Glad, sad or bad fathers

I guess the puzzled look on my face gave my friend the signal to further explain himself. He added that all his hometown mates, in his 40 to 45-year age group, have had similar experiences: of only seeing their fathers drunk, gambling, fighting other men or their partners. And in some instances, dying from alcohol related illness before the boys had reached their teenage years.

Although he fondly recalled going fishing and hunting occasionally, they were but only brief moments of respite that punctuated bouts of alcohol-induced domestic violence that made the family even more dysfunctional. He told me he knew there must have been another side to life, but sadly he never got exposed to it during his formative years.

Gregory Phillips, a Waanji man from north-west Queensland, in his book Addictions and Healing in Aboriginal Country, says Aborigines experience three different types of trauma: situational, cumulative and inter-generational.

Situational trauma includes that which is attributable to a discrete event or series of events. For example, a death of a close relative may cause extreme grief, which, if not resolved and healed, can become a post-traumatic stressor. Cumulative trauma included that which builds over time, is often more subtle, and may for example manifest as a repressed rage at subtle racism or sexism experienced over many years. Legacies of unresolved trauma that are experienced between generations, such as Holocaust survivors, or those affected by forced removal and separation are called inter-generational trauma.

As I thought about all these issues of inter-generational trauma, my mind wandered back to 100,000 years to a place in time where the first Australians lived a life often described by the experts as the only "pure democracy" practiced on the planet: an organisation of people without a chief who operated a horizontal form of communal life.

Our ancestors lived in harmony with each other and were happily sustained physically and spiritually by their environment. They numbered in excess of a one million inhabitants, living in 500 discrete tribes, speaking a similar number of distinct languages and many more dialects. Under their respect of moiety, skin grouping and totemic affiliation they adhered to a strict set of lores that gave meaning for their connection to kin and land.

Mother-in-law and sister avoidance made for harmonious fulfilment of family obligations. A son’s relationships to members of his immediate and extended family - father’s brothers being fathers and mother’s sisters being mothers and their respective children being brothers and sisters - also allowed for members of the community to assume their rightful role of nurturer of life’s skills and stages of initiation. Sons were taken under the watchful eye of their mother’s brothers (uncle) to go through life training, an arrangement that took out the familiarity component they would gain through an association of the father figures in their life.

Perhaps if the uncle obligation (mother’s brothers) was still practiced today, my friend wouldn’t be engaging with me about the loss of his parenting skills as a result of the absence of a father figure in his life.

I know it worked for my father who left school at the age of 14 to live and work with his mother’s brother to be taught the ways of the world (living off the land and gaining work skills in the rural sector). It didn’t do him any harm - he is still a strong, proud, black man who is very popular with his peers and highly regarded for his integrity at the ripe old age of 74. Dad never hit my mother, I never hit my wife, and I trust my son won’t hit his future wife. I’m confident that a majority of Aboriginal men fit into this category.

The traditional kinship organisation structure worked for our people for over 100 millennia. So what happened to others?

Piero Giorgi, in his book The origins of violence by cultural evolution explains, in part, his hypothesis on the origins of violence:

• Domestication of plants and animals generated a food surplus and large human settlements.
• Food surplus led to specialisation of tasks.
• Job specialisation led to social stratification.
• Astronomy became the dominant profession.
• Religious concerns provided astronomers with additional power.
• Direct violence became necessary to maintain social stratification.
• Conflicts of interest with neighbouring hunter-gathers led to wars of defence.
• Taxation and enforced trading led to wars of conquest.