PREFACE
Australia was invaded by ‘white colonists’ in 1788. Within a year of the arrival of the ‘First Fleet’, Aborigines were victims of the ‘white man’s illnesses’. Pandemics silently laid them waste. They, who had been here for at least 65,000 years, were given no respect, their lands were embezzled to graze the settlers’ sheep and cattle. When they objected, they commonly were slaughtered. As they died, much of their indigenous knowledge died with them. Then we stole their children, denied those children the advantages of growing up ‘on country’, denied them contact with their kin, knowledge of their arts, folklore and skills, the advantages of learning two languages. They must only – could only – speak English. Their culture was treated with utter dishonour and contempt.
THE INDIGENOUS CULTURE
It is unsurprising that there are no legends of ‘arriving’. 50,000 years, probably 65,000 years of occupation of Australia is much, much to long a duration to maintain any oral communal memory of ‘a previous place’, or a ‘journey’. Nor was a journey of any significance. What was significant was Aboriginal presence in Australia, developing such a congruent adaptation that they were one with the land, its flora and fauna. Their plant and animal husbandry subtle, optimal – and to the ‘white man’ – completely inobvious. Yet when white explorers came across it in its pristine, Aboriginal manicured state, they described it as ‘a garden’. (As was the first explorer description of the Canberra area.)
Their community relations were civil. There was no social stratification – apart from the recognition that with age came knowledge, experience and optimal ‘judgment’ – advice to be respected and adopted. The role of the ‘elders’ was acknowledged, effective – and necessary. A society without a written language and records depend entirely on ‘community memory’, as summarized in the memory store of information, experience, judgment and wisdom of its ‘elders’. The technology – the physical constructs – of the Aborigines were simple, useful and practical. Portable, or abstracted from the environment ‘on site’ with simple labour, then returned to nature when no longer relevant, or the group chose to travel on.
It is this simple living, no wastage, no pollution, that we must relearn – if homo sapiens is to continue in the long term – for the long term – to live as a species on planet earth. If human life – indeed all life – on planet earth is to continue.
ORALITY – THE TECHNIQUE OF ALLUSION
What of illiterate human cultures – without a ‘written word’? Were they really that ‘primitive’? Written words provide permanency of message – but only for as long as the medium lasts, for as long as the skill of reading that writing lasts. Yet the advantages of literacy are obvious. Many people can read one message. Over time – indeed human generations – one document has a permanence an oral statement cannot match. When copied and distributed through multiple media, many more literate people can read it. The media can be diversified, evolve. Recorded messages are now ‘broadcast’ all over the world, stored ‘verbatim’ for generations.
However, many cultures without a written language – including Indigenous Australians – established means, far more sophisticated and comprehensive than we commonly understand – to record, document – then disburse information of significance and importance to their community and culture. Skills of voice and ear, hand and eye, The medium the human brain, the human memory. The memory of individual humans, and collectively of the community. Specifically enhancing human memory skills from infancy, over at least the first three decades, to store increasingly vast volumes of information – in a manner that provided for ease of and prompt recall, with implicit ongoing classification and analysis. With recognition, retention and appropriate analysis and re-classification of changed or new events. With relevant confidentiality. With repetitious sharing and re-statement, so the information continued in community memory.
The ink was an underlying remembered algorithm, commonly the memory of the physical environment of the individual, the community. Experienced – remembered – as a journey, a route through that environment. Inexorably physically retraced over and over again, as the person lived and moved in that environment. Specific locations became points of reference, information to be remembered was simply ‘tacked on’ – associated with – these specific locations. It enabled sequential classification and association of data. Numbers of related items of importance could be ‘tacked onto’ a specific location. Observed location details became more sophisticated, increased in number, as the necessary memory association and specificity increased.
As the child – then the adolescent – grew, these conceptual journeys grew longer, the memory trail extended, more details in each section would be observed, identified and committed to memory. Byways would be travelled – committed to memory. These trails have now, in English, been named ‘Songlines’ – for good reason. The pathways, the associated data, were commonly sung – and danced. This music, these physical activities further enhanced memory retention. Adjoining songlines – the journeys through neighbouring communities – would be heard, committed to memory – the geographic knowledge of the individual, the community, would be further enhanced. These additional songlines were physically experienced as individuals, families and communities travelled through neighbouring areas – greeted as friends.
A person’s physical environment was the ink that virtually associated ever increasing stores of data. Vast storehouses of relevant knowledge were committed to memory in this manner.
AUSTRALIA’S TROUBLED HISTORY SINCE “THE COMING OF THE WHITE MAN”
The Aboriginal landscape – at least through European eyes – always appeared understated. A human society without buildings, without roads, only primitive weapons, otherwise without any evident technology – even without clothes, as other cultures had come to wear them. A population that lived dispersed. Not concentrated in cities, not even villages – without the disadvantages of congestion. Nothing of the squalid tenements of Dickens’ world, the unhealthy – disgusting emanations of human faeces and horse manure – that lay on the soil and roads, contaminating the water that pooled in ponds and soaks when it rained. Contaminating wells of water, both vegetable and flesh foods – the smoke above so thick one could not even see the sun. Recurring infections, boils, impetigo, staphylococcus, tetanus – a simple wound could kill you. The not so occasional epidemics: smallpox, chickenpox, measles, typhus, cholera, whooping cough… The First Fleet would bring all of these.
It also brought monarchy, at the very time the American colonies were evicting the mad regime of George the Third. Australia was to replace these colonies. Australia would empty British gaols, providing the convicts with a ‘British lifestyle’ the ‘mother country’ could no longer supply. To achieve that goal, Aborigines would be thoughtlessly, unthinkingly – but inevitably – displaced. Some of them would be ‘converted’ from their heathen ways to ‘Christianity’, be retrained as subjects in the British lifestyle. The rest would die out. That elimination initially assisted with strychnine-laced flour, assassination, – even genocide – the theft and re-acculturation of their children – and the diseases the convicts brought with them.
Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders had no formal recognition in ‘The Australian Constitution’ until 1967, even though their union in and with the Australian ‘country’ has been the intrinsic ‘Australian constitution’ for at least 65,000 years. By far the longest duration and most integral ‘communal constitution’ of any land and people – of any country – on planet earth. The implicit colonial ‘constitution’ established in 1788, that excluded Indigenous Australians, was imported an infinitesimal – by comparison – 230 years ago. The explicit ‘Australian Constitution’ only came into existence in 1901. Can we immigrants be proud of it?
THE ULURU “STATEMENT FROM THE HEART”
Fifty years on from the Constitutional Amendment that finally, in 1967, formally acknowledged Australia’s Indigenous population, an assembly of Aboriginals met at Uluru, requesting a formal ‘voice’. The Uluru Statement from the Heart speaks for itself.
We, gathered at the 2017 National Constitutional Convention, coming from all points of the southern sky, make this statement from the heart:
Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands, and possessed it under our own laws and customs. This our ancestors did, according to the reckoning of our culture, from the Creation, according to the common law from ‘time immemorial’, and according to science more than 60,000 years ago.
This sovereignty is a spiritual notion: the ancestral tie between the land, or ‘mother nature’, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who were born therefrom, remain attached thereto, and must one day return thither to be united with our ancestors. This link is the basis of the ownership of the soil, or better, of sovereignty. It has never been ceded or extinguished, and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown.
How could it be otherwise? That peoples possessed a land for sixty millennia and this sacred link disappears from world history in merely the last two hundred years?
With substantive constitutional change and structural reform, we believe this ancient sovereignty can shine through as a fuller expression of Australia’s nationhood.
Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are aliened from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future.
These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is the torment of our powerlessness.
We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country.
We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.
Makarrata is the culmination of our agenda: the coming together after a struggle. It captures our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better future for our children based on justice and self-determination.
We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.
In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard. We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.
ANTHONY MURRAY GLEESON’S ANALYSIS
Anthony Murray Gleeson addressed and critiqued the ‘Uluru Statement from the Heart’ in his recent publication: “RECOGNITION IN KEEPING WITH THE CONSTITUTION – a worthwhile project”. He wrote… (I have highlighted a critical sentence.)
“As a practical matter, the process of design proposed by the Joint Select Committee will produce an outcome only if the Indigenous people who contribute to the process have already achieved, and demonstrated to the Australian public, a substantial level of representational competence. The process itself will display Indigenous representation and decision-making in action. Australians are unlikely to support constitutional change unless there is a substantial degree of Indigenous consensus in favour of the proposed change. Establishing and demonstrating that consensus, to Parliament and to the general public, will itself provide a preview of the representative body that will follow. Establishing the legitimacy of the proposed representative body to speak for Indigenous people will be an essential part of the design process.”
He stated its ‘representational competence’ needed to be demonstrated by the Aboriginal community itself.
This can happen. It has happened. The 2017 National Constitutional Convention at Uluru was itself the essence of what its Statement asked for. A ‘representative body’ with ‘competence’. The Aboriginal community has already, independently, synthesised this entity, as an extension of the traditional governance of Aboriginal communities – of Indigenous ‘mobs’[1]. Independent of technical Australian Constitutional protocol and governance. An autonomous representative entity, inherent in its Indigenous ‘culture’, that undertakes its own definition, development and operation.
The formal meeting at Uluru was a continuation in this tradition of the indigenous Aboriginal ‘Councils of Elders’, restructured in a contemporaneous presentation, a size appropriate to its trans-Australian representation and its communal goals.
In this embodiment, it will become a unique, independent – increasingly authoritative and potent Aboriginal Indigenous ‘voice’. Enunciating relevant, lucid and persuasive opinions. For as long as necessary, an exceptional, independent, licit voice. Citing its identity, chronicling Aboriginal history, characterizing Indigenous culture and mores, asserting the advantages in the Australian natural environment of its native way of life – compared to the agriculture, animal husbandry and human lifestyle that was introduced in 1788. Enumerating, detailing the degradations that have occurred in Australia from that introduction.
[1] Mob’ is a word Aborigines have deliberately adopted from its initial Australian English expatriate usage – of implicit contempt and scornful contumely. The absence of crops, clothes, even rudimentary buildings, had meant the descriptor ‘settlement’ or ‘tribe’ was unwarranted. Aborigines came to understand the insult, and so adopted our word ‘mob’ as their own, to express their scorn for the abominable way settlers had treated their people, culture and languages.
THE NATURAL INDIGENOUS LIFE
There should now be recognition that indigenous ‘bush tucker’ conservation and utilization, ‘country’ land and forestry maintenance, and the simplicity of human life and habitation – from a knowledge base of more than 50,000 years of Aboriginal Australian existence – was a far more natural and optimal utilization of its resources than the introduced animal husbandry and agriculture the First Fleet brought from England. Indigenous food provided a more than adequate human diet – vegetable and meat – utilizing skills that minimized the ravages of fire, flood and drought. We now need these skills to limit the encroaching damage of climate change – to conserve Australian flora and fauna. As well as optimise our contemporaneous practice of introduced animal husbandry and agriculture. Even for sheep and cattle, native Australian grasses are more drought resistant, and continue to survive after the introduced species disappear. Then recover more rapidly when rain returns. Appropriate stock reduction and pasture rotation enables a residual herd to continue much longer through a drought – as occurs naturally with Australian fauna. Their biological adaptations meant native animal populations recovered rapidly in times of flood and rain – yet endured, despite diminishing in number – when stressed by drought. The Australian hopping marsupials had the speed to escape flood and fire. This pace – and its low energy requirement – enables a far wider range, and therefore wider creature knowledge and use of diverse areas of food resource and circumstances of safety.
We must learn from the first Australian cultures to create and maintain respect and congeniality in our communities, simplicity, equity and value in our human interactions and commerce. Importantly – to maintain and enhance the richness and diversity of our natural ‘country’: the land, its flora and fauna. Technology must always – and only – protect and enhance, not demean, damage nor destroy the biological constructs that undergird our human existence, the vast complexity and integrity of living things.
For at least – at the very least – the next 65,000 years of human habitation on planet earth.
That may appear to be an extravagant timeline, an irrelevant expectation – but it is not. Apart from premature extinctions, almost all precipitated by wanton human actions, almost every species on planet earth has continued for much longer than 65,000 years from its first appearance. We can consider biological timescales. Even astronomical timescales. They are not irrelevant. There is no reason why homo sapiens cannot continue indefinitely as a species on planet earth – unless it is untrue to its name. What is it that distinguishes us from the rest of the biologic world? It is human intelligence and language. Importantly, what distinguished the Australian Aboriginal from the colonists? Was it a subtly superior human knowledge, experience, judgement and wisdom relating to the unique Australian ecosystem?
An environmentally based ‘common-sense’?
What a tragedy there was never – there never has been – a frank, intelligent, analytic, definitive – yet congenial – meeting of minds. Captain Cook and his officer complement having a discussion with a ‘council of elders’ anywhere along the east coast of Australia. Captain Arthur Phillip and his senior officers, on landing at Sydney Cove. Each describing their own culture to the other. Each respecting the human existence of the other’s community, where it existed. Searching to understand the values of its culture. The one not imposing a threat to the other. Certainly there was one culture that could enunciate its technological prowess, but would have to acknowledge its costs. The other could, and would, identify the values, the health, the wealth and the subtle sophistication of their ‘country’, and its human communities. And having been honestly informed of the human degradation and diseases endemic in ‘cities’, the unfulfillment, misfortune and misery of human ‘class structure’ (that had led to the voyage of the First Fleet) the horrible human history of more than ten known millenia of internecine warfare and slaughter – the Aborigines would have simply asked – why bring your people here? Why bring your way of life?
Before even we begin to unravel the truth of the colonists’ subjugation and decimation of the human society of Australia’s first peoples, we need to honestly examine the human society that produced ‘convicts’. Citizens that England was unable to support, nor treat at their home with care, compassion nor dignity. Why were they brought out here?
Can we now, with an honest humility, envision that discussion?
STRUCTURES OF COMMUNITY AND LEADERSHIP
Every rational human community respects its ‘elders’. Before a human community develops the facility of ‘writing records’ and storing them, the only record it has of its past is in the memory of its people. The older those individuals, the earlier the start of their actual experience and their knowledge base. But these can, and have, listened to the stories of the past as told to them – when they were young – by their ‘elders’. And so, generation by generation, a record of the past is created and maintained, particularly in the memory of its ‘elders’. Elders have ‘experience’ that illuminates their discussions, their collective considerations, the wisdom of a remembered consensus. This congruity – or the rationale where there are disagreements – provides the ‘raison d’etre’ for their formal role in the community as ‘a council of elders’. A social construct that implicitly forms when any social grouping of Aborigines assembles, as implicitly – even explicitly – those elders consider the health and wellbeing of their community. As with so much of Aboriginal lore, such discussion was understated. It did not need to be formally identified and recognised. But ‘the council’ assembled, deliberated, then voiced its opinions – as and when needed.
Indigenous Australians now, like the indigenous Americans – even the North American colonists of two hundred and fifty years ago – can and should create their own independent voice. As ‘First Australians’ that independent voice assembled at Uluru in 2017. There was, there is, no need for any permission. And I suggest it is better First Australians do not wait – not even ask – for formal Australian government recognition. Instead they simply continue – and expand – this archetypal Australian Indigenous assembly, as the Aboriginal precedent to the present formal Australian Parliament. With ‘sub-assemblies’ to represent individual Indigenous areas, as do Australia’s States and Territories – and municipalities. By the authority invested in their own ‘constitution’. In their own communities, in ‘country’ – since Aborigines have lived in it, inextricably part of it, for more than 50,000 years.
They may offer, in some future time (when Australia is finally contemplating a release from its anomalous monarchical subjection, to transit to the status and structure of a true ‘republic’) that its Indigenous Parliament consider incorporating the Australian Commonwealth Constitutional Government into its past and contemporaneous governance of the co-existing Australian indigenous communities. Captain Cook’s claim of occupation and sovereignty in 1770, the anomalous, expedient imposition of monarchical administration on Australia and its peoples at the arrival of the ‘First Fleet’, its technical, ‘constitutional’ imposition at Confederation in 1901 – were all a foreign and anachronistic anomaly to the first peoples’ culture – and the land – of Australia. Aborigines had lived together within the essence of ‘representational self-government’ for more than 50,000 years. An ‘Australian Republic’ reasonably should be a continuation of that original, communal, democratic manner of Indigenous social organization – governance by a ‘council of elders’.
From their modern appearance in 2017, representative assemblies can convene at different levels, in different locations in Australia. They can be hosted by Australian Universities. Medieval monarchs chose to travel their courts around their realms, to maintain their contact with their nobles and their subjects. The nobility held court, each in its own area. But here in Australia there should be no hereditary king, queen nor nobility. Instead, a council of elders administering a representational republic – a democracy. The contemporaneous Australian government is simply an extension and continuation of Australian Indigenous societal administration.
TWO VIEWS OF GOVERNANCE
There are two vies of governance, and the essential difference is simple – and profound. The difference between authority and governance by one person – or by the consensus of a representative committee. The leadership of a tribe by a chieftain – or of a ‘mob’ by its Aboriginal elders. Chieftain leadership commonly becomes hereditary, but that is not an essential attribute. Nevertheless dynastic, monarchic families have existed in human polity since before the Egyptian Pharaohs. As have societal stratifications – not uncommonly resulting in devastating internecine, inter-community wars. To maintain authority, chieftains (Donald Trump was among them) must divide the breadth of their human society into friends and enemies. In America – Red States and Blue States. In American international relations – ‘America First’. The rest of the world (including Australia) being an inferior, subordinate, secondary consideration.
A chief’s associates derive and maintain their political power from the chief, who ‘makes or breaks’ them. They associate with his friends. They contest their joint enemies – not the chief. The reputations, the resources, the lives, finally the communities of ‘the opposition’ may be attacked. Such were Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler. But then, as demonstrated over millennia of human history, friends can become enemies, enemies become friends. Then what was all the enmity about? We can now ask that question about Germans, ‘North Vietnamese’, even ‘past enemy’ Afghans.
Not uncommonly a dynasty continues – or is replaced by another one.
A representative council, in its diversity, can represent everyone. Differences and disputes can be negotiated in civil discourse within the council – and among the community. A council of elders may elect a leader, but his or her authority remains the choice of the council – not the other way around. He or she can – or should be able to – be dismissed at any moment’s notice. There is no ‘set term’. To our knowledge, Aboriginal communities have not had formal ‘chieftains’ at their head. No formal term. No dynastic control. Nor has there been evident social stratification. Open inter-community warfare has not been a defining feature of the Australian Aboriginal community for the last 50,000 years.
Australia’s contemporary parliamentary government is a very advantageous evolution from the monarchic paradigm of two centuries ago. And now blindingly obvious, it is superior to the present American constitutional model that was in development contemporaneously with the arrival of the ‘First fleet’ in 1788. Australia now a constitutionally powerful ‘council’, only technically subordinate to the monarch, with its clear differentiation between technical authority and practical power. But does Australia need a monarch? Can we create an Australian constitutional republic, with no conceptual, technical nor historical link to any foreign government, foreign manner of government, or other country? One that enshrines within itself the concept, precedent and power of the Australian Indigenous ‘Council of Elders’? Its intrinsic authority a societal precept, independent of each and any of its members? An ‘intrinsic Constitution of Australia’ – of all Australia – unique to the continent and the peoples of Australia? From their very beginning?
I would see the initial focus of contemporary indigenous assemblies as being within Australia, and then by communication and association with indigenous communities of other countries, to the preservation and enhancement of the ‘culture of country’ in each. Of the cultivation and preservation of the natural environment, an optimization of its flora and fauna, that – among many other things – can again limit and prevent bushfires. Relevant, credible and increasingly authoritative discussions that present Aboriginal perspectives and culture that are historically authentic and contemporaneously valuable.
Credible and rational foci of interest and activity will provide vision and incentive that will give Aboriginals pride in their history, who they are and what they can be. Having realised this perspective, accomplished this confidence and stature, they can then welcome the rest of us, who agree with these values, to join their ranks. Into the communities of the first, the original Australians. A different perspective of ‘assimilation’.
THE ROLE OF AUSTRALIA’S UNIVERSITIES
There has been a contemporaneous, practical problem. COVID 19. I would like to place it in the past, as I trust that shortly, the past is where that problem will be. (Not the virus, but its problem.) COVID 19 – more particularly COVID 21 – has been a particular problem for the Indigenous community. It highlights a particular, virulent risk. The longevity of the elders. The virus has been a particular threat to Australia’s elderly, even more a threat to the Indigenous elderly. Immediately to their store of remembered information, their care of country, flora and fauna; their knowledge of their community’s culture, their knowledge and skills – in its many unique languages. Each member, their memory, the vibrance of their intellect, their ability to inform – are valuable. It is not books nor artifacts one can curate. It is the knowledge of these human beings. Find ways to record and document what they know. Their ‘paper and ink’ are fragile – will shortly fade. And there will be problems of ‘translation’, from one conceptual language to another – quite different language. Conservation requires information transfer to a more permanent medium. There may be vast Australian distances between source and reception. We need the internet. For the safety of the resource. For competence and efficiency of reception and recording. The ability of many to participate in events of reception, interpretation and recording. This information is complex and sophisticated. We have completely underestimated the intellect of the Aboriginal. And to the degree it is less in content and sophistication than it was, it is ‘we the colonists’ who are responsible.
Australian Universities can – indeed should – take a major interest in the gathering of this knowledge. Otherwise, how can they really call themselves ‘Australian Universities’? They can host meetings of councils and assemblies of ‘elders’. They can ‘curate’ Indigenous information, and take pride in this opportunity. The contemporaneous leaders need not only be ‘elderly’. Modern education, the gifts of the written – recorded – record, provide today’s young with intellectual opportunities and abilities – a competency their Aboriginal ancestors could not even conceive of, in their wildest dreams. Indeed, today’s Australian Universities can consider themselves extensions of the communal knowledge base of Aboriginal minds, the Songlines, ‘the Councils of the Elders’. Universities’ enormous knowledge bases are simply an extension of the human memory stores that were created with memory cultivation skills, before a written record was developed – or became available. Writing, in its present form, has existed for less than a tenth the duration of Aboriginal languages and remembered knowledge. Contemporary electronic ‘information technology’ has existed for about the last four decades. ‘Google’ for even less. But silicon-based intelligence, knowledge and skill are all products and stores of human memory, human analysis, and human communication. The gamut of the database of Australian Aboriginal knowledge was never contained in the mind of one man. It was the totality of what was known in the minds of all Aboriginal elders in Australia, at any one time. That was – and still is – vast.
What they never had was a ‘Google’. But neither did Newton, Captain Cook, nor Einstein. These could read and write, they had and created paper documents, had libraries. The human intellect began in the model of ‘orality’, as exemplified in Aboriginal thought, memory capabilities and oral language communication. An interaction between mind, and external means to enhance its intellect, power and communication. This development has been a process of evolution. The natural environment metamorphosed into handwriting, paper and ink; then the printing press, then the digital, electronic record. Each advance a more sophisticated wheelbarrow to assist and facilitate the human brain. These technologies still ‘a work in progress’. (And now – that we again understand the potential of the extent and sophistication of the human memory and its associated intellect, human intelligence should again be intensely cultivated as an integral part of our education of the young.)
The Aboriginal knowledge base should be respected, re-considered and conserved. There is its art, performed on different media, arising in a different visual perspective and analysis. There should be conservation and a re-invigoration of its languages. In part – of its usage, within the culture and environment of a traditional indigenous community. Curated – as Latin is curated, as an exhibition of its culture. And where practical, returned and enhanced into contemporary indigenous life. Inevitably modernized into a fluency in two languages. Acquiring the fundamental intellectual human language skill of ‘translation’. From an early age – naturally, subconsciously, in the conversations in a child’s multilingual home. From early childhood practicing the Aboriginal art of memorization, the cultivation of a powerful memory and its facility for conscious allusion, preconscious association and its enormous biologic neural – analytic – power. The intuitive power and gift of memory should be informally, intuitively taught by parents, themselves well-skilled in this art.
This is the optimization of the original human ‘neural network.’ It would revolutionize ‘Western’ education.
Aboriginal studies can optimize animal husbandry and horticulture. Protection and optimization of desert, bushland and rainforest reserves – so fire is rarely devastating. Aboriginals can live ‘on country’, conserve and optimize National Parks, experience and perform cultivation, education and recreation – to be presented to their children, ‘white Australians’ and overseas tourists. A return to the original form of ‘Australian farming’. The study and rehabilitation of ‘country’ to its natural state may well rescue Indigenous youth from the ennui – the lack of purpose and fulfilment – that leads into a futile life of crime and community rejection. Why cannot ‘bush tucker’ be identified, studied, cultivated and then commercially marketed as a unique Australian gastronomic identity and asset?
Aborigines can do this. So has spoken Professor Fiona Stanley, the Distinguished Research Professor, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, Paediatrics The University of Western Australia. The northern Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, from Queensland, through the Northern Territory and across the north of Western Australia all lobbied that their communities would be closed, to prevent the introduction of the COVID 19 virus.
“The results, unbelievable: 184 cases nationwide. 148! we would have expected a thousand or more – no deaths. It reversed ‘the gap’. I mean, we should be shouting this from the rooftops, what is does is to show that when Aboriginal people are in control of their own destiny, their own response – they get it right!”
And preserved their elders, preserved the reservoir of their knowledge and understanding of ‘country’, and preserved their community identity. A humanity, knowledge and wisdom that is uniquely valuable and exquisitely Australian.