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.

“Why don’t you Balanda explain to us what are your plans for us?  What is the Government’s plan for us or the Shire’s or whoever’s plan for us? What do you have in mind for our future?  Someone come and explain it to me? We don’t know? You don’t talk to us.  You just change things. Where is the consultation, where is the negotiation.  We have our own parliaments; our own system of law.  You should be talking to us first.”

His speech demonstrated that Indigenous people in some remote communities feel like all the decisions about their community are being made for them.  Not only do they want to know what is going on, they feel they have a right to know and a right to be part of the decision making process.  Yolŋu have been demanding this right since the Balanda first imposed on them. The jurisdiction that their own systems of law gives them over the use of land and governance of their own society, means that decisions made by the Balanda systems without consulting the appropriate person in their own system are seen as imposing, controlling or illegitimate.  These are not naive thoughts.  Yolngu struggle to understand how our political system really works,  but they are fully aware that their land owners, leaders and elders have no say in the constant changes that complicate their lives, and determine how their land is used, despite a system that is supposed to support them.  The last year has been particularly difficult with the coercive tactics of the intervention, removing the permit system, imposing police forces and compulsory income management all without preliminary consultation.  On top of this the NT government disbanded the local community councils, forming them into super shires and so severely limiting local control of the townships.  The statement summarised above implies an anger and perhaps a fear of the Government and the ‘Balanda’ system’s plans for them.  This is evidence of the lack of information people have about the mainstream Australian system, leaving a big question mark about how the power that Balanda exerts over them will be used.  Just as this Yolngu man suggests, Indigenous communities are dependent on non-Indigenous personnel to keep them informed of the plans of Government and other organisations.  The lack of real consultation also means that Indigenous people are excluded from the debates.  Take for example the debate about bilingual education.  This year at the word of the Minister Indigenous languages are all but banned from being taught and used for teaching in the class room.  On such issues the media presents us with rarely more than a couple of Indigenous people who may or may not represent informed local opinion.  Meanwhile a whole range of non-Indigenous experts get to comment on the issue.   In addition, those Indigenous people that do get to speak in the media must do so in English, a foreign language to them, as a result they sound simple minded and shallow when their experience and meaning is deep. That Indigenous people are excluded from decisions that effect them is a real experience they face regularly ( hear about this directly from an remote Indigenous voice).   We must create ways to consult throughly using the local and traditional systems that the people are using.  Consultation takes time.  But taking that time to listen and include the peoples system is part of the solution to Indigenous problems because it allows for learning, it encourages, demonstrates respect and empowers Indigenous Australians with the opportunity to speak.   In fact, time for good consultation reduces many future complications; but that is another story…

Misunderstandings about literacy education on remote communities.

1. The children in remote and bilingual schools are not being taught English.
   

   Reality:The children on remote communities and in bilingual schools are taught English and grow up with the ability to speak English and write english.  The problems are that many have a limited vocabulary, poor written literacy and numeracy skills.

2. Bilingual schools are teaching in local languages
   

   Reality: Bilingual schools are unable to train, and thus do not have, specialist teachers who know the local Indigenous language. You would be forgiven for thinking it should be otherwise. They are provided with funding for only one linguist and the rest relys on the linguistic skill of locally employed indingeous teacher aids who recieve little additional training.

3. Children in remote communities are not being taught in English.
   

   Reality: English is the language spoken by almost all teachers in remote Indigenous classrooms already.  If there is any education using the local language, it is provided by Teacher Aids from the local community.  Conssequently at least 50% of education has been taught in English for the last 30 years.  Teaching in english has not help indingeous kids learn to speak or read english well.

4. Someone out there wants to stop English being taught.
   

   Reality: No one, including Indigenous groups, have argued against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders being taught English. Aboriginal people have always asked to be taught English.

5. The forcing of teachers to use English in the classrooms is new policy that has not been tried before.
   

   Reality: This is not the first time a policy like this has been introduced.  The education department introduced a policy of English only education (100% of the time)  about 4-5 years ago. It did not apply to bilingual schools, but in a number of bilingual schools new priniciples encouraged the use of english in class rooms. Schools that currently use english only models did not perform better than the bilingual schools in recent tests.

6. The current thinking in the NT and around Australia seems to be that the best way to teach a new language is to force people to listen to it as much as possible.
   

   Reality: Such an approach only works if the student is immersed in the language and removed from peer groups that speak their first language That is, for immersion to be successful at teaching English, the kids must be taken away from their families and friends – Australia has been there done that, No thanks.

   Reality: We do not use this approach when we teach foreign languages to English first language speakers. Have you ever learnt French or Indonesian at school or university.  What do we do?  We teach the new language using the student’s first language, English.  Why? Because language acquisition is fastest if it is charted in the first language -  eg. djugu = contract, guyaŋa = think… you just learnt 2 new words in a new language using your first langauge.  Untill the student has a good grasp on the langauge we must use structured programs that teach English using the language the students already know.  Why don’t we do this in Indigenous schools?

7. Indigenous languages are not powerful or accurate enough to teach difficult English concepts.
   

   Reality: Indigenous languages are highly effective, accurate and contain all the meanings necessary to teach mathematical, scientific and humanitarian subjects. I know this because I teach economic literacy, governance and germ theory using an Indigenous language

8. We have to do something. We have tried almost everything.
   

   Reality: The one policy no government has ever implimented to solve low literacy and numeracy rates in Australian remote Indingenous schools is the training of EFL teachers to use local Indigenous languages to teach english and other subjects. This would enable true bilingual education rather than what actually happens today.

Considering that mainstream support, rather than research and local community knowledge, tend to drive government policy it is possible that these misunderstandings or assumptions are driving the current push to once again force english only environments on children in remote Indigenous schools.  I hope this clarifies the issue for you and helps you to explain some of the issues to others.

The latest issue before us is a policy presented by Kevin Rudd and Jenny Macklin to suspend the welfare payments of parents whose children do not attend school. Even if this policy is implemented nationally it hugely discriminates against Indigenous parents, because many Indigenous people in Australia live in situations that are wholly different to other Australians, and a large proportion of Indigenous people are dependent on welfare payments due to the historical impact of colonisation. In the remote Communities of the NT 80% or more adults receive some form of welfare payment, and most of these parents want to see their children educated. Such an approach suggests that parents are to blame for non-attendance in Indigenous communities and ignores the evidence that it is schooling on Indigenous communities that has failed the parents and the children not the other way around.  Suspending welfare payments of parents if children are not attending schools will undermine further the parents struggling to do the right thing in very difficult circumstances.

The issues for Indigenous people are just too complex to handle with broad brush approaches. Indigenous parents in North East Arnhem have adopted a wide range of strategies to try to improve their childrens’ prospects, from saving for private boarding schools to starting their own private schools, to home education in traditional knowledge. For an example of the diversity in remote areas, some of the most functional and productive families in the North East Arnhem Land area those who live in villages on their home lands or ‘outstations’ where they choose to live a more traditional life style. On these small home lands family are reliant on the little money that comes in through a few peoples’ welfare payments to maintain the whole village.  Although many may not be earning their own wages they are working towards sustainability and economic development on their own land.  Schools may be some distance away on relatively disfunctional communities.   Some of the parents on these ‘outstations’ (and sometimes parents living in communities also) have made the bold choice to try to teach their children in the ways of their own culture in order to keep them away from the negative effects of schooling in Balanda run schools, such as drug abuse, depression and violence, to name a few. Instead their focus is on attempting to train their children to be able to live sucessfully on their home lands, which includes; training in traditional knowledge and attempting to acquire other skills training to create economic enterprises in their home lands. Will this choice be removed from Indigenous parents? This is just a sample of the problems with using such a blanket and authoritarian approach to create educational outcomes.  We must be very careful we do not add to the burdens with which Indigenous parents are already struggling.  Good community development arises out of working alongside people, particularly parents, and supporting them in their efforts to be successful as parents, adults and citizens.

Every day you find yourself standing at the bottom of a cliff. And every day you find that a car or bus has fallen over the cliff filled with people causing many people to be killed or injured. How should the city respond to this? First of all the people from the city send medics to treat the injured and get them to hospital and the families, priests and labourers come to bury the dead. But every day there is another lot of deaths. The city is so busy caring for the injured and the dead that it is some time before the city does anything to stop the carnage. Finally the city decides to put up a rail on the cliff to stop cars from falling over. This works for some time but soon the rail breaks from the pounding it receives and in addition to this you notice that the day the rail broke several vehicles tumbled over the edge with it. Someone who works in the mayors office came up with a great idea. If all the cars and buses had wings then they could glide safely over the edge. No body told the Mayor however that bus drivers don’t know how to fly a bus and the wings were a real problem for space on the roads. Soon the city has had enough they say well no one shall travel on the mountain any more. So they put up road blocks all along their side of the mountain and they tried to force those on the mountain to live in the city. This slows the carnage but as more people come to live in the city the problems starts to increase again. Still cars and buses fall over the edge. The city has forgotten that people have built their lives on the mountain and they have not looked carefully to see which road is killing people. Soon the people realise that it isn’t right that the citizens can’t travel to relatives or live on the mountain that has been home to people for centuries, because of one road. What can be done, how can this be resolved?

Standing at the bottom of this cliff you realise that the solution to the problem depends on what is happening on top of the cliff. Is it a dangerous corner up there? Do people get lost and the road leads them over the cliff? Are there bandits in bulldozers up there waiting to push people off? What might it be? You head off to get to the top.

Everything that happens from the edge of the cliff till the cars hit the ground are symptoms that there is something happening on top of that cliff which is the cause. The question that needs to be asked is ‘Why?’, but one’s perspective needs to change so that one can look beyond the carnage and the cliff to the causes happening above and out of sight in order to find the real answers.

The story ends like this.

When you search for and find the road that runs near that cliff, when you watch the cars to see who falls, when you talk to the drivers who use the road, ..then you realise that people only crash at particular times of the day. When you drive that road carefully, at those time you see that drivers are blinded by the sun that reflects from the city below at those times as they reach the crest. They cannot see the road as they come to the bend near the cliff.

On top of the cliff, the cause is not the mountain or the people on the mountain, or the cliff, or drivers, these are all just part of that place, the mostly immovable realities. In this story the cause of the carnage is the blinding of the drivers by reflected sun light, which is a result of the conditions created on that road by a combination of factors, the crest in the road, the corner near the cliff, the white roofs and windows of the city, the position of the sun in the sky.

There are a lot of analogies in this story with the history of programs and policies designed to help solve the problems being faced by Indigenous Australians over the years. Consider them if you will, but consider this now. If the fall from the cliff represents the gap in life expectancy, disease rates and the failures in education in Aboriginal communities, how do we look beyond the carnage and the patch up measures needed to treat the wounded to find the cause – that which is happening out of sight beyond the top of the cliff. For the problems found in Aboriginal Communities we must look carefully at what community members experience in common that leads to these problems. Furthermore, do these common experiences have other more foundational real causes which are not part of immovable realities. If there are deeper questions then we must ask again, ” Why are they experiencing this?” We must keep asking this ‘Why?’ until we get to the ultimate causes. Metaphorically, we climb the cliff and get beyond the carnage, by following a trail of ‘Whys?’. The other way to change our perspective from symptoms, to a view from the the top of the cliff, is to enter the world of those who face and experience these problems, not so much the wounded, but in particular we must communicate with the experts among the people themselves, the bus drivers trying guide the people safely along the mountain road. And we must test our answers, not adopt answers based on assumed realities. As you can see its not simple to look for causes and it is often easier to just treat the symptoms in the short term, but if that is all we do the carnage will continue and the ‘Gap’ will remain.

In the next part to this subject I will analyse some specific solutions offered by Government and consider what perspective they are using and why