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| Writings: Essays | |||||
| Self-Identification and Belonging: Where and what is home - Country or Culture? What is the stronger influence on ones sense of self-identity - country or culture? Where and what is home? Is it the place in which you were born, raised and live, or is it a space that gives you a feeling of belonging? What happens when the two are different? These questions rise to the surface at some point for most people who have a culture in their blood that is different to the country in which they reside, which applies to many people living in multicultural Australia. “People from non English speaking backgrounds, both those born overseas as well as their Australian born children, constitutes 25% of the population (of Australia)...the Aboriginal population is less than 1.5%” (Scicluna, para 3-4). For people living in Australia we are in the unique and fortunate position where multiculturalism is accepted as a beneficial part of our national identity. For those with a non-Australian cultural background retaining ones culture is encouraged and an official part of the Commonwealth Government’s National Agenda for Multiculturalism which states: “Cultural identity - the right of all Australians...to express and share their individual cultural heritage, including their language and religion.” (DIMI, sect 5). Australia’s acceptance of the multitude of cultural identities within this country support the natural tendency of people to maintain their cultural background and practices. Within cultures “there is an awareness of a common identity...a striving toward preservation of this identity, toward self-preservation of the culture...” (Wikipedia 2004, para 1) Cultural identity theory also holds the position that “intrusions from other cultures imply loss of autonomy and thereby loss of identity.” (Wikipedia 2004, para 1) So if one is living in one country, and allowed to express the culture of another, this would imply that you have access to both world’s and have the potential to be fulfilled by both. However for some people this sense of fulfillment eludes them. For some, whether born overseas or born in Australia, there is a calling to be physically located in the land that is aligned with their cultural roots. This calling may be a constant longing that lingers daily, or it may creep up on you slowly but intensely as it did for me. Thirty one years after I was born and raised in Sydney, the homeland of my family called me and I felt an urgent need to respond. Australian actor Greek-Australian Mary Coustas relays a similar story in the book “The ties that bind”: “Though she had been avoiding going back to Greece, she knew her path would eventually lead her there. It had always been leading her there. It was just leading her the long way.” (Jameson 2002, p80). Embarking on the journey with my two sisters we eased our way to the former Yugoslavia with a week on the Greek islands. Attached to the calling was a mysterious anticipation of the unknown, and this unknown factor perhaps made us delay our arrival just that bit more. We were finally going to the country that held all the stories heard throughout our lives. Stories of abandoned villages. War-torn towns. Poor people. Home made bread. Happy people. Lifestyles revolving around drinking black coffee and home made brandy. A stubborn, resilient people who never give in. What would the reality be like? As our train from Greece started travelling through the countryside of Macedonia I was unprepared for the waves of emotion and familiarity that started to wash over me. We were still hours away from Serbia, my cultural home, and even further still from Croatia the physical homeland of my dad and both sets of grandparents. I had never set foot in any of these places so what was this pull that was calling me to visit, and intensifying the closer I came? A couple of days after arriving into Serbia I found myself sitting on a bench in Belgrade, right next to the Danube River. I was still days away from going to my dad’s home village eight hours drive away but as I looked across the water to the city I was flooded with simultaneous feelings of connection to this place, and a sense of loss and grief due to the disconnection I had been unaware of until that moment. Sitting there I realised this trip was going to serve a higher purpose. It was filling a hole that I didn’t know I had. Apparently this is a common feeling for first-generations going back to their ancestral home. Part of Coustas’s journey was to test this cultural self-discovery story she had heard about: “ ‘Friends who’ve gone back said something clicked for them...There was a point of clarity at which the way you looked at life was going to be altered by what you saw or what you heard or what you felt.’” (Jameson 2002 p81) My own cultural self-discovery raised more questions. How could I have a hole I wondered? Even though I was born and raised in Sydney I had been brought up immersed in Serbian culture and tradition. Serbian was the first language I spoke, and it wasn’t until I started school at age 5 that I learned to speak English. My parents socialised with the local Serbian community and all of my friends outside school were Serbian. We all went to Serbian language school together on Sundays after church, and enjoyed many years of Serbian folkloric dancing practice and performances. It was almost like we were living in a matrix - an alternative reality super-imposed over Sydney. I always felt as if we were living in a Serbian village that had transported itself halfway across the world. So why, sitting on this bench in Belgrade did I feel this sense that I had been betrayed? For the first time I realised that indeed we had been living in a Matrix of sorts in Sydney. Everything looked like Serbia, tasted like Serbia and sounded like Serbia - only it wasn’t. This alternative reality that had been created for us by our family was a virtual reality and that wasn’t apparent until I got to the real thing. I gained a greater understanding of why in my later teen years I rebelled and wanted to disassociate myself from my Serbian-ness. After so many years being immersed in it, it had become to me a forced identity, a uniform that had been put onto me without my understanding of what this uniform really meant or why I was wearing it. Ien Ang similarly says: “Chineseness then, at that time, to me was an imposed identity, one that I desperately wanted to get rid of.” (Ang: 2002). Sitting on the bench I wondered would a childhood trip, if made, have helped me to embrace this aspect of my identity in a healthier way. I was intrigued at how strong the sense of connection now was. I felt it flowing in my blood and my heart felt at home there. This time I had reached out to my cultural identity, instead of a cultural identity being handed down to me, and the difference in feeling was immense. This fragmented identity one grows up with, with the influence of bi or multi-cultures, is an interesting one. To a greater degree than ever before I was being confronted with the difference between where you live, and where you feel that enveloping sensation that says ‘this is my home, this is where I belong’. There is a difference between the community you live amongst everyday and the group of people you identify with as ‘my people’, ‘my tribe’, or ‘my family’. Logic and reason have nothing to do with this process. Home could be a place you have never physically been to, but when you get there you just know this is where you belong. It is a place that your heart and your blood feel connected to, and the place that you have called home for decades since birth suddenly becomes like a mist, your attachment to it vaporising like a puff of smoke. Actor Eden Gaha describes his trip home to Lebanon as overwhelming: “The way they embraced us as one of theirs...they loved us like they had known us all their lives. There was never the Anglo distance that I was used to, the politeness. That went out the window. It was just raw, real and loving.” (Jameson 2002 p58). This cultural self-discovery process raises the questions; how do we define our cultural self-identity and are these definitions self-chosen or imposed on us? It also highlights the unique situation bi-or multi-cultural people find themselves in. What does it mean to be ‘not Serbian enough’, ‘not Australian enough’ or ‘not Aboriginal enough’? Ang writes: “my grandfather decided to go ‘back’ to the homeland and set up shop there, only to realise that the mainland Chinese no longer saw him as ‘one of them’. (Ang: 2002). Sandra, 36, born and raised in Serbia now living in Australia says: “I hate when people here (in Australia) say they’re Serbs. How can they be Serbian? They weren’t born there, they’ve never been there. How would they know what it’s like to be Serbian.” (Personal Interview). Tash, 29 born and raised in Sydney offers a response: “I don’t feel like I’m really Australian. We went to school here but when we went home it was like we were in Yugoslavia. Our friends were Serbian, we went to Serbian church school, we did Serbian dancing, we went to Serbian functions. But when I went to Serbia, I felt I’m not like them either. Over there they considered me an Aussie. I don’t know what I am, or where I fit really.” (Personal Interview). A member of the Stolen Generation with an Aboriginal mother and Anglo father says: “You spend your whole life wondering where you fit. You're not white enough to be white and your skin isn't black enough to be black either, and it really does come down to that.” (Confidential evidence 210, BTH Report 1995, Part 3 Sec 10). Coming from Australia I wondered what the experiences of people from the Stolen Generation were like. During my own journey I felt a need to have a greater understanding of these Aboriginal people who as children were taken from their families and raised in cities with white folk. Here I was feeling betrayed by not having had access to ‘my country’ whereas most members of the Stolen Generation were removed from both their ‘country’ and their culture. The Bringing them Home Report states: “One principal effect of the forcible removal policies was the destruction of cultural links.” (BTH Report 1995, Part 3 Sec 11). For many multicultural people our ancestors brought their country with them to Australia through memories, stories, traditions and large physical numbers of the family and community from home. For the Aboriginal population large numbers were killed during the English invasion through either murder or disease for which they had no defense. (Robinson: 2001) It is estimated that in 1788 “The population of Aboriginals in this country was 750,000. By 1911, the number had been reduced to 31,000.” (Robinson: 2001) Descendants of those remaining were taken from their families and ‘country’ and raised away from their roots becoming what is now referred to as the Stolen Generation. What kind of an impact has this had on Aboriginal individuals, and on the Aboriginal culture as a whole and its ability to flourish for future generations? A woman removed in the 1940’s says: “My mother and brother could speak our language and my father could speak his. I can't speak my language. Aboriginal people weren't allowed to speak their language while white people were around. They had to go out into the bush or talk their lingoes on their own. Aboriginal customs like initiation were not allowed. We could not leave Cherbourg to go to Aboriginal traditional festivals. We could have a corroboree if the Protector issued a permit. It was completely up to him. I never had a chance to learn about my traditional and customary way of life when I was on the reserves. (Confidential submission 110, BTH Report 1995, Part 3 Sec 10) Another member of the Stolen Generation adopted into a non-Indigenous family at 13 months in the 1960s says of his process: “I went through an identity crisis. And our identity is where we come from and who we are....My wife and I are trying to break this cycle, trying our hardest to break this cycle of shattered families. We're going to make sure that we stick together and bring our children up so they know who they are, what they are and where they came from.” (Confidential evidence 696, BTH Report 1995, Part 3 Sec 10) Do we have an innate need to feel we belong somewhere, to feel we belong to a tribe, a community that makes us feel ‘normal’, that makes us feel part of something, that makes us feel less isolated and alone? What happens when we don’t have a source of fulfillment for this connection? This need to heal an inner sense of disconnection, combined with a remarkably lower support system in terms of accessibility to cultural expression and traditions and community numbers, could possibly be associated with the higher usage of drugs and alcohol by people who are of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander background, compared to the rest of the population. A National Drug Strategy survey revealed that “Illicit drug use among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander respondents was higher than for non-Indigenous respondents.” (AIHW 2002, Sec 8) The statistics showed that “27% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander respondents reported using cannabis/marijuana in the last 12 months compared with 13% of non-indigenous respondents....13% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people reported using an illicit drug other than cannabis/marijuana compared to 8% of other Australians.” (AIHW 2002, Sec 8) Drugs and alcohol are often used in response to inner wounds within people. It would make sense they are being used for that reason amongst the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population, revealing the deep consequences cultural disconnection has had on this group of people. This inner need for belonging doesn’t always come with the directions “Visit your ancestral home and you will find the piece of the puzzle you have always been looking for.” Just because you feel that something is missing doesn’t mean you always know what that something is, even if in hindsight it seems obvious. Jerilyn Brownstein of New Jersey projected her need for belonging into getting involved with therapy groups either as a client or a counsellor: “I wanted to be in a [therapy] group. I was looking for deep connectedness. I felt lost. It's hard in suburban New Jersey. I lived adrift for a while, looking for my tribe.” (Francis: 2004) Through exploring the concepts of belonging and identity, and through examining personal stories it appears that cultural identity is more than just a label or way of describing ourselves. It is a part of our emotional DNA and when we are disconnected from it we carry around a sense of things being not quite right. Even when we are fortunate enough to be exposed to our ancestral culture whilst living in another country, there seems to be a powerful healing process that happens during a physical return to ones cultural homeland. A disconnection from both country and culture can have extreme consequences on ones being. Rather than living eternally with a fragmented or wounded cultural identity it seems important to heal and integrate the aspects of ones own unique situation in order to move forward with a greater feeling of wholeness. Bibliography
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