Normally we all take for granted the cultural spaces that we move around in, where we understand what is going on and why. It is therefore hard to imagine that someone from another culture stepping into our cultural environment could not see what is happening and why.  It is thus also hard to recognise that their lack of knowledge and experience in our cultural space severely limits their ability to operate to their full human capacity, to make their own choices, or express themselves.  In a foreign  cultural space we cannot feel in control until we come to understand that space.

Often the people helping me to navigate the new cultural environment of Yolngu ceremony, underestimate just how ignorant I am. I sometimes feel like they need to be reminded that I am a Dhunga Balanda (one who does not know, aka stupid ‘white fella’). Often what they do convey seems like surface information, yet they seem to expect that it is sufficient – they might tell me how to move or where to go, but often this does not convey what the underlying story is about, or what is really going on. Such information might enable me to participate like a child in the ceremony, but it would never get me to a place where I would be capable of running one myself, or playing a significant role.

We in the Dominant Culture can forget that schools, hospitals, clinics, councils and boards, are foreign environments to most Yolngu.  We too often only give people surface stories – what they need to do or where they need to go – but leave people feeling confused about the underlying story of what is going on in these places, knowledge that is taken for granted knowledge within ones own culture.  If we do not acknowledge this we cannot create a safe space where people can ask their questions about how Dominant Culture systems operate. If we do recognise this, we might begin to take the time to listen and discover how to answer their questions deeply. If we do not understand this we might not see that we can’t expect them to get up and run the place, while they still need to know why.. why?…Why are we doing that?.

By reflecting on my experience in Yolngu spaces I have come to realise that this provides a picture of one of the limit conditions facing Indigenous Australian, one of the limitations that underlie their disadvantage.  (We discussed limit conditions as a way of understanding Indigenous ‘poverty’ in the previous article.) Many Indigenous people (particularly those from remote areas) are limited in functioning in their full human capacity in ‘westernised’ Cultural spaces.  Unlike my temporary experiences in Yolngu spaces, their  involvement in the Dominant Cultures space is permanent.  They are daily experiencing similar (or worse) limitations in their capacity to what I experienced in participating in Yolngu ceremony.  The strangeness of the Dominant Culture is a daily limitation in their ability to make informed choices, and participate on an equal footing with Dominant culture English speaking personnel, who have been learning how to succeed in Dominant Culture schools, councils, clinics, boards since they were babes. The very normal fact that Indigenous people are new to ‘western’ culture, and that the Dominant Culture often fails to understand that they need more than surface information, becomes possibly the most significant cause of their disadvantage and a major limitation to their success in life.

When he arrived to talk with this leader, he found him just sitting on a mat on his verandah. He looked for chairs, and then corrected himself as he realised that he needed to respect the Elder, in ‘his way of doing this’, and so joined him on the mat. It turned out that the location they were sitting in was not conducive to discussion, as there were a lot of children running around and a lot of noise. The Elder got up and indicated that they would move to a quieter location. He then moved some distance away from the house and sat on the ground there, in the dirt. The visitor was quite shocked that this leader was sitting in the dirt. Again he did not want to offend him, so he sat down beside him there, but he was very disturbed by the fact that they were sitting in the dirt. As the visitor retold this story, he pointed to the dirt beside the road and expressed with great animation “It was just like this dirt here beside the road”.

What this visitor already knew about this Elder prior to their meeting, created an expectation, a picture for him about how he thought this man should behave. We all do this. Based on our world view, we get a picture in our head about how we think something should look, according to our culture. We do it without even realising it, as we are so used to the way our culture does things, that we sometimes think that that is the only way something can be done. We may try and be respectful and go along with things, but inside we are thinking that this different way of doing things is not right or is deficient.

When we are looking in on another culture, we have to be careful that we are not mis-interpreting the situation based on our cultural world view. It could be easy to look at some people in Indigenous communities, and see them sitting in the dirt, and label this as a sign of “poverty”, “inadequacy”or “hopelessness”, because that is what it might mean in our culture. But the earth is considered something more than dirty to many Indigenous people. It is part of something precious. They may even describe it as their mother;

“The Land is my mother. Like a human mother, the land gives us protection, enjoyment, and provides for our needs – economic, social and religious. We have a human relationship with the land: Mother – daughter, son. When the land is taken from us or destroyed, we feel hurt because we belong to the land and we are part of it.”( Djiniyini Gondarra 1980 in Yule Ian R. (Ed.) My Mother the Land, Galiwin’ku, UCA)

When the visitor heard this, his perspective changed. He realised that the act of sitting in the earth could be something more than an act which made you dirty, or a sign of poor status. Many Indigenous people happily sit outside on the ground or even in the dirt, and some even prefer it to inside on a chair. This is not always the result of poverty or lack of furniture, but is a different way of life.

When we see something that does not make sense to us, or makes us feel sorry for someone or feel that there is some injustice, let us remember that we wear cultural glasses, and not make assumptions from a distance. Lets be willing to go and sit beside other people, where ever it may be that they sit, and try and understand their world, their perspectives, their hopes and their true needs. Otherwise we are at risk of judging things from appearances and just from our cultural perspective. We also have to be careful that we are not the ones deciding what the problems are and how they should be fixed. Otherwise we are at risk of making people believe that they should have a problem with things that are a natural part of their culture and something that they are free to choose to do. We are also likely to only come up with solutions that fit into our world view of how something should look.

Culture shock is a very real psychological phenomenon that people experience when they enter a culture they are unfamiliar with for a significant amount of time. In a new culture, or  in a space where an unfamiliar culture controls the social environment, there is a lot that  we will not understand, we will not naturally know how we should act, we encounter awkward situations and experience a loss of control over our own circumstance. Our mind and body copes well with these stresses for a time, but after an extended period of dealing with a different language, manners, lifestyle and expectations, these stresses accumulate and the mental and emotional cultural machinery eventually packs it in and goes through an adjustment phase.   This adjustment is experienced as CS and often resembles an emotional break down, but with some rather unique characteristics.  Most Dominant culture people, Indigneous or Non-Indigenous, who come into an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander community for more than a few weeks are likely to encounter Culture Shock (CS) and need to understand it to overcome its effects.

What Causes Culture Shock.

The process of adjusting to a new cultural environment often begins with a ‘honey moon’ phase (often about 3 months), where everything new can seem exciting, and differences in culture are a source of fascination and interest. But in this  time we are actually dealing with high levels of physiological stress.  We are coping with a lack of control, because we are not sure what will happen next, and we are forced to maintain constant conscious effort in most social interactions.  Our attempts to understand what is going on and to respond appropriately can be overstimulating and exhausting. Thus the mind and body is on sustained high alert as we try to fit in and find our way through new environments, new experiences and strange social responses.  CS occurs because of the cumulative effect of  this sustained high alert and the many stressful event that we encounter along the way.

Our mind and body can only cope with these strange stressors for a time.  The onset of CS can vary enormously (anything from a few weeks to 6 months), mainly depending on the degree of immersion in the community and new culture. My wife had a stint in South Africa many years ago where she was living with families in a poor rural township. She had been given little preparation, had little support, and experienced severe cultural shock within 2 weeks (the tipping point being when she asked if she could go to the toilet and was handed a bucket) . In my own experience of full immersion, living with a Yolŋu family (who always spoke in the local Indigneous language, as I was suppose to be learning), I experienced severe CS from the 4th week.  In our most recent experience together, moving to an Aboriginal Community permanently, we started in our own house and already had significant cultural experience and language skills.   Having this space that we controlled culturally and lots of preparation meant that we did not experience CS until after 4 months.

The Symptoms of Culture Shock

I can only describe CS as a feeling of deep sadness, lethargy and sometimes hopelessness. It is very much like depression, quashing any desire for positive action and engagement with the community.  It is characterised by a powerful desire to give up and leave the community.  So strong is this desire that some people literally up and leave. The feeling is understandable because the body and mind wants desperately to escape the foreign cultural space.  But this should be an indicator to us to recognise that our feelings are the symptoms of CS and this will help us to work through the emotions we will be feeling.  As well as the strong desire to leave, there are several other characteristics (from my experience) that will help you recognise culture shock:

• No real reasons for underlying sadness.  While there may be many things that you could be sad about on reflection you might find that these things are not what is underlying your feelings.  The sadness may seem to come from nowhere, even though it may have initially started because of a stressful event.
• An increase tendency to think badly of the local people/culture, and blame the local people/culture for problems you encounter (even though this might be out of character for you).
• An aversion to social interaction, particularly with those of the foriegn culture.
• The sense of stress and depression improves in a familar cultural space.

You should also be aware and prepared for these possible symptons of culture shock:

• The  desire to leave and give up can be overwhelming, and in some  may even encourage suicidal thoughts and feelings.
• A strong desire to indulge, which can encourage very unhealthly behaviour.
• The tendency to be short tempered and feel tired.
• Unreasonably strong feelings of anger, sadness, depression and hopelessness may arise in response to the smallest and silliest of things.

The symptoms of CS only last for about 2 -3 weeks at a time. They may reappear several times at different intervals over your first year in the new culture.

How to manage its effects

To manage culture shock we need to be on the look out for the symptoms I have mentioned.  When you begin to feel such things you should stop and consciously recognise “I am probably experiencing Culture Shock.” Once you have identified CS take the following steps

1. Recognise that what you are experiencing will pass.  You can leave if you still wish in a few weeks when you are feeling less emotional.
2. Take time out, your body is telling you it needs an escape, so take some space where ever you can get it and rest.  I feel that employers should recognise the need for short stress leave at these times.  However, taking short respite outside the community at this time may not be benificial as you may find the symptons reoccur very soon after your return.
3. Indulge a little in harmless familar cultural activities and if you can spend a little time with people of your home culture. This will give you some relief and remind you that you are still sane.  Find little things like music, some food items or some movies that connect you to your first culture.  This is an opportunity for your cultural machinery to relax in an environment it knows.
4. Get plenty of sleep and try to maintain healthy behaviours such as exercise.
5. Remember you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, you have chosen to be where you are.
6. Between breaks,  push your self just a little to get back out in the unfamiliar. Don’t go more that a couple of days without engaging in the local culture a little… you might visit some locals, go to a cultural event, just go for a walk in the community.  Increase the difficulty of these activities as you start to feel better.  The better you balance taking a break and engaging with the new culture the more complete your recovery will be.

Remember CS symptoms may reoccur over the beginning months or year of your stay, so don’t be disillusioned if the feelings come back from time to time.  Remember each time you experience CS this is your body acclimatising to the new culture and with each adjustment you will be more comfortable and effective working with the local Indigenous people.

If you are aware and prepared for Culture Shock when moving to an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander community, this will help you to survive the difficult adjustment period, where many personnel lose their way. Be kind to yourself- experiencing CS is not a sign that you are not suited to cross-cultural work, nor that you disrespect the other culture or don’t care for the people. It is just a normal part of the process that needs to be worked through, in order to be able to truly engage with the other culture. This experience can also be enriching, as it shows us what cultural beings we are, and opens our eyes to many of the complexities of cross cultural interactions.

National Indigenous Times: Indigenous poverty as
'morally outrageous' as torture: Amnesty head
19 Nov 09: "The poverty experienced by many Aboriginal
people is as morally reprehensible as torture and must be
eradicated, Amnesty International secretary-general Irene
Khan says."  http://www.nit.com.au/story.aspx?id=19020

Also see SMH

Strong words, but is such ‘advocacy’ helpful.  I argue that moralistic bites such as this are in fact dangerous.  While advocates feel that such statements point out government failures, they can actually be harmful to the people they are meant to protect .

First of all, this statement suggests there is a simple problem, “poverty”.  This is not the case. The conditions she saw were in part conditions that people were choosing to live in, because they wanted to live on their home lands (traditional estates) where there are few amenities.  And there are also many aspects of Indigenous lifestyle, such as sitting in the dirt, which are lifestyle choices but are easily interpreted as something negative and used as emotive devices (eg. The opening paragraph to Khan’s edited press speech).  This is not classic “poverty”.  Is it rather the effect of abuses of rights and the outcome of a massive cultural gap, resulting in marginalisation and poor education. Khan does go on to talk about rights and education and marginalisation, but her emotive language creates confusion rather than clarifying the issues to be tackled.  This point was very clearly and insightfully expressed by a reader on crikey (click link and scroll down to read his article)

Second, such language is usually designed to catch attention in order to say more important things.  In this case Khan used such statements to talk about the discriminatory nature of  policies such as income management.  The problem is, what sticks in the mainstreams psyche is not her sensible comments about changing policies that force people to spend hundreds of dollars to drive into disfunctional communities to use their pensions.  What sticks are those words above which label the Indigenous people as having a problem.  Like there is some sort of disease out there that only effects Australian Aboriginal people. People now even refer to the generic “Indigenous problem”.

Lets do some discourse analysis.  This statement defines the situation of Aboriginal Australian’s as:

• living in ‘poverty’.  Poverty implies a number of things, hopelessness, helplessness and a lack of resources.  This objectifies these Aborignal people as victims, suggesting that they need a humanitarian savior.  For most Indigenous people this is unfair. In remote communities they may be depressed, but they are not without hope. They are not helpless, but may feel like they cannot be heard or cannot win, yet they do keep fighting.  They have many resources, but often have difficulty using them.
• a “moral” issue.  This lays blame on everyone suggesting that  Australians are not good people. That while this Indigenous problem exists its like Australians are committing torture. This is unfair.  Many Australians react to this by blaming Indigenous people in return (eg. See comments on SHM).
• needing “eradication”.  Suggesting, that if the right resources are applied, the ‘problem’ could just be removed.  Furthermore, drawing on the ‘moral’ imperative she has established, ‘eradication’ insists that immediate and extreme action is required.

Khans statements are examples of the extreme emotive hyperbole, which is so common today when talking about the difficulties faced by Indigenous communities.  It does less to empower Indigenous people or their voice than it empowers government and other service providers to implement simplistic, rushed and broad brush solutions.  The very kind of policy most advocacy tries to disable after the fact.  It was also this kind of over the top statement that the Howard Government used to force the ‘Intervention’ through.  And it was so effective that most politicians were not even game to touch the subject and the Australian public went all bleeding heart, righteous paternalist.   Since then in the NT even the more sensible “Close the Gap” campaign, is being used widely by NT and Federal Governments as a catch cry to deny Indigenous rights and force things on communities, such as English only education and land leases, without negotiation or real consultation. Why? Because from the politicians perspective the moral imperative of the “Gap” statistics and advocacy slogans mandates Government to act quickly (and thus for some reason stupidly and abusively).  In fact the Governments in Canberra and Darwin act like if they do not force the statistics to improve before the next election, the ‘Gap’ just might be one more hole their election hopes will fall in.  The result- Indigenous people get crushed in the rush and no real solutions are established.

While we continue to advocate by labeling problems we continue to label Aboriginal people and empower the government powered steamroller to run over peoples lives, and enable racist blaming. What is needed is good debate about the real situation faced by people, the underling causes, and the complex solutions needed, rather than more denouncing of the “Indigenous problem”.  Rather than simply highlighting the problems, advocacy must start highlighting complexity, revealing local needs and enabling dialogue between diverse Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices.

The blame game has two parts the first arises because the dominant culture recongises that they alone cannot know how to solve the problems experienced by Indigenous peoples. But instead of working along side the people, the dominant culture tends to distance itself by pushing Indigenous individuals or organisation to be the saviours of their own people.  This sets up unreasonable expectations for Indigenous organisations and particular individuals, such as well spoken leaders, liaison officers, health workers or council members.  Although these people are often very intelligent and remarkable individuals, people in such roles tend to have an expectation forced on them by others, that they can and must fix the Indigenous problems.  This becomes internalized and can result in an impression that they must have some special ability to fix things, and a fear of failure.  As the son of the ‘guru’ Richard Trudgen it is possible that I fall into this category myself; I expect myself to do miracles sometimes, and get sensitive when I am challenged. This is the danger, that when things go wrong, or if someone disagrees with these special people, blame is the unconscious reaction.  A sense of self inspection can be lost if one is put under these kind of expectations. This is a danger for all of us, but if is particularly so when a culture is created around an individual or even whole organisations, which  says, “You are the solution, so your position must be respected.”  Consequently, by holding on to the false idea that we are the solution, when something goes wrong or is disagreeable, immediate response is that it must be someone else’s fault.  Any criticism or challenge is taken as an accusation or attack against the special role of appointed saviours.  And in response some other person or organisation becomes the subject of rumour or even public accusation, producing a counter response leading to bickering and bad politics between and within Indigenous organisations.  This part of the blame game encourages defensiveness who have been “puffed up” with unreasonable expectations, and produces a reluctance to criticise for fear of reprisal in others.  This process is damaging to the whole system as fair and positive criticism is needed for accountability.  This defensiveness and blaming fractures trust and limits good dialouge.

The situation is compounded between Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups.  Some Indigenous people are very defensive because they have experienced so much unfair treatment personally and generationally that they are easily offended and become defensive to protect themselves.  On the other hand those in the dominant culture, having become aware of the harm their heritage has caused Indigneous people over the years, seem to carry a sense of guilt.  I’m sure many Balanda (’white fellas’, dominant culture people) have sensed this.  If you have been confronted by an Indigenous person, it is like a sense that, “Oh, I must be careful talking to this person and not say anything that might offend.”  The result is that when we unknowingly enter ‘the game’, Balanda walk around thinking, ‘I must not blame the Indigenous person’, while the Indigenous person walks around feeling, ‘I must not be blamed’.  This creates a rift of dishonesty as Balanda personnel fail to challenge the Indigneous person and the Indigenous person becomes quickly defensive in times of conflict and cannot accept being challenged.  The game becomes most imporant when we realise that this can be come a mechanism of control over ourselves or others.  There are those who work the blame game to their advanatage, in fact we all do this some times.  Indigenous people can control  Balanda, and thus whole organisations at times, to do what ever they want by pulling the right guilt strings.  Balanda can control some Indigenous people, and thus whole organisations at times, by using false praise and rumors.

We need to escape this ‘blame game’.  Organisations should not be so offended when someone or another organisation points out a problem.  We need to work together to identify real problems and help fix them. The first key to escaping this negative cultural dynamic is humility, recognising that you are a unique person, but no one special.  Humility also means assuming the best of every other person, which helps us to recognise when hurt is unintended.  The second key is to realise that we are part of the ‘Blame Game’. We need to recognise our guilt over issues or our fear of being criticised and dela with it.  he best way to do this is to reflect on why you feel that when you encounter situations that bring up this emontions.  Then think about what should be the appropriate response  that you would use next time (eg. how would you treat a person in this situation there where no power or racial issue involved).  If we do not work to release fear and guilt associated with the other cultural group we will be controlled by it in our selves or be controlled by others pulling our strings.