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Books > Health, Home & Family > Family & health > Coping with personal problems > Coping with drug & alcohol abuse
Benelong's Haven was the first residential alcohol and drug
treatment program controlled and operated by an Aboriginal
Australian. It was established by Val Bryant in 1974 in the Sydney
suburb of Marrickville, before moving to the small township of
Kinchela Creek on the mid-north coast of New South Wales three
years later. The centre is one example of the different approaches
Aboriginal people have developed to deal with the problem of drug
and alcohol abuse in their communities, where people who have
experienced problems with alcohol and drug use can leave their
existing environment and come to a different place. Anthropologist
Richard Chenhall first visited Benelong's Haven for two weeks in
late 1997. At the invitation of Val Bryant, he returned later for
an extended period of fieldwork, observing and participating in the
centre's activities and getting to know staff and residents. There
have been few studies that reflect Aboriginal social life in larger
cities or in institutional settings. ""Benelong's Haven""
represents an attempt to examine, at the ethnographic level, the
different ways in which individuals are shaped by, and interact
within, the larger structures and social institutions that surround
them. More specifically it documents an instance of Australian
Aboriginal people trying to achieve change in their lives.
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