Aboriginal people belong to their land. The soul of a person is born from the land and returns to it after death.
Charmaine Walley
Charmaine is Director/Board of Directors of the South West Aboriginal Land & Sea Council/Yued.
Charmaine's qualifications include Certificate IV Trainer and Assessor National Corporate Training Pty Ltd and a Certificate in Leadership Training.
Charmaine says....I want to empower my people, to be active custodians, to reignite the fires that burned fiercely in the past in regard to proud land ownership.
What is the Indigenous Exchange Scheme?
Above picture (from left), Aunty Kath, Bhavnaji and Aunty Janet.
The term "Aunty" is reserved for Aboriginal Elders.
What is the Indigenous Exchange Scheme? The Indigenous Exchange
scheme evolved from the success of the My
Clean School and My Clean
India programs which promote community action and individual
empowerment.
The
Scheme
creates the connection of cultures by sharing respect for our heritage
as a pathway for living life more powerfully and with greater
satisfaction.
Why
India and Australia? Genetic link. A
discovery in 2009 showed a common ancestry around fifty thousand
years ago between the
people of India and the Aboriginal Australians. Spiritual link. Australia's indigenous population, like the Indian people,
not only share a common
ancestry, both cultures have a
strong spiritual basis. The My Clean initiative is about empowering people to take pride in
themselves and to be unstoppable in achievement of their vision.
While it has a focus on cleanliness, as a symptom of community
spirit, it is more about the pathway of empowerment than the outcome. My
Clean is focussed on the youth to live life with pride and
satisfaction to encourage people to not be stopped by any
experiences of the past that hinder action. It practices oneness of
spirit and culture.Pride in one's heritage is a first step along the
lines of Appreciative Inquiry - ie. acknowledging the good things.
The
IE Scheme inspired by the My Clean program. The
Rotary Club
of Western Endeavour (Western Australia) may be involved.
The aims
Connection
The
Australian
Aboriginal people belong to their land. The soul of a person is born
from the land and returns to it
after death.
Taking care of the land is core to their being.
The
people of India also have a profound connection with the land
treating it as Mother Earth from which its children take birth and
return. Serving the Mother is their foremost duty. Of the five debts
that every human inherits, repaying the Mother is the first. To
the people of India, the meeting
of cultures is like the holiest confluence of rivers as they flow as
one to the vast oceans.
Why 'My Clean'?
Click on image to download flier in PDF format.
What is Culture?
This is how an Aboriginal elder explains culture:
“Culture is what was told to me by my elders, for me in turn to keep and use and respect, and to pass on. Culture is the foundation of Aboriginal knowledge – in art form, in dance, in story telling, in life. It’s about belief. Culture originates in the individuals contact with the land, which is passed on to his family and his family’s family. It is like a stream going into the ocean; a cultural bloodline.”(Des Thompson)
A non Aboriginal explanation of culture:
-
The customary ways of
being, thinking, and doing which are shared by groups of people.
-
The knowledge people
use to generate and interpret social behavior (Thompson, D.
Jackson, J., 2003).