Two Suicide Bereavement Narratives of Australian Aboriginal Women

Abstract

Two qualitative studies were undertaken utilizing narrative inquiry methodology to explore the bereavement experience following a family member's suicide death. In the first study 10 volunteer participants were interviewed about the suicide death of a parent. In the second study, which heard the grief narratives of 18 family members speaking of 20 suicide deaths. In both of these studies, the narrative of an Australian Aboriginal was told. In the first study into the suicide-bereavement experiences of adults who lost a parent through suicide, the granddaughter of an Aboriginal woman spoke of the life-long guilt she felt about her grandmother's death. The participant in this narrative was raised since birth by her grandparents, never knowing that she was not their child, but was the child of their daughter. After the suicide death of her grandmother, the participant learnt of the circumstances of her birth and how she had been kept in ignorance about her relationship with her birth mother, who she had been told was her sister. This new knowledge coming at the time of her shock and grief when her grandmother chose to die complicated the grief of this then 18-year-old girl. In the second study, which was to explore the suicide narratives of bereaved family members of every class of relatedness to the deceased. An Australian Aboriginal woman told her story of the suicide of her partner of four years, for which she never had an explanation. This participant also lost her first-born son to suicide following a marriage breakdown and long standing depression and alcoholism after he suffered an acquired brain injury. In speaking of her family background story, this participant told how she was handed over by her mother to various family members to be raised when she was about 7 years old. From this time throughout her childhood she lived with various maternal aunts and grew up thinking of her cousins as siblings. Of these cousins, 14 had died by suicide. Both these narratives have a twist to the 'stolen children' history in Aboriginal families, as the children were not stolen by either government or church authorities as happened in the 'stolen children' cases, but actually removed and kept away from their birth mothers by other family members. In this presentation the research that has been undertaken previously into Aboriginal family culture in respect to the raising of children will inform those attending the presentation how these situations arose in these particular families.