Name:
Location: Queensland, Australia

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Creating Aborigines in our own image

By John Tracey

A reflection on….
“Black and white lies”
An article in the Australian (national newspaper) written by William J. Lines

A recent article published in the Australian entitled “Black and white lies” written by William J. Lines represents an emerging new attitude by some non-Aboriginal environmentalists about this continents history, in particularly the traditional role of Aboriginal people as managers and custodians of land.

Lines claims that notions of Aboriginal ecological sustainability are myths generated by non-Aboriginal environmentalists.

He says

“Conservationists trapped in wishful thinking about the wisdom of the elders and disdainful of dissent cannot see the truth: there are no models, no templates for living sustainably on this continent or on this planet. We're on our own and must make our own way.”

and

“The myth of the ecological Aborigine elevated Aborigines to positions of moral and spiritual superiority and disparaged people of non-Aboriginal background. They would never belong in Australia. Their ancestry rendered them incapable of acquiring a sense of connection.”

Lines' article is a simple opinion piece, masquerading as an academic critique. It refers to the European use of Chief Seattle’s famous quotes about the environment as the basis of his dismissal of Aboriginal anthropologist professor Marcia Langton and Australian environmentalists such as Professor Ian Lowe, who claim that non-Aboriginal environmentalists need to learn from Aboriginal people about how to look after this country.

Like others, Lines makes a tokenistic allusion to Flannery’s future eaters hypothesis to discredit Aboriginal ecology, that is Aboriginal people hunted a species of mega fauna (big animal!) into extinction. Aspects of Flannery’s work were not included, including his own claim that it is just a hypothesis and there could have been many other reasons for the extinction of the mega-fauna. Lines neglects to mention another of Flannery’s hypotheses. that Australian society learnt from the extinction and implemented conservation law to ensure it never happened again.

Lines has done to ecological and Anthropological fact the same as historians such as Keith Windshuttle have done to modern history or what Mal Brough has done to indigenous affairs – interpreted and imposed a colonial construction onto indigenous reality, in so doing dismissing and nullifying contemporary indigenous knowledge.

Beyond the specific details of land management and ecology, there is a cultural and anthropological reality that Lines, on the one hand appears ignorant of and on the other hand has accurately represented in his article. That is the one-dimensional literary culture of European colonialism. One based on scientific theories and processes including the developmental hierarchy of hypothesis, theory, law. As a society we institutionalize knowledge on the basis of where the scientists are up to on this continuum. If we have very little knowledge of reality, e.g. the creation of the universe, then the best hypothesis is institutionalized, such as the big bang theory and before that creationism. A similar phenomenon is the flat earth hypothesis and the sun revolves around the Earth hypothesis, for which many heretics were burnt for daring to challenge.

Once patterns and confluences appear in experiments testing the hypothesis, if such experiments are allowed, then the hypothesis graduates to theory, such as Einstein’s theory of relativity, which has been found by string theory to be limited by Einstein’s cultural preconceptions about the nature of the universe being imposed onto his enquiries and conclusions. I have no doubt string theory will be similarly challenged in due course.

Once a theory has been rigorously tested and approved by the highest scientific authorities in the world, it becomes a law, eg. Matter and energy can be changed but never created or destroyed. Yet the mathematics of nuclear fusion and subatomic physics identifies energy that appears to come from nowhere. So a new law is that there are always exceptions to the law. A scientific paradigm not unlike its social science counterpart, post modernism.

Juxtaposed to this is Aboriginal knowledge. Let it be clear, I am an Irish Australian not an Australian Aborigine. But I can speak with some limited authority on this matter because I have – participated in – Aboriginal knowledge. There are things that I know through direct experience of reality, holistic understandings including subconscious, that have then, later, been given the vocabulary, in English in my case, to explain that experience of reality, whether it be a particular place, social relationship, health strategy, political organization etc. The pedagogy of Aboriginal education is of direct experience of reality. The colonial pedagogy is of monotonous experience of representations of reality. Primarily through text and lecturing inside education institutions from preschool to professor.

Institutionalised colonial hypothesis is juxtaposed with dreamtime stories, that even a child (or a white fella) can understand. A basic understanding at first, such as the bunyip in the waterhole to a more mature understanding in later life of the dangers of drowning in that particular water hole. The story unfolds with the person’s development. The closest thing to this in colonial culture is the Santa Clause myth, supposedly to instill an ethos of good will in children. But the myth dies with the revelation that Santa Claus is not true in any way shape or form. The bunyip is still, in adult life, the best way to explain unexplained drownings.

Dreamtime spirits represented in painting and dance give accurate cosmological knowledge including identifying and naming stars, planets, constellations and galaxies and their movements. Such astronomical expertise is just common knowledge for those who participate in the corroboree. Then there are the doctors of high degree who know even more.

Within these mythical frameworks is a key to weather patterns with not only greater accuracy than meteorological science, but with an indigenous meteorology bureau with weather records dating back several ice ages.

Colonial science is fascinated by the finding of a fossil. The process is to dig it up and take it to an academic institution to study to see what can be learnt from it. yet that fossil in the place where it had been for millions of years is a sacred object in a sacred story place that tells a more accurate history of many dimensions and understandings of what that fossil is and what happened and is happening in that place.

Lines' article tries to exploit a contradiction between high human impact on the environment and sustainable land management, obviously missing the point of Langton and others that such a contradiction only exists within colonial notions of wilderness, not indigenous perceptions of social ecology.

It will only be through transcending colonial notions of ecological "preservation" to indigenouse notions of active "engagement" with the environment that Australia as a whole can begin to deal with our current ecological disasters.

Lines' ignorant assertion “there are no models, no templates for living sustainably on this continent or on this planet. We're on our own and must make our own way.” is a clear example of the colonial attitude that there is no other real knowledge than our own. All else is myth, either ancient or contemporary. This cultural restriction is the very reason that Line and those who have similar opinions to him will not be able to achieve the sense of connection to this country that they seem to yearn for so desperately.


see also
"Terra Nullius and Ecology" by John Tracey.

and Senator Andrew Bartlets
response to "Black and White Lies"