Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following article contains the images and names of people who have died.
Psychotherapist Dianne Blayney passed away in June 2021 but her profound respect for Indigenous culture and healing practice will live on, through her generous bequest to PACFA’s College of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healing Practices (CATSIHP).
Dianne, who was based in Como, NSW, had a longstanding friendship with the late Yuin Elder Uncle Max Harrison, who also passed away in 2021.
Dianne’s partner Paul Best said she had also left a bequest to the Back to Country organisation, established by Uncle Max Harrison and his family, that runs camps connecting young Yuin people with Country and teaching them Law.
‘Dianne was a humanitarian. She cared a lot about other people and she got a lot from caring about other people, as well as simple pleasures like going for a swim in the ocean and bushwalking,’ Paul said.
Paul said that Uncle Max would take Dianne and colleagues on spiritual walks to Mt Gulaga, a mountain sacred to the Yuin People of the south coast region of NSW. Uncle Max described the significance of the ‘giant stone beings’ on top of Gulaga in his book My People’s Dreaming.
Dianne, who was a meditation practitioner, involved Uncle Max in her Master’s research on dissociative states among experienced meditators, which she presented at PACFA’s Working with Trauma Conference in 2019 in her talk ‘Dissociation and meditation: possibilities and pitfalls’. Uncle Max also spoke at the conference.
Dianne’s research supervisor was psychoanalyst Dr Kate Briggs, who at the time was lecturing at the Australian College of Counselling & Psychotherapy and more recently was a member of PACFA’s College of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healing Practices Leadership Group.
‘Dianne’s understanding of the depth of Uncle Max’s knowledge was not to be under-estimated. He registered something about her practice that no-one else did,’ Dr Briggs said.
PACFA established the College of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healing Practices in 2019 as a response to a call from Bundjalung and Jiman woman Emeritus Professor Judy Atkinson to take action to address the trauma of generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and walk together towards healing.
In November 2021, PACFA and CATSIHP launched the Indigenous Healing Practice Training Standards, which both recognise Indigenous Healing Practice and provide a structure for development.
Dianne’s bequest is for research into Indigenous Healing Practices that can be related and/or integrated into mainstream therapy. The research would embrace experiences with Indigenous elders on country so that the innate spirituality of the land can be used for intergenerational healing of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.
Dianne Blayney and the late Yuin Elder Uncle Max Harrison