Informed Consent on Ngaluma Country Part II By Freya Savitri Sampson
The process of healing requires that the underlying cause of the dis-ease or in-jury to be addressed. It’s often unpleasant and painful facing the core emotional trauma, avoiding it is worse. Once honestly looked at, joy and wellbeing found are on the other side. Paradigm Shock I was 14 when the first available unit in Western Australia in Aboriginal studies was offered at my high school. Mrs Brockman was my teacher. I didn’t realise until many years later that the Brockmans are a well-known Aboriginal family in WA. Although it remains unconfirmed, I intuit my teacher is part of that family. The 40-minute duration of the first class, completely changed the trajectory of my life. Edifying me to some of the horrific truth of Australia’s suppressed, shameful past. Families herded like cattle, their babies thrown in the air and caught on bayonets by soldiers. Men’s testicles cut off, their wives and children watching as they ran, screaming until they bled to death. Their heads then severed from their bodies and
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kicked around like soccer balls. The truth of Mrs Brockman’s words rang in my soul, burned in my consciousness and etched in my heart. There was no malice nor anger in how she communicated this information, though it was clear there was pain. Everything she
“Another defining moment - how very deeply this lie had been buried. I saw the world very, very differently after that day.” communicated confirmed an intangible awareness within my being; that the relative peace I’d grown up experiencing in Australia, was a facade.
A Stranger in a Strange Land I was in shock, so deeply affected by the atrocities, which played as clear as a movie in my mind’s eye. I could see and feel it. I wept, mourning the loss of every one of those people like they were my own family. I felt sacred rage, the kind of rage that even an ocean could not extinguish. The lies and utter
nonsense that I had been fed all of my life! That night, over the evening meal I told my parents what I had learned, they said it wasn’t true, and point black refused to even consider it. Another defining moment - how very deeply this lie had been buried. I saw the world very, very differently after that day. Shock became full blown paradigm shock, as my mind struggled to comprehend the ramifications of the systematic deceit and brainwashing of the Australian and global population. I thought about the generations of children, many who were now the indoctrinated parents of children being programed to believe lies and I wondered how would we ever heal from this? I couldn’t help by wonder... how many other lies and deceptions had corporate governance been perpetrating
“Somewhere in all of this I made a promise to myself to be part of the change.” and for how long? Then self-loathing set in - I hated my white skin with the debt it carried, and I felt powerless. Somewhere in all of this I made a promise to myself to be part of the change. To, like my
