Trauma and healing at Western Australia’s former native missions

Introduction

In Western Australia, missions run by religious organisations dominated the landscape of places that Stolen Generation people were taken to be confined, educated and denied their Aboriginality. Between 1900 and 1960, when removal legislation was repealed in Western Australia, there were 47 missions established and run by churches and Christian mission organisations (List of Institutions Holding Aboriginal People in WA 1830–1975, 2019). A small number lasted only a few years—others such as New Norcia Mission were active for over 126 years. Many of these places are now abandoned or have been restored to Aboriginal organisations or other use. While these are sorrowful places for Stolen Generation survivors, they are still important as a “homeland” that carry an ambivalent mix of memories, emotions and experience. The removal of children (and others) from country, families and the denial of their culture since settlement in Western Australia has had lasting and destructive effects.

This article describes research at Curtin University which aims to assist Stolen Generation people and their descendants heal the cultural dislocation and trauma endured by Aboriginal people who were “in care” in missions and government institutions through the regeneration of mission sites as healing centres.

Mission sites have been identified as useful places for the healing of survivors. Healing centres are a recognised strategy for healing Stolen Generation people and mission sites are powerful places to provide healing programmes. But there are significant issues in accessing these places for many survivors because of administrative and political problems or ill health restricting travel. Many mission sites are deteriorating at an accelerating rate that outstrips attempts to raise funding to conserve them. While restoration is certainly most desirable, virtual reality (VR) offers an alternative and unique platform to substitute for physical access in attempts to help Stolen Generation survivors and their families counter the damaging effects of child removal programmes.

This article concentrates on the state heritage listed Mogumber Mission (1951–1974) established by the Methodist Overseas Mission at the former Moore River Native Settlement (1918–1951)—an infamous government run Aboriginal establishment where removed children were also sent. The mission is located 135 km north of Perth in the Western Australian wheatbelt on a bend in the Moore River. It is a well treed site containing, reasonably well-preserved single-story timber and brick residential buildings, a large timber church, farm sheds, tennis court, remanent swimming pool and the denuded remains of the original Moore River settlement. The site covers approximately 36 ha.

We focus on the collaborative process of creating a virtual Mogumber Mission site and bringing alive an historic environment onto which are layered the knowledge, memory and stories of the survivors. We explore the use of VR as one of the ways of Healing and Truth Telling (Truth Telling Symposium Report, 2018) and its use as a platform for the Stolen Generation survivors to manage and share their stories and memories through “yarning” processes and direct testimony of events attached to place. The construction of the Mogumber Mission VR environment was undertaken by Curtin University researchers in partnership with Survivors and Bringing Them Home WA (BTHWA)—an Aboriginal organisation that represents the interest of the Stolen Generations in WA.

We begin this discussion with the historical, ideological and political context for the institutions that took children into care, the effects of removal policies, how the environment at Mogumber was digitally reconstructed employing a strength base approach and examine the ways VR can be deployed as strategy to help heal the Stolen Generations.

Context

Foreshadowing the closure of the Seventh Day Adventist Mission at Karalundi in Western Australia in 1974, C.S. Adams (1974) bemoaned emerging federal government policies and their changing attitudes towards the treatment of Aboriginal people:

The [government] policy is to encourage these people in their tribal customs (which we discourage), and not to take children from their homes for school purposes. We have always housed the children from an early age in in dormitories, in order to run a controlled school system. (p. 1)

The practice of taking Aboriginal children from families, country, language and culture to provide a “controlled” environment in which to civilise and shape their lives has a long history in Western Australia dating from the Perth Native School in 1840, a residential school run by the Wesleyan Reverend John Smithies. While various religious denominations set up missions throughout Western Australian over the course of the 19th century it was the Aborigines Act 1905 (and successive acts) that enshrined in policy the practice of child removal and entrenched paternalistic, racist, controlling and ultimately destructive attitudes towards Aboriginal people.

For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, Aboriginal people were considered to be heading for extinction. Scientific opinion (echoed in popular lore) believed that certain traits in their character prevented them from joining the ranks of White civilised society. Warwick Anderson (2005) argues that the history of Australian racism is entwined with the medicalisation of White occupation and the fear of Aboriginal contamination of White people—racially, morally and through disease. In tandem with the restrictions on immigration, the Federal Quarantine Act 1908 sought to place a cordon sanitaire around Australia to protect it from the disease centres of Asia. The concept and practice of hygiene (both physical and racial) became part of the process of reinforcing White resistance to disease and preventing moral degeneration through contact with coloured races. These practices bled into relations with Aboriginal people who were herded into reservations and camps across Australia. However, science had also revealed there were similarities in blood between Aboriginal and Europeans leading to a view that Aborigines were distantly related to White people and were a type of proto European. By the turn of the 20th century biologists believed that Aborigines—as a type of archaic Caucasian—could successfully blend with White populations producing successively whiter shades of individual without the danger of throwbacks such as in Asians and Negroes (Anderson, 2005). It was this aspect of medical thinking that helped drive assimilation practice in Western Australia.

A principal actor in the control of Aborigines through the provisions of the Western Australian Aborigines Act 1905 was the Chief Protector of Aborigines (later Commissioner for Native Affairs) Auber Octavius Neville whose ideas of racial absorption fuelled the establishment of government run native settlements such as Moore River (1915), Carrolup (1915), Moola Bulla (from 1930) and Cosmo Newberry (1951) where children were separated from parents. Neville represented a strain of thinking in Australia about the future and treatment of Aboriginal people that saw them as a danger to White Australia through contamination but also a people in need of protection (Anderson, 2005). “Part-Aboriginal” people were particularly problematic in that they belonged to neither White nor Black, were accepted by neither, not as intelligent and constantly increasing in population. “Hybrids” were “Australian mongrels” who could not sustain White civilisation. Conversely others felt that, while less intelligent, they had a better chance to adapt and the focus should be on those more readily assimilated (Anderson, 2005).

Neville’s (1947) strategy for improving the lot of Aborigines of mixed descent was to “breed white natives” (p. 75) through the strategies of isolation, indoctrination and the production of ever White individuals. Assimilation and absorption policies and practices were at the core of Neville’s efforts to remove Aboriginal children of mixed descent from their families and place them in care away from the cultural influence and moral dangers of camp life and to ultimately “merge them into the our white community and forget that there were ever any aborigines in Australia” [sic] (Commonwealth of Australia, 1937, p. 11).

For some, such as the anthropologist Normal Tindale, Neville was a fanatic (Anderson, 2005), but his attitudes were widespread, had historical context in Australian states and were reflected generally in White Australia’s approach to immigration and people of “other” races during the 19th and 20th centuries. Neville’s motivations were not malicious although his strategies were arguably genocidal. Like others, Neville did not believe Aboriginal extinction was inevitable. He was concerned that Aboriginal people advance to a higher state of civilisation preferably in the protected environment of reservations where they could be isolated from White contamination, their culture could be erased and eventually raised up to White standards:

We know that there has been wanton and unwarranted destruction of black life, for which our race is responsible, but if we work on right lines now it may be contended in days to come that the white man eventually saved the black man from entire extinction. (Neville, 1930, p. 22)

But, like others, Neville was more worried about “half castes” and he saw managing their future as a priority (Neville, 1947; Tomlinson, 2008).

Neville was not alone advocating assimilation of mixed-descent Aboriginal people. Other states enacted similar legislation to control Aboriginal people and remove children into isolated environments (Commonwealth of Australia, 1937). Assimilation practices were also followed in other countries. Canada, for example, placed indigenous children in “Residential Schools” (Union of Ontario Indians, 2013). The New Zealand Native School System did not usually separate families but actively curbed and replaced Maori culture and language (Te Ara, 2012).

In Western Australia, missions and native settlements sat alongside other places of policing and control of Aboriginal people including feeding stations, lock hospitals, leprosarium, and homes and hostels to house Aboriginal children, including wards of the state.

There is argument on the numbers of children that were removed and placed in care and thus the extent of the Stolen Generation. Keith Windschuttle (2010) has questioned the number of people taken into care and has offered an Australia wide figure of 8,250, numbers challenged by Robert Manne (2010) who maintains that the Australian Bureau of Statistics 1994 figures represent the best estimate of 20,000 to 25,000 children removed during the period 1900 to 1970. The Healing Foundation (2018) estimates 17,150 extant survivors nationwide, of which 22% are in Western Australia. This state was the most affected by in-care policies with 24% of the national total of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people born before 1972 who were removed from their families (p. 1).

Missions

In general, missions were much less interested in Neville’s ideologies of assimilation and more concerned with saving Aboriginal souls for Christ. However, as previously indicated, the strategy of isolating children from the influence of culture and family was similar whether the aim was absorption or Christian conversion. Missions benefitted from the polices arising from the Aborigines Act 1905. Christine Choo (1997) shows that the Broome and the Pallottine Beagle Bay Missionaries, lobbied hard for state powers of removal to ensure a supply of aboriginal children placed in their care (p. 18). Missions also actively pursued Aboriginal people to place their children in mission care or used aggressive tactics to attract families to missions where they invariably isolated their children in dormitories (Choo, 1997; Davenport et al., 2005). Many children were removed from parents under the provisions of the Aborigines Act 1905. However, some families did willingly send their children to missions in the hope that they would receive an education that was not available to them in the state-run school system. Because of financial hardship, others also agreed that their children to be taken into care. For example, many admissions to Wandering Mission were because of family “poverty” or they were “unable to look after their children” (Wandering Register of Inmates, 1961).

By the end of World War II, the Western Australian government was seeking to transfer operation of their Aboriginal institutions to churches and mission societies in the belief that it was more cost effective to subsidise these organisations than run the institutions themselves. Under the Commissioner of Native Welfare Stanley Middleton (appointed in 1948) subsidies to church missions doubled and the number of missions expanded from 16 to 34 by the time he retired in 1954 (Davenport et al., 2005).

Government Settlements and church missions were tough places and children were often locked into dormitories at night and their movement strictly regulated. At the Moore River Native Settlement in the 1920s, children were firmly controlled, and parents were discouraged to visit—even if they were camped nearby as part of the settlement—although some children escaped to see parents at night-time (Haebich, 1992). Boundaries at the settlement were aggressively patrolled and parents who partitioned to have children returned were inevitably unsuccessful (Haebich, 1992). Children lost contact with their parents, especially those taken at an early age. Parents were also discouraged from visiting and contact at missions. But the enforced separation of children and parents was not universal. At Wandering Mission (operated by the Pallottines), parents agreed that they would not take children from the mission without the consent of the Father in charge or the Commissioner of Native Welfare (Wandering Register of Inmates, 1961). But these conditions were apparently not enforced. While children who absconded during term time were severely (sometimes brutally) dealt with, the mission was quite permeable. Many children simply did not return after holidays and apparently no action followed. Wards of the state (involuntarily removed or orphaned children in state care) did not go back to families on holidays—if indeed their families were known. Many of these children entered the mission as very young infants and did not leave until in their late teens (Wandering Register of Inmates, 1961; Ward, 1991).

Child experience of missions varied. Some had a relatively benign time and look back fondly on priests and teachers although the traumas of family and cultural separation have emerged in later years. Some became Christianised, advocates for churches and even missionaries themselves (Ganter, 2018). Many children suffered separation from family (a form of violence itself) and others, horrific experience of physical and sexual abuse. For many survivors—particularly “wards of the state”—the mission was the only home they experienced and while some feel repulsed by their experiences the missions are a type of “homeland”—in many ways a substitute “country”. In this context, the missions become critical as complex sites interweaving the themes of trauma and homeland. While survivors have a shared experience of loss, they are not a homogeneous group. But problems of ownership and survivor use of mission sites sometimes arise as they are often another’s traditional and legal “country” and there are difficulties for permanent access.

The “Bringing Them Home” report tabled in the Australian federal parliament in 1997 officially recognised that infinite harm had been done to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by removal policies. The magnitude of the practice has resulting in trauma for survivors that is passed down through generations and often accompanied by a profound loss of both self and social identity manifest in health and behavioural problems, social disadvantage, substance abuse and crime that follow generations (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2016; Haebich, 2000; Sheehan, 2012). Stolen Generation people descendants and families are likely to suffer unresolved loss, grief and trauma with pathological effects on their communities. They are 30% more likely to have ill health and 15% more likely to consume alcohol at unsafe levels than the general population (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2016)

The Curtin project

The concept of using mission sites as healing centres predates Curtin’s partnership with BTHWA. It is linked to opportunities to use under-utilised mission sites and that the processes of healing trauma were often better facilitated at the places of trauma (Moodie, 2016) incorporating local Aboriginal knowledge and a “trauma-informed or recovery framework, acknowledging the pain and suffering as well as the potential for transformation” (Healing Foundation, 2014, p. 20). Here, the place of disempowerment becomes a platform for empowerment and renewal. For example, the Protestant Church run Roelands Native Mission Farm in the South West of Western Australia (1938–1975) was converted into a place of education and healing for Aboriginal people in 2013. Its success has stimulated the notion that these places of heartache and trauma can also be useful places of healing (Woods, 2013). In the context of this project, BTHWA had canvassed the idea of using mission sites with their membership before Curtin’s involvement and had targeted both Carrolup/Marribank and Wandering as possible places as these had strong contingents of member survivors. These were both owned by the Southern Aboriginal Corporation who were responsive to the possibility of arranging long-term leases to BTHWA. It was at this point, in 2014, that BTHWA approached Curtin university researchers to help map and prepare master plans for the rehabilitation of Carrolup/Marribank and Wandering missions as healing centres.

Master plans for future healing centres at these places incorporating historic research, mapping and condition reports by Curtin researchers and students—in close collaboration with survivors—were produced including a detailed point cloud VR model of the extant structures at Wandering Mission. Methodologies included yarning sessions with survivors and researchers and survivor oversight of student workshops on possible planning for the sites. This experience laid useful groundwork for the future Mogumber VR.

Unfortunately, due to political and economic issues, these places became difficult for BTHWA to access for healing centre use and it was decided that VR might be an avenue worth pursuing since it would be available globally and also service those survivors who, through illness could not travel and visit these sites. VR also offered a substitute immersive site and useful platform for survivors to share knowledge and memory with each other, family members and to inform the public. In view of the rapid deterioration of these places, historically accurate VR renditions of the mission environment are important as an archival record as well as a unique environment to tell stories and locate and attach memory to place and space. The subsequent Mogumber VR is layered with memory, stories and knowledge through close survivor involvement and oversight.

In the past, VR has been used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder in sufferers, particularly soldiers (Senson, 2016) but there is a growing study of the use of VR landscapes as a therapeutic space that can underwrite health and wellbeing (McIntosh et al., 2019, p. 185). McIntosh et al. (2019) have explored this territory showing that “a multi-sensory engagement with a landscape can establish a closer relationship with the user of that landscape, in both virtual and real environments” (p. 189). Their research shows that VR landscapes have the capacity to reconnect people to their homelands—when it is impossible to visit—and to foster social and health wellbeing.

While much of the Mogumber era buildings and environment still exists, most of the Moore River Native Settlement buildings that existed during the Mogumber period have been removed, demolished or are in ruins. This has required extensive historical research into the original infrastructure and setting and on-site measurement so that it can be reconstructed digitally. The VR has also been constructed using the survivor memories who have mapped their lives into the landscape ensuring that the reconstruction is under survivor control and layered with their meaning. Because of time and cost constraints, the VR represents the Mogumber environment in ca. 1965—a period that also coincides with a majority of survivors time at this place.

At present, there appear to be no projects that specifically aim to reuse former missions as healing centres outside of Australia. In Canada, there are attempts to preserve former residential schools as “sites of conscience” (Boffa, 2017, p. 11). However, there is a similar programme to Mogumber VR in Canada in the project entitled “Embodying Empathy”, a VR reconstruction of the Fort Alexander Residential school in Manitoba. Embedded with survivors stories, the VR is meant to inform the general public the conditions under which survivors lived and the consequent effects on their lives—although it is not overtly used as a healing platform (CBC News, 2018).

Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander world view

In a simplistic sense, the Aboriginal world view differs from Western in that it has a more wholistic consideration of understanding the world through relationships to context, environment and to each other. Western understanding tends to be more scientifically focused and categorised—understanding from the particular to the general:

Aboriginal people’s identity is essentially always embedded in land and defined by their relationships to it and other people. The sacred web of connections includes not only kinship relations and relations to the land, but also relations to nature and all living things. (Graham, 2008, p. 187)

Mary Graham (2008)—a Kombumerri person—poses two basic precepts of the Aboriginal world view. First, the land is law. Land is a sacred identity and how we treat it determines our humanness. “[A]ll meaning comes from land.” Second, you are not alone in the world. “Aboriginal people have a kinship system which extends into land” (p. 182). While damaged through attempts at cultural genocide and other disruptions, it survives. Each group or clan “has its own Dreaming or explanation of existence”. The collective is paramount, and individuality is found within the group. To deny this collective aspect of Aboriginal life and understanding of the world is to “limit yourself to being an observer in an observed world” (p. 182). As the Aboriginal concept of country is an interdependence of all aspects of life and the inanimate—human health is interwoven with the health of the country. “‘Caring for country’ means participating in interrelated activities on Aboriginal lands and seas with the objective of promoting ecological, spiritual and human health” (Burgess et al., 2009, p. 567). There are important relationships between culture and country. However, the strong link between Aboriginal health and country is an aspect rarely considered in government service or policy development surrounding Aboriginal health (Schultz & Cairney, 2017). The denial of these connections between people and country results in an “unspeakable loss” and causes “deep injury and trauma” to Aboriginal people (Sheehan, 2012, p. 38). The loss of country and its importance to culture and wellness through removal policies is a key cause of poor health outcomes for survivors (Healing Foundation, 2014, p. 6).

The Curtin project has taken account of Indigenous world views ensuring that there is Aboriginal cultural overview through the strength-based system. As Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) observes, it is

. . . difficult to discuss research methodology and Indigenous peoples together in the same breath, without having an analysis of imperialism, without understanding the complex ways in which the pursuit of knowledge is deeply embedded in the multiple layers of Imperial and colonial practices. (p. 2)

While we acknowledge that this project has roots in the Western scholarly tradition with all its colonial and post-colonial implications, Aboriginal control of the project helps ensure that the Aboriginal world view, traditions and practices are a primary in approaches to the project; Aboriginal people and organisations in this project are not observers but immersed in the project, its conception, conduct and desired outcomes.

Healing

In Australia, there have been several approaches to healing adapted to suit the diversity of needs within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. These programmes aim to strengthen the various social units that exist in these communities and are vital in addressing the traumatic legacy of child removal. The manner in which these initiatives work varies from place to place but most of these have common features such as “an emphasis on restoring, reaffirming and renewing a sense of pride in cultural identity, connection to country, and participation in and contribution to community” (Healing Foundation, 2012, p. 6). Also, most of these approaches are rooted in models advanced by the Healing Foundation (an indigenous-led organisation) that are germane to Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survivor experience. The Healing Foundation (2012) support Aboriginal-led healing programmes—such as those by BTHWA—that utilise “group activities including support groups, healing camps and reunions” aimed at collective healing (p. 12). “Healing is a complex and often lengthy process—‘a journey rather than an event’” (p. 15). Indigenous healing models are different from the Australian mainstream in that they “reflect their unique history, culture and community structure, and holistic world view” (p. 15). A prime aim is to reconnect survivors to family country and culture. “For some Stolen Generations members, circumstances will mean that the connections made are not to their Aboriginal family but to their institutional family” (p. 15). The Healing Foundation highlight strength-based approaches “especially healing approaches based on the strengths of Aboriginal cultural traditions” (p. 20). Successful healing includes projects that are “culturally sensitive, culturally driven, culturally developed and culturally implemented programs and models [that] provide pathways forward for individuals and communities” in a “culturally competent and culturally secure environment” (Dudgeon et al., 2014, p. xxvii).

The VR Mogumber mission project offers a shared and safe environment that has healing through cultural renewal as an underlying concept allowing survivors to connect to land, family and community through their memories around past practices and experiences at the mission.

Another approach to healing in previous successful international programmes has been through Truth Telling. An example is the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) which was established by the 2006 Indian Residential School Settlement as a means for residential school survivors in Canada to share and witness residential school experiences in a public forum (Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA), 2006). The focus of the TRC is on reconciliation, specifically focusing on building new relationships through a process of narrative sharing with a belief that communication of experience within a public venue is an essential part of healing. In Australia, Truth Telling processes are gaining momentum to “. . . explore both our shared history and its impacts today to further healing and reconciliation” (Truth Telling Symposium Report, 2018, p. 6). Truth Telling is different to the adversarial forms of a law court in that the witness tells their story—usually in front of a panel or commission—questions are asked but their testimony is not cross-examined. Evidence is reviewed and corroborated. In the Mogumber VR process the stories told by survivors about their experiences is a form of truth telling—a sharing of their story which aides both healing and reconciliation.

Public access to survivors’ stories becomes one key underlying premise for the production of Mogumber VR in our project. Similar to photography, radio, music, theatre and electronic media, the VR environment serves to represent Indigenous worldviews, resist colonial narratives and educate people about the living reality of Indigenous peoples (Iseke-Barnes & Danard, 2007). Survivors incorporate their narrative into digital stories to engage in a process of decolonisation and representation (Perley, 2009) and to “convey a process of transforming communities and individuals impacted by the enduring legacy of colonial policies, institutions and their practices” (Adelson & Olding, 2012, p. 4).

Project processes

Using a strength-based approach by promoting and working with strengths of the survivors that include cultural traditions, we planned the project processes with the BTHWA and the Healing Centres Steering Committee for a Participatory Action Research (PAR) process. The Healing Centres Steering Committee had been previously formed to service a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Aboriginal organisations. The committee comprises Aboriginal elders, BTHWA personnel and Curtin University researchers. The project intention was to have power-sharing and collaboration in the research. Knowledge and lived experience of the survivors and Aboriginal participants was considered paramount to the success of the project.

There were three project stages—project planning, VR production and the evaluation of the project. The fourth outreach stage mentioned in Figure 1 has been planned for the future. Figure 1 shows the stages of the project and roles for different stakeholders.

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Figure 1.

Role of stakeholders in the stages of the project.

Evaluation using Social and Emotional Wellbeing measures

The distress and intergenerational trauma caused by the removal of Indigenous children from their family homes was for many years restrictively associated with “healing from physical and sexual abuse”, and as pointed out by the Canadian Aboriginal Healing Foundation, governments were only willing to address those needs that could be resolved in court . . . “loss of language and culture were not a compensable issue in court, but physical and sexual abuse was. And it was very strictly limited in that way” (Maxwell, 2017, p. 989). In Australia and other countries, the acknowledgement of this failure has seen the overall concept of Aboriginal health also being associated with the levels of Social and Emotional Wellbeing (SEWB) in Aboriginal communities (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2009). This has led to a more holistic understanding of Aboriginal health which extends beyond the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual aspects to include links to land, community and family.

Evaluation involved the BTHWA and researchers and an assessment framework using SEWB measures was developed as illustrated in Figure 2.

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Figure 2.

Assessment framework using SEWB measures.

The first component of the framework is about hearing people. The majority of previous successful healing initiatives have been around “. . . collective healing” projects that “. . . bring people together in a safe space in which they can learn from others, share their own experiences and be stimulated to think and do things differently” (Blignault & Williams, 2017, p. 6). By listening to the lived experiences of others, survivors are able to share, reflect and understand the impact mission life has made on them and are able to look at where they stand on the healing scale. They draw inspiration from survivors stories of resilience and inspire with their own.

The second component—mapping places—links survivors to the land. As one survivor remarked,

its sad seeing buildings taken away, knocked down, erasing all the memory . . . its good we are doing stuff like this—VR—looking at how the place was . . . trying to look at the history . . . for some people it was their whole life, some people were there from childhood, other people were born there—it’s part of you, it is in your soul and makeup. (Survivor B, personal communication, 19 September 2018)

Mapping the mission environment has provided opportunity for survivors to reconnect with the land with a sense of control that was absent when they were children.

Third component of the framework is mining products. “Mining” is used here with reference to excavating from the past those artefacts, relics, articles and objects, that were present on the mission site and which are closely tied to survivors’ memories. Survivors relate stories about certain trees, objects like faucets, doorknobs, furniture, building material and wall colours. Such objects, observations and their significance find a place in the historic VR environment.

The last component of the assessment framework is tracing practices where survivors’ activities, past daily rituals are charted onto the mission site. A key ingredient in most healing programmes is processes of cultural renewal incorporating “strong Indigenous cultural themes” (Blignault & Williams, 2017, p. 6). One such example is of the use of storytelling through the production of digital shorts by the not-for-profit media group Reel Youth where the legacy of abuse in Canadian residential schools is shown, focused in particular on the intergenerational effect of psychological, physical, sexual and spiritual abuses. In the Mogumber mission project, the survivors are able to interweave the past and present and reflect on what was lost and how much has been recovered after leaving the mission. “. . . this reduces guilt and places the blame for social and economic problems outside of the individual” (Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2006, p. 42). It further helps in establishing connections to family and community traditions and cultural practices.

The Mogumber VR (see Figures 3 and 4) has been experienced by survivors at a number of locations and settings. In December 2018, a group of 10 survivors experienced the VR at the Curtin Hub of Immersive Visualisation and eResearch (HIVE) where memories were triggered, and stories were shared (Figure 5). Individual experience of the VR was afforded through Oculus Go headsets and shared with a large three-dimensional (3D) immersive stereoscopic panorama display. Survivors and their families also experienced parts of the production during the 100th year reunion event held on 27 October 2018 at Mogumber where responses were recorded:

“Very good concept; I would love to see the final result.”

“Very spiritual connection with what I felt: viewing the VR brought tears for me on the past historical events that happened here and the souls that passed through this land.”

“Awesome, interesting and mind blowing.” (Moorditj Mag, 2018)

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Figure 3.

Image of Mogumber VR environment. The light pillars and discs contain stories, songs, remembrances and knowledge and are activated when touched within the environment.

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Figure 4.

Image of Mogumber VR environment.

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Figure 5.

Mogumber VR demonstrated at the Curtin Hub of Immersive Visualisation and eResearch.

There are some current and future potential areas of healing that this project presents:

Community Safety and Wellbeing: The project resources will help to improve the social and emotional wellbeing of Stolen Generation survivors and their families by supporting them to heal from trauma.

Stolen Generations History: Some personal Stolen Generation survivors histories and lived experiences will be recorded and commemorated so they become better known by WA communities.

Connection to Place: Stolen Generation survivors have the opportunity to revisit Mogumber mission site virtually and yarn about their collective experiences with other survivors.

Inclusion and Acceptance: Stolen Generation survivors and their families will be included more as the project proceeds into future development in the co-design and co-production of the project. Sharing their experience with the wider community will encourage acceptance.

Equity of Participation: Stolen Generation survivors will be remunerated for their involvement in the project, which will also generate employment for Aboriginal people through BTHWA and West Australian Stolen Generations Aboriginal Corporation staff positions.

The combined, hearing, mapping, mining and tracing practices components had profound effects on some Survivors engaged in these activities and was a particularly successful strategy in placing Survivors at the centre of the project ensuring that their memories and mapping gave them cultural control over the site and gave it meaning. One survivor related that the acts of remembering the landscape and mapping his life at Mogumber on to it was a therapeutic activity in itself—acting as a form of healing (Survivor B, personal communication, 19 September 2018). It is possible that healing through the charting and recording of missions could be incorporated into the VR healing centres project—not only as a one-off undertaking as each mission is reconstructed, but perhaps multiple reconstructions of the one mission by each survivor.

Conclusion

For Stolen Generation survivors, former church mission sites such as Mogumber are a type of homeland. Healing Centres offer a proven holistic strategy to counter the damaging effects of their exclusion from family, culture and country. While missions are often viewed as landscapes of distress, they can also be healing places for Stolen Generation people to come to terms with the trauma caused by removal policies. However, due to political and access issues and financial constraints surrounding the physical restoration and use of these places, VR is presented as a novel substitute environment that can also be a survivor controlled multi-layer interactive place. Embedded with stories and testimony, it provides a thick and rich environment for survivor and intergenerational healing, and public information and understanding. While the VR project arose because it was difficult to physically access mission sites it has implications for sites are actually accessible. Even if a ruin, an accessible site may make use of augmented reality (AR) where the material on the ground is augmented by VR reconstructions (accessible through portable digital technology) with the advantage that the user is at the actual site—perhaps enhancing the reality of the experience.

Creating VR mission environments as a platform to link people to place through stories becomes a process of cultural recovery. Missions were places where, as children, the survivors were stripped of their identities and not allowed to speak their language or practice their culture. To take control of these historic sites and confront the past trauma creates opportunities for a dialogue between the sense of power and sense of fear, a juxtaposition of present and past. Unheard and silenced voices from the past when heard by other Aboriginal and non-Aboriginals become a source for Truth Telling and acceptance and provide ground for healing.

The VR Mogumber mission content is educative and experiential; it provides opportunities to engage as individual or in groups in safe places. It respects individual difference and allows a healing process that is managed and controlled by the individual at his or her own individual pace. Control and “a sense of mastery” of the healing process by Aboriginal people is an important part of processes that are aimed at the restoration of the self, family, community and culture, and ultimately the health of the individual and community (Dudgeon et al., 2014, p. 427).