Monday December 3rd 2007

I was adopted into an Aboriginal family while I was at university. I had decided I wanted to be a teacher and had chosen to get my teaching experience in an indigenous community in Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory.

When I first entered the community I stood out like a sore thumb. Not just because I was white but because I wasn’t part of the kinship system. I had no relation to anyone else in the community. When I was later adopted, however, I suddenly had mothers, brothers and uncles all over the place. On one occasion, when we had all gone hunting together, a baby was thrust into my arms. “Here, you look after it,” I was told.

It made me realise that when the government says that there is child neglect in these communities, what it doesn’t understand is that these children have deep connections to people other than their own mothers and can be looked after by any number of them. Mothers will even share the breast-feeding.

To read entire article go here.

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Tags | Aborigines, Indigenous News, Social Justice