4 Workshops called GrowingUpWhitefellas

Join Zohl de Ishtar, starting on Friday 3 May to commence a conversation about how we 'can become worthy allies to the Custodians of this vast ancient Continent, we whose culture/s come from other lands, must strive to re-discover and reclaim the gentle goodness that resonates in the depths of all cultures – our own included! In reclaiming the fullest dimensions of our own cultural heritage/s, in acknowledging our weaknesses, and honouring our strengths, we begin forging informed and empowered alliances with First Nations Peoples.

Zohl will draw on 50 years of her own experiences of GrowingUpWhitefella –first growing herself and being grown-up, by a whole community of Aboriginal women, children and men on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia’s Kimberley.

She is inspired to pass on some of that knowledge, given she has coached over 450 visiting Kartiya women who, in small groups, who joined her in supporting the Elders, first as Marlpa (carers), and then as Tilitja (Culture Workers) under Zohl’s caring tutelage.

This is a unique opportunity. Zohl aims to have a number of workshops, but the first will be on Friday 3 May at 6.30pm for a 7.00pm start.

Zohl lived with the Elders on their Women’s Law Ground from 1991 to 2019. Now she wants to share what she learnt about Whitefella culture (her own and others’) and about some of the “Outside” things that happened because of the interaction between First Nations and Kartiya (Stranger/s) on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia’s Kimberley.

As an Irish-Australian social justice advocate, and applied social researcher, Dr Zohl de Ishtar has lived with and campaigned alongside First Nations women and Indigenous Pacific women, and their families and communities, since 1973. Most recently, Zohl spent 20 years living with the Parntarny (Women Elders) of Wirrimanu (in the Kimberley’s Great Sandy Desert). The Elders asked her to assist them to form the Kapululangu Aboriginal Women’s Law and Culture Centre which operated on Two-Way Cultural Collaboration drawing on both Yapa (First Nations people) and Kartiya (Whitefella and NewComer) cultures.

Workshop dates Friday 3 May, Friday 31 May, Friday 19 July, 23 August 2024.