Tuesday, 13 May 2014
Monday, 12 May 2014
DARK EMU - Bruce Pascoe interview with Fran Kelley (with comment)
'Dark Emu'
challenges modern re-tellings of early Aboriginal history
The centuries-old notion that pre-European
Aboriginal people were hunter-gatherers who did not farm the land they occupied
is under further challenge. A new book by award winning indigenous author Bruce
Pascoe draws on the diaries of early explorers to provide evidence that
Aboriginal people across the continent were sowing, harvesting, irrigating and
storing. He argues that systems of food production and land
management have been blatantly understated in modern re-tellings of early
Aboriginal history.
[My transcript...mb]
Fran Kelley: At
school, the little that a lot of us did learn
about the First Australians is that they were hunter-gatherers, nomads, people
who moved around the landscape. But that centuries-old notion that the First
Australians didn’t farm the land they occupied is now being challenged by a
growing body of work from historians [It has actually been
challenged in academia since at least 1995, with Robert Lawlor’s
Voices of the First Day, more
recently in Steven Strong’s essay: The First Race: Out-of-Australia, Not Africa! but definitely now
needs to be included in Australian schools’ curricula]. The latest is a
new book from award-winning Indigenous author Bruce Pascoe; he draws on the
diaries of early explorers to provide evidence that Aboriginal people across
the continent were sowing, harvesting, irrigating and storing. In the book called “Dark Emu” Bruce argues
that systems of food production and land management have been blatantly
understated in modern re-telling of early Aboriginal history. Bruce Pascoe
joins us from East Gippsland this morning – Bruce, welcome to RN Breakfast.
Bruce Pascoe: Thank you very much.
FK: Bruce, let’s start with what our history
books do teach us about the
Aboriginal population that were here before white man came – does it only
really suggest the hunter-gatherer lifestyle?
BP: I haven’t read
any books that suggest that it wasn’t a hunter-gatherer society, so I was
surprised about six years ago when I read a book by Rupert Gerritsen which was
talking in terms of agriculture as being conducted by Aboriginal people and I’m
very indebted to the book that he wrote, which had to be published in England
incidentally, because he opened up a whole new area. I was googling for
‘Aboriginal agriculture’ when I found the book because Id kept on finding
references to large villages which were there to take advantage of grain fields
that had been sown and irrigated, and I thought, that doesn’t sound like
hunter-gathering to me.
FK: …large villages.
So tell us what you have unearthed, what kind of agriculture and land
management practices you have found through your research were being undertaken
by Aboriginal Australians.
BP: Well, when I’d
finished writing my previous book Convincing
Ground, I was surprised to have this extra body of material that I’d been
gathering about agriculture so I thought, this is going to be a surprise to a
lot of Australian people, so how am I going to explain this, and the best
explanation of all was through the words of the Australian explorers [Indeed – first-hand accounts throughout history are the most
viscerally compelling and accurate window into the past we have],because
everyone loves a good explorer and they’re revered in Australian history, so
all I did was read the explorers’ diaries, and if you read those diaries with
an expectation that you’re going to find something about Aboriginal land use,
you’ll find it.
FK: And what did you
find, what did they describe?
BP: Well Charles
Sturt was nearly dead in what later became known as ‘Sturt’s Stony Desert’, and
he climbed over one last sand hill … his horses could only walk in a straight
line, they all stumbled down this sand hill and were greeted by 400 Aboriginal
people who offered them roast duck and cake and well water. [What a great scene that would be in the epic movie that
should be made!]
FK: Cake! [Not fluffy sponge cake type cake Fran – more like dense, nutrient-rich
grain biscuit]
BP: Cake made from
the grain that those people had been harvesting in the ephemeral water-bed of
the Warburton. It was an extraordinary occasion – Sturt talks at great length
about the resources of the people and how they were manipulating the land to
grow this grain.
FK: So there you have
evidence that Indigenous Australians were growing grain, they were making
flour, they were processing food, presumably they were storing that food, you
made reference already to large villages…as you say, flying in the face of the
hunter-gatherer tag. But I noticed something you said there; you said if you
read these diaries ‘with an expectation’ of this kind of land use. So your
thesis in the book, I think, is that the hunter-gatherer tag was, to quote you,
a ‘convenient lie promulgated by colonisers who ignored the possibility of
prior Indigenous possession of the land ’.
So what your point is, your saying that it suited us to think of them
and categorise them as hunter-gatherers because that meant they weren’t putting
down roots of this land that the European colonisers were going to take. Is
that your point?
BP: It is exactly
that, that the Europeans were usurping those agricultural lands for their
cattle and sheep. In Victoria, the sheep came off the boats from Tasmania and
walked straight to the yam paddocks and ate them out, and then they would go to
another yam paddock and eat it out …that destroyed the Aboriginal economy in a
matter of months – yam doesn’t recover from the way sheep eat it because they
crop it very close to the ground. So that just disappeared. I was a far greater
problem for Aboriginal people than smallpox or war or any of the things that
impacted on them… simply the loss of food.
FK: But what evidence
do you have, Bruce, to support this notion that it was a deliberate lie, if you
like, promulgated by the colonisers, rather than a failure of observation?
BP: Look I don’t know
if it was a deliberate lie, but
people like Sturt and Mitchell were very well-meaning people but they had it in
their mind that the Aboriginal people were going to be displaced by the
Europeans. Sturt was buying up land in his newly discovered journeys, his
brother was doing the same – Mitchell was a town planner at heart and was
dreaming up all these wonderful towns that were going to be built for Europeans
on the lands of Aboriginal people. Even though they had real affection for some
of the aspects for Aboriginal life, and real admiration of their building
skills and agricultural skills, they had it in their mind that this was going
to have to fall aside in the path of European people; so they may not have been
deliberately misleading the public as
determined that the European way of life would win.
FK: There is also
proof of a nomadic lifestyle within Indigenous Australians – we know that
existed, we know that because of the sacred sites and some of the ceremonies
meant tracking through, across country, through to sacred sites for different
ceremonies – we know that because of things like Songlines …so we know there
was that lifestyle as well.
BP: Yeah, it was a complicated lifestyle - it wasn’t easy to classify. People were
moving around the country – not all people were sedentary; Lake Condah may have
been, Brewarrina may have been, but in other parts of the country, people would
have had at least two residences to take advantage of seasonal crops and also
to visit country. And that is still going on in Australia, even down in
southern NSW where I live, the sacred sites are still being visited, still
being respected [Does Bruce know about Bulahdelah,
central NSW? Contact with info] So there was movement going on in
Australia then as it is now, but at the same time, agricultural practice was
common.
FK: Bruce, it’s clear
from your book and the work you’ve done in Dark Emu, you think the curriculum,
really, we need to change what we’re teaching about Aboriginal Australians and
about the way they were living in this country before European colonisation.
And you also question why the world flocks to see something like the Stonehenge
structures in England but there’s little interest in what is considered to be
the oldest human constructions on Earth, the 40,000 year old stone fish traps
at Brewarrina in NSW. Why do you think there’s no great appreciation of
Australia’s ancient heritage? […that has led to the
mass destruction of much priceless heritage…]
BP: Well I would hate
to think that it is a deliberate refusal to engage with Aboriginal Australia or
to engage with Aboriginal achievement, but I’m really at a loss to explain why
something as remarkable as the Brewarrina fish trap has never received much
attention in the country. As you said, Stonehenge is everyone’s favourite,
people go to Angkor Watt in SE Asia, almost like a religious ritual, and yet we
have these things in Australia, and there are many of them, and they are
unvisited. If it was in Texas you’d have a Greyhound bus going there every
quarter of an hour… I don’t know what it is but we need to have a different
conversation with Aboriginal Australia in this country and we have to start in the schools. [Great - I will draw up a suggestion for a plan to
augmented curriculum forthwith and submit it for the consideration of whomever
it may concern]
And don’t read one book… you know, please read Dark Emu, but
don’t read it alone. Read across a range of writers and make up your own mind,
because I believe the evidence is there.
FK: Alright Bruce, thanks very much for joining us.
BP: Good onya – thank
you very much Fran.
FK: Bruce Pascoe is an
Indigenous author, his latest book Dark Emu is published by Magabala Books, and
if you happen to live in Melbourne and you want to hear more from Bruce, he’ll
be a Readings Bookshop in Carlton on the 22nd April.
[There would have been fish traps
all along the Burnett River! Evidence was inundated by 30 or more dams, but after the
de-commissioning of the Paradise Dam, some may be still there. Find Pictures of fish-trap looking rocks
in rocky river beds and 1930’s Picture of a few Aboriginal children with dozens
of lungfish displayed in front of them – how did they catch so many if not in a
fish trap?]
THE COMMON WAYS - How restoring the network of the world's ancient trade routes with eco-cultural tourism can unite humanity, enhance biodiversity and bring about lasting peace
This
is my entry in the Sydney Writers Competition: The Competition - If you were writing a book, what would you call the book and what would
be the first sentence for the book?
THE COMMON WAYS - How restoring the network of the world's ancient trade routes with eco-cultural tourism can unite humanity, enhance biodiversity and bring about lasting peace.
Pictures: 1. ‘First
Footprints’ map that shows the Dreaming Tracks
2. ‘Tracker’ magazine map of an existing eco-cultural tourism enterprise called The Bundian Way that could be replicated across Australia, and in fact across the world; 3. Internet sourced map of the ancient opium routes across Asia
This is a real book by the way that I’ve been wanting to write since I began Indigenous Studies at SCU a few years ago – it is going to be my thesis - I will try and enlist famous walkers such as Robert Macfarlane, author of many exceptional nature books such as The Old Ways, and the global Travellers Network, to make this a reality.
ONE SMALL STEP - Tony Abbott's polar opposite
ABC Insiders - Talking Pictures 04/05/2014
It seems like the Prime Minister is trying to channel JFK, and AJA is no JFK let's say: "Ask not what your budget can do for you, but what you can do for your budget."
CATHY WILCOX: Look he likes to borrow ideas that may or may not have worked in the past, and I think he sends them out kind of randomly, saying people will remember that quote.
I’ve got a great example of Abbott paraphrasing (and misquoting) another famous saying, Neil Armstrong’s “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”, which also suggested that I must be AJA’s polar opposite - just at the very moment he was standing on a podium in a press conference announcing his new war planes acquisition costing $12 billion, and saying: TONY ABBOTT (during press conference): One small step for me, a giant step for mankind …and talking about how the world is a dangerous place and we need to be prepared for war, I was writing the same well-known phrase, except the giant leap I envisaged was not towards inevitable conflict, but towards ecological restoration and social harmony …. $12 billion in fact would probably pay for all of the suggestions below and eco-social restoration back to resilience, health and optimum biodiversity over the entire continent.
[Maureen Brannan 905 Wilsons Road CLOYNA via MURGON Q 4605 ph: 0427710523]
(Posted 12.00pm 27.4.14)
Thank
you for entering the Sydney Writers' Festival competition. Successful
applicants will be notified by the email address and/or phone number supplied.
THE COMMON WAYS - How restoring the network of the world's ancient trade routes with eco-cultural tourism can unite humanity, enhance biodiversity and bring about lasting peace.
If
I told you that it would take just one small step upon an ancestor’s pathway
for mankind to make one giant leap, transform Western civilisation and achieve
enduring peace and harmony with each other and all living things; that
identifying, protecting, buffering and augmenting every last remnant of native
vegetation then linking them up with wildlife corridors in a continental web,
provides the best hope for us and the rest of biodiversity to survive climate
change and extreme weather events; that simply by realigning political
boundaries to harmonise with Aboriginal tribal boundaries, Australians could
establish a legal (after signing a Treaty with each Sovereign First Nation)
two-tier government system, composed of a federal administration and Autonomous
Regional Councils based on the major water catchments; that we could have
‘stopped the boats’ not by spending billions of dollars on further punishing
already anxiety-ridden and often traumatised people, but by setting up
well-resourced regional processing centres for asylum seekers in strategic
places in South East Asia to determine those in greatest need of protection,
then offering family groups resettlement in CERES-based
permaculture villages of around 1000 situated near volunteer host towns that
they will eventually integrate into, thus invigorating our society as well;
that if governments stopped
telling Aborigines what to do and started asking them what they want and need
to address their social problems then resourcing them, not with money but with
the goods and services they need, be it supplying homeland communities with the
latest renewable energy technologies, practical and inexpensive earth building
programs, or anything else that will help with their reconstruction efforts,
they could very quickly restore health and harmony in their communities, as
they were before ‘we’ decimated their cultures, social structures and skilfully
managed diversity of bush foods and medicines with assimilationist policies and
extensive habitat destruction; that if governments actually VALUED the
priceless legacy of humanity's longest, most sophisticated comprehensive
continuum of environmental scientific and metaphysical knowledge, instead of
demeaning ‘welfare’, they could pay all Indigenous people who wished to restore
these 80,000+ year knowledge streams a fair
living wage for this work and the consequent eco-restoration of their
homelands that would follow, including re-establishment of their network
of Songlines, trade routes and migration trails that are mostly still extant
within the stock route system which overlaid them (the most ancient trade routes in the world, thus taking us back to
the beginning of homo sapiens and this sentence) then the horrific escalation
of Aboriginal youth suicide could be halted or even stopped completely, as in
the Native American experience, would you believe me?
[Maureen Brannan 905 Wilsons Road CLOYNA via MURGON Q 4605 ph:
0427710523]
-------------------------------------o0o--------------------------------------
2. ‘Tracker’ magazine map of an existing eco-cultural tourism enterprise called The Bundian Way that could be replicated across Australia, and in fact across the world; 3. Internet sourced map of the ancient opium routes across Asia
This is a real book by the way that I’ve been wanting to write since I began Indigenous Studies at SCU a few years ago – it is going to be my thesis - I will try and enlist famous walkers such as Robert Macfarlane, author of many exceptional nature books such as The Old Ways, and the global Travellers Network, to make this a reality.
-----------------------o0o------------------------------
ONE SMALL STEP - Tony Abbott's polar opposite
ABC Insiders - Talking Pictures 04/05/2014
It seems like the Prime Minister is trying to channel JFK, and AJA is no JFK let's say: "Ask not what your budget can do for you, but what you can do for your budget."
CATHY WILCOX: Look he likes to borrow ideas that may or may not have worked in the past, and I think he sends them out kind of randomly, saying people will remember that quote.
I’ve got a great example of Abbott paraphrasing (and misquoting) another famous saying, Neil Armstrong’s “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”, which also suggested that I must be AJA’s polar opposite - just at the very moment he was standing on a podium in a press conference announcing his new war planes acquisition costing $12 billion, and saying: TONY ABBOTT (during press conference): One small step for me, a giant step for mankind …and talking about how the world is a dangerous place and we need to be prepared for war, I was writing the same well-known phrase, except the giant leap I envisaged was not towards inevitable conflict, but towards ecological restoration and social harmony …. $12 billion in fact would probably pay for all of the suggestions below and eco-social restoration back to resilience, health and optimum biodiversity over the entire continent.
[Maureen Brannan 905 Wilsons Road CLOYNA via MURGON Q 4605 ph: 0427710523]
Tuesday, 11 February 2014
"Come together, right now, over me...."
"Come together, right now, over
me...."
When John Lennon wrote this,
alluding to his call for people everywhere to join with him in pursuit of Peace
on Earth in our time, he may have been referring to himself (having the ego that
he did, and at the time The Beatles certainly were bigger than Jesus) but in reality,
‘me’ can be anything at all.
Humans have always come
together, formed alliances and coalesced around a multitude of shared interests,
charismatic leaders or ideologies. Millions of people are united under a
dynastic monarch or tyrant or president. Smaller groups who share common
interests and ideals unite politically in parties, corporately in profit-making
organisations, and socially in churches, sporting clubs, volunteer groups, and
charities. 'Me' could also be a family crest or a pattern representing a tribal
group. Once people came together at ceremonial sites to worship the life-giving
sun under the symbol of the crux disimulata (the swastika), appropriated
in more recent times when it united people in the evil polarity of goodness and
light.
So it doesn’t matters too much
what unites people, only that we do ‘come together’, that we look after
each other and work together peacefully and co-operatively in stable social
arrangements, whatever form that may take. In fact 'co-operation' is a
biological imperative over which we have little control, a force of nature, a
powerful urge that drives most of Earth’s species (mammals in particular)
ensuring their survival through adversity and the vagaries of nature, into
future generations. And it has driven humanity since before we even became human
around two million years ago. We may believe we are superior, but we cannot deny
we are just another species of animal living in the body of the planet and
completely dependent on its ecological foundations. We may have evolved in a
different way to other creatures but we are all bound by the same Laws of Nature
and if we transgress those laws (as in destroying our own habitat) we can expect
no mercy from our indifferent Earth Mother who provides our only home in a vast,
empty universe. But what makes our species unique is that we can, by our own
hands, bring down other species with us.
And so the call-out in our
time must be for all of us inhabitants of Planet Earth, to "come together" and
strive to end wars, end the relentless destruction and pollution of our
life-support systems, and transition our societies back into the
ecologically-sound lifestyles that we, as indigenous peoples, have lived for
tens of thousands of years. As Robert Graves warned; “We must retrace our steps
or perish.”
After the last old ‘digger’
has passed, whose mates suffered and died under our current flag, and when
today’s diggers and the general population no longer identify so much with our
colonial past, consider this unifying symbol as a new flag for Australia, one
that spans and unites the entire continent. What do you get if you take the states star
(2 tier government our inevitable future, a reduced federal administration and a parliament of the heads of Regional Governments with boundaries based on the major
water catchments) and the Union Jack, off the Australian flag? (Respectfully of
course, acknowledging their roles in our history.) You get the constellation of
Crux, a new flag, and just people living under it, helping each other through
thick and thin, a mostly decent mob just trying to do the right thing and have a
laugh while we’re doing it – all equal, all standing together under the stars of
the Southern Cross. All we need for this to become a reality is the
support of each other… and love.
……...............o0o......................
"When they analyse the semantics consistently through mythology and
theology of words like ‘love’ and ‘god’ they find the common theme is UNION,
that we just want to be connected to something higher – that can be another
person, that could be God that could be a relationship with Nature, it could
even be a relationship with West Ham United – I think the important thing is to
have the central tenet of your being love, compassion and tolerance – everyone
knows ." Russell Brand
Deady video by the kids of Manmoyi community
Published on
Jan 31, 2014
The kids of Manmoyi community
wanted to encourage everyone to eat better food and the best food of all is
"Bush Tucker" The song is written with their fathers and uncles who are part of
the Nabarlek Band. Promoting good health can be fun.
REAL education for Aboriginal kids
Yuendumu School
and Sporting Academy has provided the template for all Aboriginal schools – and
every remote community should have a
swimming pool! Nota Bene Tony Abbott,
Prime Minister for Indigenous People – your army of truancy officers won’t work
anywhere near as good as this principal’s methods! These kids will become fluent
and knowledgeable in their own cultures, and later on it will be very easy for
them to learn English and Western knowledges too if they wish – they will
eventually surpass their Western peers with
ease.
---------------------------------------------
Desert school: teaching
in the N.T.
Can you hear the
collective groan, or squeals of excitement, across Australia this week as
millions of students head back to school? In certain parts of the country,
there's just one bell that rings in class for miles and miles.
In many parts of the
Northern Territory, students attend schools like this - remote schools. One of
which is Yuendumu School, located 300 km northwest of Alice Springs. The
school is headed up by principal Kylie Johnston and potentially famous among
locals for it’s 'no school, no pool' policy.
[My
transcript…mb]
Natasha Mitchell: Today we’re taking you up the Tanami Road,
into the heart of the Tanami desert, 300 kms north of Alice Springs. Kylie
Johnston joins us on the line – she’s the principal of Yuendumu
school.
[Begins talking to
Kylie about the recent rains brining abundant growth]
NM: Take us inside the school – when the gates
open, who will be pouring in them?
Kylie Johnston: O my goodness – I’m going to have children
from pre-school, right up to year 11, I’m going to have children who are very,
very excited to be back at school [tells anecdote about kids calling out to her
- they call her KJ - “When school start?”] which makes me very happy
too.
NM: Multi-age classrooms – do you have all those
children in one class sometimes?
KJ: No, we’ve got our students broken up into
various class levels, we have our pre-school class, our transition year one
class, we have our 2’s 3’s 4’2 and 5’s split up across the primary area, and
then we have our year 6’s and the older students split up into the secondary
area, and they are in separate male-female class
groupings.
NM: Why is that?
KJ: We found that it’s much more culturally
appropriate for us to be structuring our secondary school in that way. We
consult with community on a daily basis and we were given feedback that that is
the preferred way of structuring secondary students in a culturally appropriate
way, especially in regards to how Warlpiri culture is structured and how men and
women work together …
NM: So it’s cultural and its
curriculum.
KJ: Yes – it’s very hard for me to put into
words because it’s not my culture, its Warlpiri culture, but we at the school
very much consult with community how best to operate for this community, so when
I’m given feedback, I take that on board and try to implement that in the
school. [Background - Enjoyed sharing Indigenous peoples’ knowledge and culture
– I’ve learnt so much – it’s been very, very rewarding – the relationships I’ve
made with indigenous people will stay with me for ever. I’ve been here 5 years
and have had an extremely positive experience that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed and I
learn something new about Indigenous culture every
day.]
NM: You’re in Warlpiri country, Kylie, and one
of the really defining aspects of Yuendumu School is your bilingual approach in
the classroom – I think it’s called the two-way learning program. Can you
describe for us how that works in practical ways in the classroom from the day
those kids enter preschool?
KJ:
We have what’s described as a bi-literacy program, so students when they
come in and start engaging in pre-school speak Warlpiri – they have minimal
English language skills. So what that looks like in the classroom is that we
provide them with Warlpiri teachers and assistant teachers to work with in
regards to translation and also in regards to them learning to read and write in
Warlpiri. [Excellent! Best practice for all remote schools] We have a bi-lingual resource development
unit that creates texts and resources for the teachers to be able to implement
that program with the students. That program doesn’t just happen in pre-school;
it also happens in early childhood and primary school classrooms and is very
much facilitated by our Indigenous teaching staff.
NM: So is the Warlpiri language taught first and
English is next? Are we thinking of Warlpiri as the first language of the kids
at the school? [Sort of negates the ridiculous Naplan
Test that shouldn’t apply to traditionally living Aboriginal kids – ‘closing the
gap’ in that instance would mean all non-Indigenous kids learning about the
culture of the tribal people on whose land they are living.]
KJ: Warlpiri is their first spoken language – yes –
however, we provide them with the opportunity to learn to read and write in
Warlpiri and in English. So the program starts in preschool, where of course the
majority of the times things are translated because they are so little and have
minimal English skills; however, we do provide them with as much opportunity as
we can to engage in both Warlpiri and English.
NM: Why is that so important at Yuendumu
particularly? Because there’s been lots of debate about this in the territory
and shifting approaches over the years and edicts from government and all that
stuff – but for your school, your experience, why is this seen to be so
important, what are the main markers of its success?
KJ: We deem it to be important because it’s
something that the people of the community have communicated to us that they
would like to be happening in our school. Warlpiri language and culture is very
valued, of course, so we try to work with community as closely as we can and
that’s why we incorporate it.
NM: And do you see it working in the classroom,
in terms of the development of literacy and growth of those
children?
KJ: We are seeing growth in our children and I
think that is due to a number of different things that we do at the school but
especially the bi-literacy program does support that
growth.
NM: One of the big challenges for remote schools
is attendance – in some schools its very low and it might have just 50% of the
local kids attending the school and that’s a real challenge for teachers and
certainly it’s been a focus for the federal government. Is that a problem for
your school? How have you approached this kids coming or going depending on say
funeral business, or special business… How do you navigate that as a teacher?
KJ: We focus on providing positive opportunities
for engagement at school; we have various programs in place to students so that
when they’re coming to school they’re having a positive experience but that
their educational outcomes are also positive for them.
[I’ve heard that some remote schools have
changed their term times to align them with the wet season when the roads are
cut – such adaptation should be adopted for all remote schools – they should
have flexibility to design their own school times and their own curriculum –
hardly fair to expect Aboriginal kids to come up to Western standards when the
non-Indigenous kids don’t have to learn an Aboriginal language and
culture!]
NM: What are some of the approaches that you’ve
taken to encourage kids to attend school? One of the approaches that we’re
utilising, and a lot of people have had input into this, is to implementing our
Yuendumu sporting academy… Now this is a big deal isn’t
it.
KJ: It is a big deal, it’s very important to us
– as I’ve said, lots of different people have worked towards this happening.
Sports are an integral part of this community and we wanted to include that in
our school, particularly targeting our secondary
students.
NM: And also you have a ‘no school, no pool’
policy too I gather – how does that work?
KJ: Basically when the students come to school
we give them a swimming band at the end of the day and they are able to go and
swim at the local pool after school for no charge.
NM: Big carrot stick? [she means, Big
carrot…]
KJ: Very big carrot stick! The students really
enjoy the pool, and like I was saying previously regarding sport, it’s an
integral part of the community and very important to the
children.
NM: What has working there as a teacher brought
you personally?
KJ: Natasha, I’ve been here for five and a half
years and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time here thus far, and I’ll be spending
more time here in the future and I look forward to continuing my journey of learning about Indigenous
culture here in Yuendumu.
NM: It’s one of the unique
opportunities…
KJ: Yes it is and one that I appreciate and am
very grateful for.
NM: That’s Kylie Johnston, she is principal of
Yuendumu School in the Northern Territory.
This map of Songlines is from the book ‘First
Footprints’, by Scott Cane:
"The enormity and complexity of the religious geography across arid Australia is indicated by the representation of desert dreaming, or Tjukurrpa, tracks. There are many hundreds more tracks and stories than are represented here and each provided a pathway across the desert, between countries, linking waterholes with reliable living areas and places of religious importance. These highways of subsistence, ceremony and society conditioned life in one of the hardest landscapes on Earth. Armed with this oral tradition, a desert nomad could survive anywhere, at almost any time over the last 45,000 years of settlement in the desert."The Dreaming stories for the tracks are: Sand Goanna, Water Snake, Thorny Devil, Fire/Bustard, Two Men, Two (other) Men, Eagle, Moon. Native Cat, Man and Kangaroo, Scrubby Kangaroo and Magpie, Red Kangaroo, Echidna, Sand Goanna, Emu, Women (Fire), Many Women, Sweet Potato, Kingfisher, Water, Desert Finch
When
you consider that these are just the ‘freeways’ and that there are hundreds,
thousands more shorter connecting stretches, the map of the overlay of Songlines
and trade routes starts to look like fine lace! When the First Nations sign
their treaties, I hope they will be calling to have their Songlines registered
free access, like the stock routes.
[Maureen Brannan 905 Wilsons Road CLOYNA via MURGON Q 4605 ph:
0427710523]
(Some further related emails and info below)
I’ve acquired a bit more evidence to back the theory that homo erectus
evolved into homo sapiens on this continent first, not Africa – homo erectus
spread over the whole globe, being very intelligent hominids who had tools and
sea-going craft – my own theory is that it could also be a case of co-evolution,
that it is the inevitable predictive unfolding of the human DNA potential that
was facilitated by the psychotropic plants of the region - the hominids evolved
into homo sapiens on the different continents at more or less the same time.
Terence McKenna was adamant that humans evolved from apes when we came out of
the forest and started ranging upright over grasslands and began eating the
‘magic mushrooms’ that the herbivores’ dung produced, the psychotropic qualities
of which caused organelles in the brain to activate, causing “utterances” and
eventually language – the Ayahuasca vine in the Amazon, mescaline of Mexico, the
amanita mushrooms and mistletoe of the Celts, etc etc, all helped to evolve the
human brain. Could that psychotropic ‘evolver’ on this continent be pituri?* (more on DMT and wattles below)
Anyway, I came across the word ‘piggiebillah’ first in the book ‘Aranda
Boy’ where it means echidna, and then noticed it in the Euahlayi people’s
language. It is identical, you could say, to the Old English word ‘piggie’
meaning little pig. Now, as these Aboriginal languages are a minimum of 80,000
years old, and English is just a few thousand years, and as the word is so
specific to a small pig-like animal, it MUST have come from Australia. The sound
‘Ng’ is another example of human languages coming ‘Out of Australia’, being
found in Aboriginal languages tens of thousands of years before it travelled to
Indonesia and beyond.
I’ve also recently read Worimi Dates confidential statement about the
sacredness of Boolah Dillah (The Alum Mountain, Bulahdelah - lots more news coming up soon about getting the
unholy Bulahdelah Bypass moved) He called Mother Earth ‘Puri’ -
the core of ‘pure’ in Latin is ‘purus’, and originally Greek ‘pur’ purify with
fire, but maybe the true original word was Aboriginal – Puri – Mother Earth, the
great cleanser and transmuter of all decay through her terrestrial and water
channels into healthy ecosystems; Puri -
One of six Holiest Hindu cities; Puri -
Royal Temple compound in Bali; Ceremonially making pure;
Purim, festival that celebrates good overcoming
evil, just as the Earth always overcomes ‘evil’ and death by purifying within
her body and then resurrecting – which according to Worimi is the specific
Dreaming of the holy mountain Boolah Dillah!
I’m
after a scholarship for regional correspondence study
for an eventual thesis linking all the world’s
ancient trade routes – got the Aboriginal Songlines mostly mapped – as a means
of bringing about intimate, physical and spiritual planetary connectivity again – of
achieving union with almighty Nature. I want to set up a website with it for the
Meridian Wave, that’s a self-embedding roll of energy outlined in the piece
below. The website would follow the wave in real time and co-ordinate the midday
observance with each participating town and city. The
thesis will result in an exhibition of a papier-mâché landscape of the
Aboriginal Songlines into Asia – (recently heard of a similar school project
mapping landscape by laying down the topography with layers of cardboard
according to elevation)
An
old email also refers:
Sent:
Wednesday, November 23, 2011 10:03 AM
Cc:
Koori Mail ; National Indigenous Times ; Alanna Moore ; ATE - Claire Reid ; ATE Buddhist Council ; ATE- Robin Chapple WA Govt ; ATE-Ausanthrop Resources ; Aurukun Council ; Cape York Institute ; Bob Irwin ; Black/Green Solidarity List ; Father Bob Foundation ; Frances Bodkin D’harawal elder ; Frances Bodkin 2 ; Greens Bob Brown ; Greens Sen Christine Milne ; Jens Korff - Creative Spirits
Australia ; Larissa Behrendt ; Marcia Langton ; Malcolm Carrall ; Michael Anderson ; Robert Corowa ; Roma - Professor Ian F. Hancock ; Tracker - Chris Graham ; WGAR ; Cherbourg Aboriginal Shire Council ; Cherbourg Cultural Precinct
Subject:
Latin 'crude' compared to Aboriginal languages
Extract
from NIT Big Read 16.11.11
“The
Australian Aborigines have no trace of a written language , yet their spoken
language is very complex.” Klaatsch [That’s
because the written word is ‘dead’ – it carries no authority, you need
vibrations to affect the brain and in any case any written language is far too
‘crude’ to express 100,000 years of cultural evolution – they use holistic
Iconography, infinitely richer and more complex as it expresses the
understanding of entire concepts...m]
‘Complex’
is an understatement. I have had the honour and pleasure of listening to
Ramindjeri Elders when speaking in their traditional tongue, and in particular
witnessed the discussion that took place when determining the correct
pronunciation of one word. Close to twenty minutes passed before a consensus was
reached. The rules of grammar, context association and sundry considerations
were so detailed and ‘complex’ it made Latin seem like a cruder form of
Pidgin English. [Many
more incredible facts and figures – eg a hand-held pebble chopper found by Angel
John Gallard in the Snowy Mountains was dated as being possible over 100,000
years old. In ‘Bonyi Bonyi’ there is an account of a human skeleton that was
discovered in a well being dug by pioneers in the foothills of the Bunya
Mountains in the 1880’s - they said the human body was so fragile it turned to
dust not long after it was exposed – the well diggers however recorded the exact
depth where it was found so any archaeologist worth their salt should be able to
work out just when that person was alive – Burnum Burnum says the Bunya Lands
were the first meeting place of mankind, so maybe up to 80,000.]
Word
comparisons include manda for hand and Latin manus; German
wasser is repeated in ‘arra’ warra’ and ‘larra’; strinking
resemblance in Latin ‘pina’ and ‘bina’ for a leaf and feather.
Central Australian ‘kaputa’ for head is very similar to the Latin
‘caput’ The Greeks and the Aborigines have the same word for 'liver’:
‘hepar’ in Greek and ‘jepar’ in a Queensland tribe. The Latin
‘una’ and ‘duo’ similar to “unnar” and “djakala”. [I
found another cross-cultural similarity in my own name, Maureen - it is derived
from the Biblical name Miriam which means 'drop in the ocean' - I noticed the
name of one of the Torres Strait islands is Meriam Mir, which is, literally, a
drop in the ocean. Variation on the word 'milk' is also universal across
languages. NEXT: Pattern Thinking and more examples of the mind-boggling
subtlety, nuance and sophistication of Aboriginal languages and
cultures.]
books.google.com.au/books?isbn=1465533842
It might be the track of a piggiebillah porcupine. This
track was followed to a hollow log; then came the difficulty, how to get it out,
for porcupines cling tightly with ...
Pituri, intoxicant
Until Europeans arrived, the Aborigines
used few drugs. The main one was pituri from the shrub Duboisia hopwoodii
(7,19,37). The active ingredient is nicotine, the same alkaloid as in tobacco.
"Pituri" is also used more broadly to include wild tobacco weed. The
chemistry of pituri differs widely (19,37). In the Northern Territory, the drug
is actually non-nicotine, four times more toxic than nicotine. Aborigines there
prefer tobacco weed.
Aborigines used pituri to inspire
mirth, to increase stamina and courage before warfare or firewalks. Pituri can
induce trances, thus accessing the Dreamtime, that is psychic and mystical
experiences. Nicotine is also commonly used in American shamanism (38).
Pituri also refers to the dried
leaves and stems of the shrub. Aborigines smoke "quid", a mixture of
leaves with ash from the acacia bush, thus increasing drug potency (19). Leaves
are placed behind the ear, or on other body parts. Nicotine is absorbed through
the skin (37). Nicotine in quid -three times more concentrated than in
cigarettes - produces stupor and catalepsy, a trancelike pain-free state
(19,37).
Pituri is hoarded and the shrub
localities kept secret. It grows over much of Western Queensland, Eastern
Northern Territory and Northwestern NSW, where it was widely traded (1,37).
Pituri can induce trances, thus
accessing the Dreamtime, that is, psychic and mystical experiences.
Reading List:
1) Aiston, G. (1937). The Aboriginal narcotic plant pitcheri [pituri].
Oceania, 7,372-377.
entheology.com/plants/acacia-spp-acacia-tree/
by K Edley
Many species of acacia, particularly Australian ones, contain DMT
and other ... TRADITIONAL USES: Numerous acacia species have
been used for medicine ... In Australia, aboriginal tribes use
various species of native Acacia to create a fine ...
Traditionally these snuffs are administered by forcefully blowing a mixture of
powdered ... Archeological evidence of the use of the 5-MeO-DMT
snuffs reach back ... the snuff as Acacia niopo (later called
Mimosa acaciaoides by R. Schomburgk), .... stealth, they have assumed a
place of primacy in aboriginal religious beliefs.
aiprinc.org/aborig.asp
Only recently have Aborigines written or recommended books that
accurately portray ... This is the medicine man, man of high degree,
clever man or shaman (11,13). .... The precious foliage: A study
of the Aboriginal psychoactive drug pituri.
Narcotics
The ash of several Acacia species was used to mix with the leaves of Duboisia hopwoodii to
produce pituri. This was a highly valued trade item and the ash of A. igulata and A. hakeoides
were amongst the plants utilised.
Man has a poor understanding of life. He
mistakes knowledge for wisdom. He tries to unveil the holy secrets of our
Father, the Great Spirit. He attempts to impose
his laws and ways on Mother Earth. Even though he, himself,
is a part of nature, he chooses to disregard, and ignore it, for the sake of
his own immediate gain. But the laws of nature
are far stronger than those of mankind…
Chief White Cloud. The Circle of life.
Chief White Cloud. The Circle of life.
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