{"id":3477,"date":"2023-02-12T04:04:44","date_gmt":"2023-02-12T04:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regenesis.org.au\/?p=3477"},"modified":"2023-09-25T04:53:48","modified_gmt":"2023-09-25T04:53:48","slug":"violence-and-defying-the-enemy-within","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regenesis.org.au\/2023\/02\/12\/violence-and-defying-the-enemy-within\/","title":{"rendered":"Violence and Defying the Enemy Within"},"content":{"rendered":"
Joe Williams runs a program called ‘Defying The Enemy Within’. Joe is a proud Wiradjuri\/Wolgalu, First Nations Aboriginal man born in Cowra, raised in Wagga NSW, Australia.\u00a0 I first encountered Jo through his appearance on The Drum, talking about ‘the enemy within’.<\/p>\n
I am the mother of mixed race sons.\u00a0 My children’s father, Charles Lepani, is from the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea.\u00a0 I met and married him when I was a student of sociology at UNSW, and where he was a student of Industrial Relations on an ACTU scholarship. I went to live with him in Port Moresby in February 1972, a few months before I gave birth to my eldest son, Genou Lepani. Four years later my second son, Justin Lepani was born.\u00a0 I registered them at birth as Australian citizens so that they would have the option of where they lived in their later life.\u00a0 After their father and I separated in late 1978, my sons came to live with me for three years in Sydney before then returning to live with their father and his new wife in PNG. Genou returned to live with me when he was thirteen, to go to high school.\u00a0 Justin went with his father to Hawaii, when he moved there for three years to take up the position of Director of the East West Centre, before then joining Genou and me to start high school in Australia.<\/p>\n
Both their father and I have been committed to helping them have a sense of identity that is at home in both countries.\u00a0 However as many mixed race people know, this is not always easy.\u00a0 An Australia that prides itself on being the world’s most multicultural society should make this easier.\u00a0 Still, issues of identity remain contentious for those who do not easily ‘fit’ for reasons of ethnicity, religion or gender.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It was my own exposure to Trobriand Island society that first introduced me to other possibilities for masculine identity.\u00a0 On my first visit to the village I encountered men wearing lots of ‘bilus’ – ornamentation in the form of necklaces, earrings, hair ornaments, and woven arm bands with perfumed flowers. They were also readily seen walking along the road with small children on their hips, while their women folk walked alongside them carrying food and other items in woven baskets on their heads.\u00a0 At night the family gathered around to sing and talk.\u00a0 The men cried easily in both joy and sorrow, and one could hear the sound of the reed flute in the surrounding jungle as teenagers engaged in romantic encounters.\u00a0 Unfortunately since those days, Christianity, as the face of modernity, with its strange preoccupation with bodily covering and the repression of sexuality has taken its hold. I just hope the old spirit is strong and survives.<\/p>\n
While Joe’s work has been inspired by his own battles with suicide and mental illness, his work is also a powerful pointer towards the importance of redefining ourselves from within against the forces that can bear down so heavily upon us.<\/p>\n
His work speaks to issues that underpin masculine identity and domestic violence, as well as the lateral violence issues that can bubble up among groups who find themselves seething in frustration at their powerlessness.\u00a0 This particularly applies to Australia’s First Nations people, as a result of colonisation and displacement, but is not exclusive to them and is experienced by most people who experience marginalisation from the society around them.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.joewilliams.com.au\/<\/a><\/p>\n Although forging a successful professional sporting career, Joe battled the majority of his life with suicidal ideation and Bi Polar Disorder. After a suicide attempt in 2012, Joe felt his purpose was to help people who struggle with mental illness. Through customised workshops Joe talks of dealing with adversities, struggles, resilience, addiction, connection, emotional wellbeing & healing trauma in schools, communities, correctional services, sporting clubs and workplaces.<\/p>\n Joe was awarded the Wagga Wagga Citizen of the Year in 2015 for his committed work within the community mental health and suicide prevention sectors and was named a finalist in the National Indigenous Human Rights Awards. In 2018 Joe was awarded Suicide Prevention Australia\u2019s highest honour, a LiFE Award for his excellence in communities within the suicide prevention sector and in 2019 was named a dual winner of the Australian Mental Health Prize.<\/p>\n Now a published author, Joe\u2019s autobiography \u2018Defying The Enemy Within\u2019 <\/em>shares not only his life\u2019s story but offer\u2019s practical tools anyone can implement into their lives to improve and maintain their emotional wellbeing. Joe also contributed to the book \u2018Transformation; Turning Tragedy into Triumph\u2019 <\/em>and features in the global documentary \u2018Suicide: The Ripple Effect\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n Increasingly we are facing that pervasive violence is a feature of domestic life for many families and intimate partners.\u00a0 And we have come to understand that the need for control is a strong driver of violence, often leading to homicide.\u00a0 In Australia one woman every week has fallen victim to domestic violence homicide, and we know that the situation in friendly New Zealand is even worse.\u00a0 Coercive Control is at the heart of domestic violence.<\/p>\n Yet we are societies of relative security in terms of human rights abuses and invasion.\u00a0 Although that diverges markedly for First Nations Australians in terms of Australia’s criminal justice system, and in the pervasive and enduring racism that extends from the earliest days of colonial settlement and the frontier wars.<\/p>\nDomestic Violence<\/h1>\n
Violence in Aboriginal Communities<\/h2>\n