For Joshua, an Ojibwe father teaches his son (link here) comprises a series
of letters from a father to his estranged son by an acclaimed Canadian author,
Richard Wagamese. I came across an
extract from For Joshua and found it both engaging and moving (link
here).
I decided to post about Wagamese because I
suspect that he is largely unknown in Australia, yet solely on the evidence of
the extract from For Joshua, I am confident that his perspective and
insights have multiple resonances with the experience of many Indigenous
Australians.
His Wikipedia page (link here) and the
obituary posted by his publishers (link here)
both suggest that a key theme in his writing is about the experience and
consequences of intergenerational trauma arising from dispossession and child
removal. Notwithstanding my own experience working on Indigenous affairs
policy, I was slow to appreciate the extraordinary prevalence and importance of
intergenerational trauma in shaping the arc of Indigenous lives, and the
concomitant implications for policy.
I suspect that the vast majority of
Australians, even those well disposed to Indigenous aspirations, similarly
under-appreciate the importance and intensity of intergenerational trauma
arising from dispossession and social and economic exclusion.
Sometimes, there is value in seeing the world
not through our own experiences and perspectives, nor through out own national
contexts, but through a new and different lens. I found it valuable to reflect
on the extract from Wagamese’s letters to his son, outlining his experiences in
Canada, while asking myself the question, does this dynamic happen here in
Australia?
At a personal level, I propose to seek out more
of Wagamese’s published work, but thought I would share the existence of his
oeuvre with others who might be interested via this post.
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