Dr Stephanie Gilbert

Dr Stephanie Gilbert is exploring Aboriginality - both within a tertiary education framework and in relation to the Stolen Generations and how it may impact on future generations. 

A background in social work has added a distinctive lens to Stephanie’s academic research, providing a nuanced insight to an important cultural study. Stephanie’s experience in the field of adoption is brought to the fore when she’s exploring the forced removals, fostering and adoption of Aboriginal children of the Stolen Generations and how it has impacted on people practicing Aboriginality.

Stephanie’s sharply focussed postgraduate research has helped inform her ongoing research, exploring into how ‘child protection’ policies have impacted on the development of a sense of identity.

An honours degree from North Queensland’s James Cook University saw Stephanie examine the Stolen Generations through the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families from the late 19^th century to the mid 20^th century.

For her Masters in Women’s Studies, Stephanie explored a gendered angle on child removals: “There’s a particular way that these removals played out with the female experience and I wanted to make sure that the story was told .”

Then, when undertaking her PhD, Stephanie investigated how people who were removed from their Aboriginal families of origin chose to relate to their Indigenous heritage.

This is a topic that still fuels her research to this day. Stephanie’s current focus is more particularly body dysphoria, and she’s interested in testing out whether this notion is experienced by other Indigenous peoples around the globe.

The shadow memory and communal wounds

Stephanie’s interest in epigenetics was sharpened whilst attending a conference at Stanford on Soul Wounds. “It explored the concept that a community can experience a communal wound from an event. I heard Dr Michael Skinner speak at this conference on “Ancestoral Ghosts in Your Genome” and it spoke to a concept that I was already thinking about.”

“You’ll have an individual who actually experiences something that they’ll then pass on to their children. My question is: what is the connection between the body and identity as part of their inheritance?”

Research indicates that the damage caused by forced removals in the past is still felt by present generations, which is the focus of Stephanie’s latest research exploring ‘soul wounds’ and epigenetics. “It’s thought that up to seven generations can be impacted upon by what’s happened to the generations before. This has been explored through research through the Jewish populations where people are still experiencing trauma from generations earlier,” Stephanie explains.

“I’m keen to explore what gets implanted in the genome and passed on to the next generations,” Stephanie says.

Stephanie has also been inspired by research where there was a realisation that trauma in early life can actually change the shape of the brain. With the Stolen Generation, there is a sense of disconnect between the body and the identity which forms part of the psyche through the assimilation policies. “Body dysphoria in children of the Stolen Generation is strong, with Aboriginal children being told they’re white – but others seeing them as brown,” Stephanie explains.

“The problem is that there’s no easy way to negotiate Aboriginality in public – I think it’s considered a ‘political act’. If you’re not taught the Aboriginal ways of being and don’t have a connection to country can you consider yourself Aboriginal? There’s a disparity between people who get to have these things and those who don’t.”

A global perspective on an Indigenous issue

Having immersed herself in this research in Australia, Stephanie’s next step is to see what she can learn from other cultures.

In March 2017, Stephanie was awarded a prestigious Fulbright Indigenous Scholarship which she’ll use to examine the possibility that trauma can become embedded in people’s bodies in such a way that it can be transmitted across generations. “There’s an idea of a shadow memory which can exist in up to seven generations,” Stephanie says. “But can you get to a point where it doesn’t express?”

Stephanie will be exploring the dichotomy between children being raised as white, and the disconnect between what they’re told they are and what they see. “What if a Stolen Generations person were to look down at themselves, see brown skin and feel nothing but disgust?” Stephanie asks. “This has happened because many had no exposure or experience of Aboriginal culture or family and were taught that they were not Aboriginal at all.”

With her Fulbright scholarship, Stephanie will visit the US and Canada to compare and contrast Indigenous peoples such as Native Americans and the Indigenous Canadian people to see if a similar experience exists. “I’ll be looking at these issues from an archived and a living perspective. The archives won’t answer everything, but will hopefully reveal similarities of experience. We know that in the US the cutting of hair played a major role in identity, which wasn’t the case in Australia. But what are the similarity of experiences in knowing who you are?”

Aboriginality and academia

This raises the question, and highlights the second stream of Stephanie’s work – how can we help students and academics support the multiplicity of circumstances around Aboriginality. “What do universities do to provide support for this multiplicity? That’s why I have this interest. We’re challenged all the time to understand how Aboriginality can operate – but do we understand it? There’s a misconception that Aboriginality is about what you look like, but it’s also about what you feel like. There’s a multiplicity of circumstances that people find themselves in and we need to engage with that.”

When Stephanie first came to the University of Newcastle it was to improve the entry for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to higher education through the Yapug pathway to University. “Back then Yapug was medicine-only, but now it’s housed at Birabahn and proudly gives Indigenous students entry into all sorts of studies,” Stephanie explains.

Over her time at UON, Stephanie’s seen students graduate across many undergraduate degrees, PhD or Masters by research degrees. “Indigenous peoples have long been underrepresented in the higher education system and my goal is to make a space in institutions for Indigenous people in knowledge and ways of learning. And to ultimately lift participation numbers.”

As coordinator of Teaching Quality and Development at The Wollotuka Institute, Stephanie manages to balance her research and academic workload astutely. “You’ve just got to focus on what’s important and allow yourself to push some things to the side,” she says.

With her Fulbright Indigenous Scholarship, Stephanie will bring an even greater global focus to an issue that’s still poorly understood by many. It’s giving a voice to those who were silenced in the Stolen Generation and will bring a new perspective on an important, ongoing issue in Australia. It’s a tough conversation – but one we need to have.