Ian Chater, Indigenous Liaisons:Experiences, Dreams, Synchronicities on the Journey of Individuation
September 18, 2024 at 12:47AM
Program presented to the C.G. Jung Club of Orange County on September 15, 2024. Program web page at https://ift.tt/tMQTXxw
Over the last fifteen years, Ian Chater has been working in the remote deserts of the Kimberley region of North Western Australia as an Indigenous Liaison; this is the actual title of his occupation. The nature of his role has him treading the liminal and transcendent realms as an intermediary and communicative link between the white and black worlds; a unique and rare role that has allowed him to spend deep time immersed with the numerous language groups of the region.
This presentation will look at the day to day experiences in his role as a liaison between black and white Australia and explain the nature of the tasks at hand, with an objective and empathetic gaze at the Indigenous people he works with – a populace beset with all the travails of a people losing their elders, myths and culture – and how a reckoning with a personal shadow can also echo a national one. A special focus of this talk is “whiffs and hints” as he looks back, with the generous gift of hindsight, to totems on the pole of his personal individuation, showing how this journey was actually set in motion a long time ago. A number of important dreams will be discussed as well as some powerful synchronicities that not only link his personal contact with Indigenous Australians directly to the call of Jungian analysis, but to the very Centre for Depth Psychology itself.
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