BUSSIN Healing

BUSSIN Healing is a pilot project organised by Dr Geetha Reddy, Ope Olusoga, Dr Sathya Baanu Jeevanba and Suntosh Pillay. The project focuses on understanding how traumatic experiences and ways of surviving them in the past continue to manifest in the ways we relate to one another today.

Baanu and Suntosh are counselling and clinical psychologists who have created activities that can be conducted with BUSSIN research collectives in Malaysia, South Africa and Brazil to help understand the breadth of issues that can (re)surface when we do the deep work of engaging with colonial pasts and its present manifestations. The intention is to find ways to heal, collectively, such that we limit the legacies of colonialism in our lives today.

In two online meetings, BUSSIN collective members from South Africa, Malaysia and Brazil discussed strategies that can be undertaken to overcome conflict that can take place when people with different working styles, experiences and expertise come together. Dr James de Moura also offered examples of healing practices carried out by Quilombola communities in Brazil, allowing the collective to reflect on how healing can take place during the research process.