Acknowledgement of Country and of First Nations influence on development of The Possums Programs
Acknowledgement of Country
The Possums Programs and The NDC Institute acknowledge and pay respect to the Australian First Peoples, the oldest continuous culture on our planet, and in particular the traditional custodians of the land upon which the Possums programs were developed, the Yuggera and Turrbal Peoples.
Australian First Nations women have breastfed and slept with their babies and toddlers on this land for 65,000 years or more. The First Peoples knew how to make breastfeeding and baby sleep work.
Acknowledgement of cross-cultural learning
I acknowledge my formative experiences working as a young general practitioner with First Nations' Peoples in the late 1980s. During this time, I saw urban First Nations' women breastfeeding their babies in consultations. I saw the way Anangu women breastfed and interacted with their babies when I stayed as a guest of the matriarch Nganyinytja and her people for a brief but impactful week on an outstation, sleeping in a swag in a dry creek bed. I read Professor Annette Hamilton's groundbreaking report Nature and Nurture on her collaborative work with Anbarra women, quoted generously three decades later by the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care in Growing up our way.
I acknowledge that things I learned from Australian First Peoples have directly influenced my development of Neuroprotective Developmental Care or The Possums Programs. This includes
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The Possums Baby and Toddler Sleep Program
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The Possums 5-domain approach to infant cry-fuss problems
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The NDC evolutionary bodywork approach to infant motor development, and
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The NDC concept of frequent flexible breastfeeding.
Despite the continuing intergenerational effects of a deeply silenced but genocidal colonial-settler violence, Australian First Peoples generously share the wealth of these lands, seas, and skies and also selected elements of their cultural life with us. In the Uluru Statement from the Heart, Australian First Peoples say: "Our children will ... walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country."
For this, I am deeply grateful.
Related resources
A breasted ontology: Australian central desert peoples and the inscribed female breast.
I’ve been a Queensland GP since 1987. Here’s why I’ll be voting yes for the Voice
Selected references
Hamilton A. Nature and Nurture: Aboriginal Childrearing in North-Central Arnhem Land. Canberra: AIAS P; 1981.
SNAICC. Growing up our way: practices matrix. North Fitzroy, Melbourne: Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care, 2011.