Tamworth Aboriginal healing gathering for Gomeroi women, photos

It’s a return to traditional healing on country, women’s business where traumas are confronted and culture practiced.

The feeling these women get from a return to country is indescribable, Gomeroi woman Dorothy Tighe said.

“It heals better than what white man’s medication can heal you,” she said.

“We are not properly adapted to western society, their medicines, their foods, their way of speaking – virtually everything when you’se [sic] come into our land and try to embed it into us, it doesn’t work.

Want more local news? Sign up to receive our daily editor’s picks to your inbox

“That’s why we have a lot of sicknesses and why we have to go back to mother nature, back to our land so we can regain and have the strength to carry on.”

Organised by Rosalie Armstrong, Yinarr is a cultural healing gathering that takes place once a year.

The women come together, share traditional knowledge, cultural expertise and practice their language.

Read also:

“Our culture is the essence of who we are and ultimately it’s what will heal us, not sitting in a counselling room with white walls and talking to psychologists in there,” Ms Armstrong said,

“When we reconnect to the land we are reconnecting back to spirit, soul, that’s what will heal us.”

The women weave, dance and sing, but they also carry out traditional rituals known only to the Gomeroi tribe.

“There are some things we cannot talk about that are sacred to us as Gomeroi women,” Ms Armstrong said.

Yinarr is a grassroots cultural healing and storytelling gathering for Gomeroi women held on September 22 and 23 at Boobera Lagoon.