by Alyce Barry –
I recently learned, by way of a short YouTube video, of an organization called Authentic Community Training (ACT) in Melbourne, Australia, which has been running healing programs for Aboriginal men and young men since 2005.
The video, which is about four minutes long, was shot by Colin Moore, who was in the United States on a Churchill Fellowship to learn facilitation skills to take back to his work with Aboriginal peoples. The video was Colin’s first step toward making a short film about his Fellowship travels to the US, Canada, and the UK.
While in the US, Colin attended the Shadow Work® Advanced Facilitator Training, and the video features several of his fellow trainees as well as Certified Facilitator Judge Mattocks, Jr., who was on staff, and Shadow Work® founder Cliff Barry, who was leading the training with Vicki Woodard.
ACT is owned by Colin and his business partner, Mark Williams. Here’s another video, about six minutes long, featuring brief interviews with men and young men who have worked with ACT, as well as with staffers Colin and Mark.
Colin and Mark plan to get certified as Shadow Work® Coaches and Group Facilitators, offer introduction evenings and weekend workshops and work with individuals and businesses.
A Churchill Fellowship is a grant from a memorial trust created in 1965 in honor of Sir Winston Churchill. A Fellowship is granted to a person with acknowledged leadership skills and funds an individually designed plan of overseas travel, for up to eight weeks, to acquire further knowledge in their chosen field that will upon their return make a “real contribution to Australian society.”
Mark received a Churchill Fellowship two years earlier to study Aboriginal men’s healing, and he used it to visit the Cree Nation of Edmonton, Alberta, where he met John Crier and others doing Shadow Work® in Hobbema. Mark first became aware of Shadow Work® some years earlier when he attended a Shadow Work® weekend led by Cliff Barry and Mary Ellen Whalen. Colin, who is from the Yuin Nation, received a 2011/12 Fellowship to study “Traditonal and Contemporary Healing Methods which Support a Transition to Adulthood” for young Aboriginal people.
Colin and Mark are developing a business offering Aboriginal experience travel tours to run alongside the work ACT is currently doing. The goal is to use profits from the business to help fund healing and cultural programs and personal growth workshops such as Shadow Work®. Colin and Mark will initiate a cultural exchange by taking a group of Aboriginals to Canada to experience a Sundance ceremony, and to Navajo communities in New Mexico and Arizona. The outbound side of the business has begun, and the inbound side will include sharing Aboriginal culture with others. While sacred ceremonies of the Aboriginal people are generally considered too sacred for outsiders to be admitted, the new travel tours will feature celebrations such as the Corroboree and visits to sacred sites where Aboriginal guides can share the wisdom of the Aboriginal people.
Alyce Barry is a Certified Shadow Work® Group Facilitator and Coach in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. She is the author of Practically Shameless, on Amazon.com’s Bestseller list of books about Jungian psychology for more than a year. The book is available in paperback and on audio CD and as an e-book.
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