The Motherland | Mama Disrupt® Cover Story

Motherhood is something to be celebrated. But for Indigenous families, it’s marred with a painful history that is still taking its toll generations later. And while we can’t change the past, we can learn from it and move forward as one equal and united sisterhood.

Kaleishia Ross cradles her pregnant belly, which bears the marking of the Goanna (Gidawa) – her family totem. The colours represent her bloodline, as she and her partner both have Indigenous and non-Indigenous grandparents; the brown is for their Aboriginal heritage; and the ochre is the colour of the land where she and her son come from.

Kaleishia, a proud Ngaringman woman, lives in Katherine, NT with her partner Khoen Chisholm and their 18-month-old son Khoen Chisholm Jnr. Talking about her childhood, Kaleishia says it was very chaotic at times, as they would often open their home to family from the Community, plus her parents took in extra kids who they raised alongside their own four children.

A very tight family, they always spent weekends together watching her dad and two brothers playing local sports, and on school holidays they would all go out to Yarralin Community (her mother’s country) and go fishing, hunting, camping, catch up with family and reconnect with the land.

“Nowadays things are extremely difficult and it’s harder to raise children with a number of barriers. For me it’s childcare, my son has been on the waiting list for over two years.

Therefore, I have to rely on family to look after my son, whilst I work to make a living,” Kaleishia says, who works full time at the Headspace Centre in Katherine as the Aboriginal Wellbeing Worker, while also completing a Bachelor of Social Work full-time.

“Living remote makes it harder with the essentials being expensive. And due to my son being on the waitlist, my partner has to stay at home until he is able to go to childcare. Financially, it does put a strain on my family, but we manage to make it through with the support from our parents, siblings and extended family.”

While the Stolen Generation is something Kaleishia’s paternal grandparents were part of, which she says tragically resulted in a loss of identity, connection to family, their country and language, it’s something the 24-year-old often worries about happening today. “As a young Indigenous mum, I feel that we Aboriginal and Torres Islander mothers fear that our children could be taken away from us. I feel that Indigenous mothers are scrutinised more about how we raise our children. Black mums are the backbone to most families and if we aren’t being strong mothers for our kids, families and support, then we lose that connection.”

And that’s why it’s so important we break the cycle to be part of a changing future – to better listen to and support Indigenous mothers.

“We need to be reassuring our young first-time Indigenous mums, encouraging them and ensuring that they have the right help in place,” Kaleishia says. “Are they travelling ok with being a new mum? Are they meeting the demands of the baby and adapting? I was lucky enough I have the support from my partner, my mother, grandmother, sisters and extended family.”

While Kaleishia leans hard on her mother and grandmother, she says when they were first-time mums, it was expected that they were not to ask for help.

“My grandmother gave birth at a young age and had to get a job in order to support her child. She was a young mum with very little education or support. Her mother died when she was a little girl, and she never experienced having her mother around to teach her the things that many people take for granted,” she says.

“My mother was able to go to high school and complete senior school. Now, both my mother and grandmother support me and are always there to give me advice about motherhood and life. They are both knowledgeable in the Western ways, but also in our cultural ways. Whenever my son is sick, I contact them to ask what I should do before going to the hospital. Nine out of 10 times they would suggest bathing him in bush medicine, as that is our natural remedy which helps heal many ailments and gets rid of bad spirits – it’s often used in smoking ceremonies to show respect to the land.”

It’s important to Kaleishia to hold onto these traditions, because they are a part of her. And there are stories and rituals that she too will pass onto her own children, about their skin names (her skin name is Nalyirri and her son’s skin name is Julama), the structure of kinship, their language, their cultural protocols and their Dreaming stories of the sun and moon. “I share my stories and rituals with my partner, who sadly grew up not knowing his Aboriginal language or protocols. He is so intrigued and has now reconnected with his Bidjara Tribe.”

There are currently more than 500 different Indigenous communities across Australia, and in 2019 there were more than 150 Australian Indigenous languages being spoken at home. While there has been a historical decimation of First Nation culture, the irrepressible nature and resilience of local Indigenous peoples have provided and still provide the connections for their culture to grow and evolve again in contemporary society. If we are to learn from our past, it is imperative we listen, so that Indigenous mothers and families are heard, ensuring a better future, united in harmony. And perhaps then, we can look ahead with hope.

Aboriginal motherhood traditions

+ While women are the ‘givers of bodily life’, it’s essential for the husband’s ‘spirit-child’ to enter for her to become pregnant, in an act called the ‘quickening’.

+ Just before, or during birth, the child is given totems to link them with the spiritual world, aka The Dreaming. These totems define people’s relationships to each other and

give them particular rights and roles within the language group.

+ In childbirth, mothers were always supported by other women, and they often gave birth in special shelters. After childbirth, mothers would squat over hot coals or ashes to stop bleeding and help ease aches and pains in a ritual known as smoking, and this was part of the cleansing process for the mama.

+ Pregnancy, childbirth and postnatal rituals varied among tribes, and while modern Indigenous mothers now have different birthing experiences – many have their babies at a clinic in town, or if they live remotely they go to the nearest town a few weeks before their due date, while some women do still choose to give birth in their communities, following traditions to this day.

Dreaming Stories

+ Aboriginal people share important knowledge, cultural values, traditions and law to future generations through their Dreaming stories, which are passed on through various customs such as ceremonial body painting, art, storytelling, song and dance.

+ The Dreaming represents the time when the Ancestral Spirits moved over the land, creating life, geographic formations and sites. It explains the workings of nature and humanity, family life, the relations between the sexes and obligations to people, land and spirits.

The Stolen Generations

+ Between 1910 and 1970, Australian and State government agencies and church missions took First Nations children from their families, who were then either adopted into non-Indigenous families or placed in institutions.

+ The children were forced to adopt a non-Indigenous culture, were stopped from speaking their traditional languages and even had their names changed. This was all because it was presumed that ‘full-blood’ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people would naturally die out and that children with Indigenous and non-Indigenous parents would assimilate better into ‘white’ society, due to their skin being lighter.

+ Both the Indigenous families and their children experienced insurmountable trauma and grief (which has also been felt through the generations), and because of these connections being destroyed, some cultural knowledge and traditions have been lost forever.

Originally published in Mama Disrupt® magazine