I’m given to making outrageous statements and then I have to come in and explain myself. The nature of the blog post – it’s immediate, but it’s chaotic.
This is definitely Chapter Four in the making.
Why are Europeans clueless in Australia? In a nutshell, this country is all about Nature Spirit. And Europeans are Christians. And thus have been taught to view the natural world and its shenanigans as evil, basically. Something to triumph over.
(I remember seeing large marble statues honouring the white male hero who was standing over the slain nature demons, in Paris. Don’t expect details, as I don’t remember any – but feelings of discomfort and irritation, I do remember.)
And white people can be suspicious of black people for that reason as well as just being generally badly behaved about viewing anything different as valid.
I know, it’s not your fault. It’s what you (we) have been carefully taught. White is right, anything else is gobbledygook.
Glorious thing though, European people are clever, and find out for themselves eventually. For example, recent discoveries in cosmic physics are proving the ‘wild’ claims of Aborigines about mysterious universal energies. Aborigines would describe it in their own way, in stories which speak from their experience. But while these things (black holes, dark energy, dark matter, to name the ones I remember off hand) are a huge discovery in white land, black land has known about since forever and have been working with these ‘mysterious’ energies since forever.
Archeologists are doing their bit for the blackfella too. When I was a teenager, Aboriginal people had been here 10,000 years. So we were told. That date has gradually been pushed back in my lifetime. I expect it to keep going back.
We were here from the beginning, the old fellas say.
I believe them.