Colonisation OF Mind
About ten years ago, I was part of a small group out ‘on country’ with Nyoongar Elder Uncle Noel Nannup. Early in the journey, we visited a massacre site on Naaguja country, just south of Geraldton in Western Australia. Coming from all directions on horseback, early settlers attacked an Aboriginal camp and massacred the defenceless men, women, and children. The year was 1854. It became known as the ‘Killing Ground’, and was not an isolated incident, nor the worst recorded massacre in Australia since colonisation.
I knew beforehand that massacres such as this had taken place throughout Australia. Knowing about these atrocities was one thing; however, being physically present at a massacre site with Aboriginal people was incredibly confronting. The magnitude of intergenerational grief and trauma present on that day could not be ignored, and my previous learning via filtered media and textbooks was powerfully grounded and became real. I was shaken to the core.
Later that day, we travelled inland to a traditional camping place. In the evening, as we sat in Circle around a campfire, bellies full of kangaroo tail stew, a discussion among my Aboriginal friends about the impact of colonisation unfolded: trauma, forced disconnection from country and cultural ways, the imposition of the colonial way of being, imprisonment, and much more. As I listened, I was mindful to breathe deeply and slowly while maintaining a connection to Mother Earth and without intellectual analysis, judgement, or even pretending to understand those experiences in their fullness. The power of what I was hearing landed deeply, and I was grateful I had the support of Mother Earth to process and integrate it, such that understanding, insight and wisdom were available. Out of respect, I silently called upon the Indigenous ancestors of that land, and my own ancestral lineage, to bring forth what I was ready to receive at this stage of my learning.
As the stories of my friends flowed, a question I could not ignore was front and centre in my mind: “What the hell was wrong with these people, the colonists, that they came out here, did such horrific things, and were able to justify their actions? Very big questions, and the answers were likely to be challenging. I knew I had to stay out of my intellect and trust the process of connection, Mother Earth, and the ancestors I had called upon, staying heart-centred for connection and waiting, waiting, waiting. The feeling of a different consciousness from somewhere deep within me came into awareness, and the information began to flow.
For any of us, if we go back far enough in time, we all have Indigenous ancestors. I don’t know where that was for you, but mine were in Western Europe. They were colonised thousands of years ago, and since that time, there has been a history of invasion, ongoing colonisation, war, and violence. By the time the colonists arrived in Australia, they were experienced, hardened by a violent history, believed in a colonist doctrine, and knew exactly what to do and how to go about doing it.
As you will come to understand from what I have to tell, our violent history and resultant trauma has cascaded across time with increasing power, complexity and destructive force, powerfully affecting the evolution of mind and consciousness for all of us. So much so that what is considered a ‘normal mind’ in psychology and promoted as such is, in fact, a ‘colonised mind’: a mind conditioned to serve the agendas of colonisation while coping with, accepting, and surviving in the resultant traumatised world and fragmented society. This is a mind that has a collective force, is in control of the world, and has given us mechanistic science, hierarchical power and control structures, the rise of the ego, corporate dominance, self-importance above all else, inequality, exploitation to the point of exhaustion, the perpetuation of war and violence, ongoing trauma, neo-colonisation, and much more.
Mother Earth wasn’t finished with me that night, however. The information, insight and understanding that came about my own ancestral journey were things I could not walk away from. The fact that they were released to me in this way came with obligation – something I had learnt from an Aboriginal elder many years prior. Remembering the commitment I had made all that time ago, I took a deep spiritual breath, reminded myself I was not walking alone, a door opened, and once again I was on a journey of not knowing where I was going or what the outcome would be.
As the journey unfolded, I came to realise how deeply and powerfully colonist indoctrination was entrenched within all of us who have been born into it, in ways I was completely unaware of. I was challenged to liberate my mind by releasing indoctrinated beliefs, including those about my own identity, before I could comprehend what was going on in its fullness. Only then was I able to see, and it was shocking, distressing, and at times overwhelming. As I processed and integrated this experience over time, conditioned thinking fell away, and a great deal was revealed. What follows is my account of that.