Therapies for Healing Justice: Redressing Systemic Oppression and Intergenerational Trauma

Panelists: Dr Sipho Dlamini, Ms Rejane Williams, Ms Thembelihle Mashigo & Ms Berenice Meintjes
Chair: Dr Jude Clark

Abstract

In alignment with the conference theme, this panel asks what a decolonial, healing justice can look like in relation to therapeutic practice. The conversation between practitioners explores the implications of systemic oppression, both historical and contemporary and the possibilities for collective healing. It considers the multifaceted issue of language and/in therapy, modalities of indigenous healing as therapeutic resource and the successes and challenges of community-based interventions for collective trauma recovery and healing. Rejane Williams invites interrogation of the limitations of Northwestern-centric models of psychological intervention and explores the kinds of approaches needed to tend to the historical and ongoing wounds of generational alienation and trauma, including racial trauma. Dr Sipho Dlamini considers the value of indigenous language in the therapeutic context and what becomes possible in moving beyond the dominance of English towards a more socially just encounter in the therapy space. Drawing from experience of working at the interface of indigenous healing and psychotherapeutic practice, Gogo Thembelihle Mashigo explores how therapies of Umoya (Spirit) offer a process based on a multiplicity of being, beyond the individual. Berenice Meintjies shares vignettes from the work of Sinani, an organisation engaged with psychosocial interventions for recovery from violence, to describe the dilemmas of decolonizing and contextualizing healing approaches in community-based trauma interventions.

Global Indigenous Psychologies: Movement toward healing historical harms

Panelists: Prof Malose Langa, Dr Mmatshilo Motsei and Mr Anele Siswana
Chair: Prof Peace Kiguwa

Abstract 

There is an imperative for a psychology of healing and self-determination that considers the ubiquitous nature of trauma today. The marginalization of Indigenous approaches to trauma and healing remains a critical site to interrogate disconnections to rich traditions and practices of healing. In this panel dialogue, three speakers engage these dis/connections, with a view to reimagining healing, trauma’s complex hold on communities, and imaginations for a healing psychology. There is a recognition that healing is itself a complex process of renewal, recovery, and refusal; that addressing psycho-social effects of neoliberal economies that are complicit in the erosion of communities remains fundamental to wellbeing, and that trauma as disconnection is political in form. The question of how we engage these entanglements is the concern of the speakers in the panel. Speaking from their respective practices as practitioners, activists and scholars, the speakers address themselves to the questions of trauma, community building, and healing. In turning to indigenous psychologies, they also address alternate rich traditions and approaches to healing that psychology as profession may do well to attend to.