming
on the Cairns Esplanade. This visit by the 110 extends the regular visiting of
healing artistry people from the Byron Bay - Lismore area to the Atherton
Tablelands. As agreed with the UN Human Rights Commission, a Report on the
Gathering Celebration with an Audited Statement of Financial Disbursements
along with a set of Photographs was sent to the Commission shortly after the
Gathering Celebration finished.
The First Nations people
of Canada seek two articles for their magazine, ‘Healing Words’ about wellbeing
action through the Atherton Tablelands Region including the processes used by
Geoff Guest in healing storytelling and softening substance abuse, and these
two articles are published in separate issues of Healing Words and distributed
through all of the indigenous communities through Canada.[3]
Following Federal
Government interest in the 1992 self-help and mutual-help gathering at Petford
in the Atherton Tablelands region (see later) Inma Nelps receives offers of
substantial funding for setting up therapeutic community based alternatives to
psychiatric and criminal incarceration for Aboriginal and Islanders from the
Federal Health Department. This funding offer is not taken up by the Elders.
Rather, Dr Neville Yeomans, Terry Widders, and Dr Les Spencer prepare a short
paper called ‘Government and the Facilitating of Grassroots Action’.[4]
Dr Les Spencer meets with top government people in Canberra who realise why
their funding is not being accepted.
These government people
acknowledge that while all levels of governments use the service delivery
model, they have little or know knowledge of community self-help and
mutual-help processes outlined in this paper. They further state that the
processes outlined in ‘Government and the Facilitating of Grassroots Action’[5]
are decades ahead of where the Federal Government (and other levels of government)
were presently at; little has changed in the intervening years.
1993
Neville set his Yungaburra
home up as a base for a self-help group called ‘Mediation Matters’ and runs a
series of mediation workshops. Linked to this he organizes local Aboriginal and
Islander women around Atherton to host the Lake Tinaroo Mediation Gathering in
November 1993. This is held at Lake Tinaroo near Atherton on the Atherton
Tablelands. A number of Aboriginal nurturer women come across 3,159 km from
Yirrkala in Northern Territory and other remote communities in the Top End and
participate in co-learning at this Gathering. Mediation Therapy was a key
theme.
Following UN-INMA and Total Care Foundation
enabling, the UN funds Alex Dawia, Bougainville person living in Cairns as a
platform speaker at UN NGO 'Small
Island' Conference in the Caribbean in 1994 on the theme ‘The Small
Island Coastal and Estuarine people Gathering Celebration as an integral aspect
of Healing Action in the Atherton Tablelands’.
Neville arranges for
Les to give Marjorie Roberts a lift from Cairns via Gordonvale up the range
through the rainforest to Yungaburra. While in Gordonvale Marjorie visits her
cousin and over a cup of tea they exchange news of over five hundred people
they know – communal networking for social cohesion as an inherent aspect of
life. Marjorie is the one that hosts with other Aboriginal Islander and small
minority women the 1994 Small Island Coastal and Estuarine Peoples Gathering
Celebration funded by the Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
Professor Clark,
who was the head of the Outside Research Team at Fraser House and who co-wrote
with Neville the book ‘Theory and Evaluation of a Therapeutic Community’[6]
writes his book ‘Understanding Social Conflict’ and writes that Fraser House
and its Inma and other outreach is still the best model for resolving social
conflict that he has found.[7]
1992
UN-INMA, Connexion and
Inma Nelps set up at Petford a Wellbeing Gathering called ‘Developing
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Drug and Substance Abuse Therapeutic
Communities’ with over 100 Aboriginal and Islander healers attending from the
Top End. Through UN-INMA enabling action, three Aboriginal communities fly in
to Geoff Guest's Therapeutic Community over 70 Aboriginal and Islander healers
from Northern Australia, including off-shore islands for a healing sharing
gathering. A bus load of women and children are brought to the Gathering by the
Akame self-help group.
As well, two Aboriginal
Permaculture practitioners (a female and a male), and Anglo members of the
Australian Therapeutic Community Association are flown in. The theme for the
gathering is 'Exploring Therapeutic
Community, Keyline and Permaculture as Processes for Softening Drug Use'.
Neville’s younger brother Ken also flew in and carried out a Keyline survey of
a large area of Petford with the help of a team of the Petford youth.
Dr. Neville Yeomans is a
Platform speaker at the UN
NGO Rio 'Earth Summit' on UN-INMA Healing Action around Atherton
Tablelands. Neville is a main speaker at the indigenous platform, and perhaps
the only non indigenous person invited to speak at that platform. Neville's is
accompanied to the Earth Summit by his son Quan Yeomans, a leading member of the Australian music group, 'Regurgitator'.
In an ABC TV interview with Gabrielle Carey, Quan describes his father's Fraser
House and UN-INMA work and the Rio Earth Summit as major influences on his life
and music.
Following Rio, the self
help group UN-INMA engages in the drafting and disseminating of wordings of
possible treaties that may be used as resources by adults, adolescents and
youth interfacing with, and engaging with Indigenous and Unique People. Akame
and UN-INMA support folk at the 1992 Petford gathering sign the Unique People
(UP) and Unique Young People (UYP) Treaties.[8]
During 1992-1994 Dr Les
Spencer makes many trips to engage closely with Dr Neville Yeomans in action
research on the Atherton Tablelands INMA Project.
Dr Spencer writes up this
action research with the support of Dr Andrew Cramb and Dr Dihan Wijewickrama
of the Australian Wellness Association, as well as having discussions about the
INMA action research with Professor Stuart Hill and Professor Tony Vinson.
1977-91
Dr Yeomans terms ‘natural
nurturers’ those who are naturally good at nurturing others and he makes many
visits to the Atherton Tablelands Region seeking out, evolving links with, and
linking up natural nurturers in the Atherton Tablelands Region.
He especially uses
Yungaburra Market, Kuranda Market and Malanda Market as places to find and meet
natural nurturers and link them with each other.
Dr Neville Yeomans is
continually linking natural nurturers up with each other so that they begin
sharing in friendship networks and passing between themselves news of healing
wellbeing actions that work.
1985-89
Neville is living in his
house in Bondi Junction and forms Healing Sunday where 25 healers he has linked
together invite 25 others each month for 18 months to experience healing ways.
This dispersed healing community grows to over 150 people who are introduced to
the Atherton Tablelands Inma Project.
Dr Yeomans corner house in
Bondi Junction where Healing Sunday was held
Neville linking with Geoff
Guest and Norma at Petford at their Therapeutic Community – Petford Training
Farm; Neville passes on healing ways to Geoff and Norma and the adolescents at
Petford, including the ecological use of NLP, Mediation Therapy and how to use
Bliss Symbols invented by Charles
K. Bliss (1897–1985): some samples below:
Man Woman House Action
Neville establishing a
Healing Wellbeing Centre, Family Mediation Centre called Mediation Matters, and
UN-INMA Centre in his House at Yungaburra.
Photo 28. Old Photo Showing Neville’s Yungaburra House Circa
1931
Neville establishing therapeutic
community Houses in the Cairns Atherton Tablelands Region.
Dr Yeomans set up an INMA
based in a house in Edgehill in North Cairns.
Photo of Neville’s Therapeutic
Community House INMA in Cairns
Criminologist Professor Paul Wilson in his
book A Life of Crime writes of his supported life changes while living in one
of the Inma therapeutic community houses set up by Dr Neville Yeomans in
Queensland.
Various folk set up the Keyline
Foundation and start a newspaper and begin setting up an Archive relating to
P.A. Yeomans work on evolving Keyline. Neville uses Keyline as a model for his
evolving of Cultural Keyline and applies these understandings and ways in
forming the Inma Project in the Atherton Tablelands.
1983 Laceweb person
commences Behavioural Science degree at Latrobe University
1980 Dr Yeomans is one of the
international editors of the International Therapeutic Communities Journal when
it starts in 1980. The first edition of the International Journal of
Therapeutic Communities contains Dr Neville Yeomans letter titled ‘From the
Outback’. Neville writes:
Since A. W. Clark[9]
and I produced the monograph ‘Fraser House’ in 1969, I
have moved to private practice in Cairns, North East Australia. This is an isolated
area for this country, but is rapidly becoming an intercultural front door to
Melanesia and Asia. ‘Up North’ the therapeutic
community model has extended into humanitarian mutual help for social change.
Two of the small cities in this region have self-help houses based on Fraser
House.
An Aboriginal Alcohol and
Drug hostel is moving in the same direction, as are other bodies. These are
facilitated by a network called UN-Inma, the second word of which is
aboriginal for Oneness.
1979
Laceweb person commences the
study of the Sociology of Knowledge with Werner Pelz at La Trobe University for
his Social Science Degree; This person commences study with Terry O’Neill as a
para-professional crisis counsellor and has 18 months experience as a crisis counsellor
in the student counselling centre. Terry O’Neill’s counselling competence was
furthered during his experience of working in Fraser House with Dr Yeomans in
the 1960s. The head of the Latrobe University Sociology Department is Professor
Alf Clark whose PhD researched Fraser House. Clarke co-wrote with Neville the
book published in 1969 titled ‘Fraser House – The Theory and Evaluation of a
Therapeutic Community’. Clarke, a lecturer at the University of NSW at the
time, was also the head of the Fraser House outside-research team.
Akame (self-help group)
and a small group of Aboriginal and Islander women energise small gatherings of
Aboriginal and Islander youth on Dr Neville Yeomans Black Mountain Road
rainforest property beside the Barron River in the Kuranda rainforest.
1972-75
Dr Yeomans travels through
Atherton Tablelands energising the Region as an INMA – Interpersonal Normative
Model Area. Lien, Neville’s wife, a superb Vietnamese cook, makes feasts and
hosts parties for the folk that Neville is linking with in the Atherton
Tablelands Region continuing the tradition of the self-help group Mingles that
Neville, Lien and others energised in Sydney in the 1969-1971 period (refer
later).
Lien Yeomans in her book
‘The Green Papaya’ writes that she and Neville ‘entertained artists for fun,
and social reformers and medical practitioners for favour’.
Neville writes paper
titled, ‘Mental Health and Social
Change’ about the Atherton Tablelands INMA Project.
Neville writes a paper
titled, ‘On Global Reform – INMA’
about the Atherton Tablelands INMA Project and its possible implications
supporting wellbeing transitions. This paper explores a three phase transitioning
process in viewing the Atherton Tablelands INMA Project and other Top End
INMA’s as small micro-projects:
Involves the conceiving of
a three-stage transition process towards a model of global futures (T1-T3 ):
Tl = Consciousness-raising in INMAs and national
Arenas
T2 = Mobilization in
Transnational Arenas
T3 = Transforming action
in Global Arenas
T2 has two subunits:
T2 (a) commences with the
mobilization of extra-Inma supporters nationally.
T2 (b) moves to the
mobilization of transnationals who have completed T1 consciousness raising in
their own continents. That mobilization is of two fundamentally distinct types:
T2 (b)(i) mobilization of
those who will come to live in, visit, or work in, the Inma.
T2 (b)(ii) mobilization of
those who will guarantee cogent normative, moral and economic support combined
with national and international political protection for its survival.
By T3, the effects of T1
and T2 have largely transformed the Inma, which is now a matured multipurpose world
wellbeing transitioning model.
The Atherton Tablelands
INMA Project is currently ahead of where Neville envisioned it would be, with
T2 (b)(i) well under way.
1969-71
1969: Dr. Neville Yeomans
and Professor Alf Clark write a book on the precursors to the Atherton
Tablelands INMA Project. Professor Clark goes on to be head of the Sociology
Department at La Trobe University in the late 1970’s and through the 1980’s
when a Laceweb person was studying Sociology of Knowledge at La Trobe
University.
1969: The Total Care
Foundation is incorporated by Dr Neville Yeomans and members of the following
self-help groups: Chums (Care and Help for Unmarried Mums), Mingles, Connexion,
Inma, Inma Nelps, and Nexus Groups. These self-help groups tap into the free
energy among people who enabled the Watsons Bay Festival in 1968 and the
Paddington Festival in 1969 that spawned the Paddington Bazaar, now an icon on
the Sydney cultural scene. They also energised the Centennial Park Festival and
the Campbelltown Festival that spawned the Aquarius Festival, and the people
that energised all of these Festivals help form the first ConFest Festival in
1976, as well as the Cooktown Festival in a very remote difficult to get to
area on Cape York in 1978 – attended by Dr Neville Yeomans and Dr Jim Cairns,
Deputy Prime Minister of Australia in the Whitlam Government (and Acting Prime
Minister during Cyclone Tracy Aftermath, and hosted by two residents of Yungaburra
on the Atherton Tablelands, one of whom knew Neville in his Fraser House days
and ends up per chance living opposite Neville in Yungaburra.
1968: Professor Alf Clark
completes his PhD through University of NSW on Dr Neville Yeomans’ Fraser
House, Australia’s first therapeutic community and associated precursors to the
Atherton Tablelands INMA Project.
1963-1966
Emeritus Professor Tony
Vinson and Professor Paul Wilson join with Dr Yeomans in forming the
Psychiatric Research Study Group which is recognised as the pre-eminent social
science research group in Australia at the time with around 160 members from
all of the social sciences including psychiatrists, psychologists,
sociologists, criminologists, social workers, anthropologists, chaplains,
pastors, prison officials, as well as church leaders and business leaders – all
passionately interested in group processes. They met on the grounds of Fraser
House and kept extensive archives.
Dr Terry O’Neill worked
with Dr Neville Yeomans in developing precursors to the Atherton Tablelands
project at Fraser House and went on to head up the Student Counselling Unit at
Latrobe University. Dr O’Neill trained a Laceweb person in crisis counselling
at that University Unit.
1957-62
Dr.
Neville Yeomans travels round the world speaking with indigenous people seeking
their views about the best place on Planet Earth to evolve an Inter-people Normative Model Area (INMA) for exploring Global
Futures and the transforming and re-constituting potency of communal nurturing
action for social change. He receives the same answer from every Indigenous person he speaks to. He also receives the same
answer when he raises the same theme with Indigenous people at the Rio NGO
Earth Summit in 1992. The answer is ‘The
Atherton Tablelands and the Darwin Top End in Australia’. Dr Neville
Yeomans summarise these themes in his paper ‘Mental Health and Social Change
written later in 1972. Neville writes in this paper that the reasons given by Indigenous
people in the 1960s are:
It can thus be considered
equally unimportant to both East and West and having little to contribute.
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 Civilization. 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
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.
Neville also said that the
Region to the immediate North of the Top End holds more than half of the
world’s indigenous people – by number and by groups; therefore the Australia
Top End is ideally located to link into and engage that wisdom.
While on that world tour
Dr Yeomans has a lengthy discourse with the social theorist Talcott Parsons. In
1998 in Neville’s view, Fraser House and its outreach was evolving social
theory and clinical sociology practice and process that were way ahead of
Parsons work, especially relating to fostering social transforming to
wellbeing.
Neville also evolved with
resonant others the Rapid Creek
Project in Darwin as another INMA.
Neville’s first INMA was
the Fraser House Project in North Ryde Sydney that commenced in 1959 after
preparatory action in 1957.
New Social Movements
The Inma Project is
spawning new concepts and processes and theorein (pre-theoretical theorising)
for the evolving of theory and praxis in the social sciences. One of these is
the concept of Cultural Keyline. That the lived-life experience of the
personal, interpersonal, familial, communal and social irregular multilayered
imbricating (as in having irregularly arranged overlapping edges, as in some
forms of slating and roof tiling or unnatural fish scales) depicted above may
be transforming and re-constituting, may be in-comprehensible to some. In this
spawning of novel way, it is perhaps appropriate to reflect on what Martin
Heidegger has written about incomprehension:
To
the common comprehension, the incomprehension is never an occasion to stop and
look at its own powers of comprehension, still less to notice their
limitations. To common comprehension, what is incomprehensible remains merely
offensive – proof enough to such comprehension which is convinced it was born
comprehending everything, that it is now being imposed upon with a sham. The
one thing of which sound common sense is least capable is acknowledgement and
respect Heidegger, 1968, 76-77).
For a world sorely in need
of transforming towards wellbeing for all life forms, the Atherton Tablelands
Wellbeing Inma Project continues to emerge as a global model of significance.
One Fortnight’s Laceweb Action in the
Atherton Tablelands in Jan, 1994