Disabling trauma, the dormant oppressor
In terms of middle to high-income countries with relatively recent colonial oppressor histories, Australia has the biggest divide between its First Peoples and the rest of the population in all its measurable quality of social, health, financial and education indicators.
The result of trauma and dispossession in the context of youth and adult detention of Indigenous peoples is grim. Nearly 100 per cent of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoner population are without a Year 12 completion, more than half have not completed high school. It is estimated that by 2025, one in two of the national prison population will be Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. The suicide crisis, already catastrophic, is expected to rise above what we see today.
Trauma is cumulative, collective and transmittable. But I believe we must focus on packing it away rather than languishing in it, if we want Indigenous people to thrive.
Though trauma is universal, it can often be unique in terms of its dynamics. This is the case of the devastating effects of the dispossession of Indigenous peoples of the world of their land rights through violence.
Overcoming trauma
18 weeks ago, I visited Acacia Prison near Perth and spoke to a group of inmates about the importance of self-belief, as they were soon to be released. They had spent the prime of their life in and out of prison, and had no substantive education or employment history. Three days later, three of them walked out of prison and on that very day walked through the doors of the Ngalla Maya Aboriginal Corporation to embark on a five-week training course.
All three young men completed the training and are now employed, earning thousands of dollars each week in remote housing construction.
Their lives had been consumed by the memories of harrowing childhoods, and they had grown up thinking their traumas were insurmountable. I said to them, ‘just turn up each day to the training’.
The Ngalla Maya 25 seater bus daily transports trainees from their homes or from a designated location to training and back.
Trauma is a part of life, few are unscarred. However for far too many, trauma is overwhelming and debilitating. Trauma becomes the core of their identity and recovery becomes near impossible. I believe there is a persistent misconception that trauma is to be dealt with gently, patiently, and that it is a lifelong experience, that requires unrelenting management. I don’t think this is the case.
Trauma is always damaging, but it shouldn’t be allowed to dominate an individual.
I believe trauma needs to be acknowledged and understood, but dwelled on in the briefest stretch possible, so that it can be healed to a scar. Who we are should not be reduced to the traumatic events in our lives. We should be the sum of all our experiences, contextualised in the dawn of daily meanings that appear endless.
Trauma, or its treatment, should not corral people into miserable and unproductive lives, or into constant fear.
In the last half century, the study of psychology has complicated our understanding of trauma by telling us that trauma has the ability to shape who we are. There is now a perennial default position of medicalisation and effective incapacitation.
For the First Peoples who suffer pronounced levels of cumulative and collective trauma, these beliefs extinguish hope. There are scores of Aboriginal remote and regional communities where no child completes school, where the majority do not attend, and this has been associated with trauma.
At best, we are sold vacillating emancipating approaches of how to re-engage with society, but the approach of life-long self-management can steal years of life or imprison the mind. This destroys the positive self.
We need to re-educate ourselves so that trauma, whether incidental, cumulative or collective, is not allowed to dominate the individual, a family, a collective, society, or the human discourse. This is not about “moving on” but about not allowing trauma or anyone who professes to be a trauma recovery expert to shut down someone with trauma.
I believe we must identify and acknowledge trauma and do away with it, reduce it to that scar, transform it into a protective factor, and even use it to embolden and empower, to strengthen. Trauma should not become an oppressor.
I think it is possible to change the lives of the poorest and most neglected. When working on trauma recovery work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, predominately with those who have been incarcerated, impoverished or affected by suicide, my approach is that behavioural issues should not be trapped into mental health issues.
My colleagues and I have worked alongside scores of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who were homeless or just out of prison into tertiary education, and with relentless multi-layered psychosocial support, we got them across the line. They graduated and they are leading the way for their families, breaking and ending cycles of poverty and aberrant behaviour.
How do we do it? We improve lives by contextualising traumas and reducing them to healed wounds, as opposed to letting them predominate. There are a number of projects successfully mentoring, training and employing the poorest, those who were chronically unemployed, without an education, illiterate.
I believe in radical approaches that ask people who have endured traumatic events to remain steadfast in their belief of their positive self, that it need not be interrupted or reduced.
My compassion for others defines my values, but I have a ‘no time wasting’ approach in that trauma-affected people have to get back on their feet, to stay solid-in-their-thinking.
We need to spread the love, but not distort that love to a point that we debilitate others. Even the most affected traumatised people I have worked with, I have urged the radical approach and that you can get back on your feet immediately.
I heard an inmate say to me, “It is best I am here, and best I keep on coming back, because it is the only hope my children have.” Another inmate said, “I have no hope in here but it’s even worse out there.”
Some of Ngalla Maya’s graduates have gone from prison or homelessness to working full time in remote housing construction (Jigalong, Western Australia).
The penal estate is not rehabilitative or restorative. There are limited job skills programs, limited education opportunities. The penal estate should invest in people rather than dungeons. Currently, opportunities for healing, psychosocial empowerment, for forgiveness, for redemption, for education skills and qualifications are continually being bypassed.
People are more likely to be good if they didn’t have to go to prison, but supported instead. For those who are sentenced to prison, these must be places where people come first, not last. In working with our most vulnerable sisters and brothers, in changing lives, we must invest in supporting each other, so that trauma can be overcome and packed away.
Recently, a 21-year-old man who had been homeless since he was 14 years old completed a ‘training to employment’ program with Ngalla Maya. He had little formal secondary school education. He lived homeless throughout the training stretch. We picked him up each day and took him to the training. He graduated. He is now employed. Because we believed in him, he began to believe in himself. He is now saving for a private rental home. He will bring his mother out of years of homelessness and with her, his two youngest siblings, a three year old and 15 month old.
There is nothing as profoundly powerful as forgiveness. The forgiving of others validates self-worth, builds bridges and positive futures. Forgiveness, cultivated and understood, keeps families and society solid as opposed to the corrosive anger that diminishes people into the darkest places, into effective mental illness.
The Ngalla Maya Prisoner Reform
Rev. Crews is joined by Spokesperson from Ngalla Maya, Gerry Georgatos to discuss the incredibly high rates of indigenous Australians in our prison system.
Former inmate and drug addict turned his life around, but not all are as lucky
CHRIS Ugle suffered years of despair, aberrant behaviour, depression and suicidal thoughts after he lost both his parents in the same year.
Trouble began in his early teen years, but it spiralled out of control when both his parents died 11 years ago. He was 19 at the time.
The Darwin local spent most of his young life in trouble with the police, turning to crime and drugs to “numb the pain”.
“My father had a massive heart attack and my mother died of cancer in the same year and that’s what took its toll on me,” Mr Ugle said.
“I went off the rails. I got involved in the wrong crowd and was doing the wrong things, I involved in criminal activity and getting into trouble with police while under the influence of alcohol and drugs,” he said.
Chris Ugle, a father-of-one, has turned his life around after a youth spent in trouble with police and addicted to drugs.Source:Supplied
Mr Ugle, now 30, said during this period of his life, he lost his self worth, did not feel settled and had no structure.
At 19, he ended up in Perth’s Hakea Prison for burglary, describing his time in jail as “horrific” and “shocking”.
But he repeated the same offence three years ago.
“I was highly strung out on meth every day. It was my whole lifestyle,” he said.
“Having drugs, handing over drugs, doing all the bad stuff. It’s all real, whatever people think happens, happens.
“You’re doing anything just to get a hit and that’s the sort of lifestyle I was living just three years ago.”
Chris Ugle, a father-of-one, has been on the run from cops since he was 14. He found himself in jail at 19, when both parents died in the same year.Source:Supplied
Ngalla Maya chief executive Mervyn Eades, 47, who helped save Mr Ugle’s life, spent almost 20 years in and out of the prison system from the age of 13.Source:News Corp Australia
The father-of-one said he suffered from suicidal thoughts the moment he lost both parents.
“I was still hanging around bad people. If people in the criminal system can see you have no one to turn to, they leech onto you and suck the life out of you and that’s what was happening to me — I was getting the life sucked out of me.
“I had nowhere to go, no family, no friends.”
According to Gerry Georgatos, national co-ordinator of the National Indigenous Critical Response Service, in the first year after release, inmates are up to 10 times more likely to suicide or die unnaturally compared to their time in jail.
“It is in the first four to six weeks that a significant proportion die unnaturally. In my work with suicide-affected families, we experience such tragedies regularly,” he told news.com.au
Data released last week by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) revealed that suicide in Australia is at a 10-year high, jumping from 2866 deaths in 2016 to 3128 people having died by suicide last year.
“I have been warning every year for the last decade that the national suicide toll, and attempts, will increase and I expect that the 2018 toll to be even higher,” Mr Georgatos said, explaining one of the highest risk groups are former inmates soon after leaving prison.
Mr Ugle said given his experiences, he is not at all surprised at the alarming statistics surrounding inmates and suicide.
“If they get out of jail and society and their family rejects them, they are going to get back on the drugs, they are going to get back into criminal activity and if that doesn’t work, guess what, they are going to neck themselves or overdose.
“I’ve seen it and heard it all.”
But his life turned around when he got a suspended sentence for his most recent charge, crediting the Ngalla Maya program for supporting him mentally, psychologically and equipping him with life skills.
It is a program that offers former inmates and those at risk of being incarcerated a chance to become qualified in industries and placed in employment — and because of it, the scaffolder recently completed 12 certificates at the Skills Training and Engineering Services in Bibra Lake and has been clean for 18 months.
“Those who are thinking that their lives are at an end or (that there’s) no hope left, I just want to say there is light at the end of the tunnel,” Mr Ugle said.
“It’s never too late but changes don’t happen unless you make the change and Ngalla Maya is bound by that, even if it’s that one step.”
The Federal Government-funded Ngalla Maya Aboriginal Corporation aims to achieve up to 80 success stories over three years, however it achieved this in less than one year.
“They set a national record because the bar was so low, and it’s an indictment of everyone, of COAG, that programs such as this have not been massively invested in to turn lives around, to reduce reoffending, to change lives, to save lives, to reduce the suicide toll,” Mr Georgatos said.
“Thanks to the Federal Minister (for Indigenous Affairs) Nigel Scullion we were given a chance to make a big difference. Now we need investment 20 times more to help the many and not just some. All the states and territory governments must invest in changing lives.”
Mr Ugle said it’s not about looking for a handout.
“We just want to be able to expand the program so it can help save more lives, like it did mine.”
Mr Ugle had suicidal thoughts from the moment he lost his parents, up until three years ago. Research reveals that First Nations people are at elevated risk to suicide, three times the national rate.Source:Supplied
He says the Council of Australian Governments has a responsibility to invest more money into post-prison programs to prevent reoffending and suicides. Picture: FacebookSource:Supplied
FORMER INMATE AND SUICIDE STATISTICS
- People leaving prison are at elevated risk of an unnatural death and aberrant behaviour and are 10 times more likely to die unnaturally — including suicide — than while in custody.
- As of June 2016, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people comprised 28 per cent of all prisoners despite comprising less than three per cent of the national population
- According to the ABS, the suicide rate is at a 10-year high in Australia, equivalent of 8.6 deaths by suicide in Australia every day
- 3128 people died by suicide in 2017, compared to 2866 deaths in 2016
- Of those who died, 75 per cent (2348 people) were male, with 45-49 year olds making up the highest proportion
- Migrants comprise between one-quarter to one-third of the Australian suicide toll, with newly arrived migrants particularly vulnerable
- First Nations people are at elevated risk to suicide, three times the national rate
- Kimberley’s First Nations peoples are seven times at risk to suicide compared to the overall Australian suicide risk rate
- Queensland’s far north First Nations peoples are five times at risk to suicide compared to the overall Australian suicide risk rate
