custodians introduction

CUSTODIANS WELCOME
to the Karen People of Burma

This project was fostered by Peter Haffenden, the Director, and resulted in meeting the project’s aim of addressing the more subtle issues of settlement with a sense of place, a sense of land and a sharing of spiritual values between the local Aboriginal community and representatives of a newly arrived group of migrants, the Karen people of Burma who reside in the Western Suburbs of Melbourne.

Peter Haffenden invited Aboriginal consultant Reg Blow to discuss a project titled, “Looking at the Land – Custodians Welcome”. The project was to focus on a group of new arrivals to Australia who are residents in the western suburbs. A Steering committee was setup to consider this project as a proposal that enables new settlers to Melbourne’s Western Suburbs to settle into the Australian life style with as little trauma as possible.

The committee comprised representatives of the Melbourne’s Living Museum of the West, the Inner West Region Migrant Resource Centre and the Maribyrnong City Council.

Reg Blow suggested the target group be an Indigenous group from Burma, the Karen
community residing in the Western Suburbs. Reg believed that this group would be an easy group to work with in terms of this project as he already had formed an association with the karen community whom he found to relate well to the spirituality of Aboriginal people. Reg enlisted the support of another Aboriginal person Daphne Milward primariliy to handle the female side of consultations with the target group, in the case of gender bias or any other cultural factor which may hinder the operational process of the project.