We’ve said sorry, now we must say thank you
The column, “Important role in the past”, Bendigo Advertiser, November 16), featured a painting of an overtly large sheep on the Darling Downs, 1887.
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In it Clare Needham, of the Bendigo Art Gallery, correctly points out that we now recognise that Australia Felix (fertile land where Bendigo sits today) was purposely cultivated by the traditional owners.
There is another side to the sheep story.
We should all know that squatters in the first half of the 19th century pushed their sheep over south-eastern Australia, and Queensland in the second half. They came with sheep first, trampling, eating and laying waste to the Yam daisy which was cultivated all over the place and was the staple of our first people’s diet.
Our first people also cultivated grasses and grains which were stored. Of course, the squatters took over all the choice places – on rivers, lakes and waterholes and pushed the Aborigines out. Conflict was inevitable, because Aborigines saw sheep as fair game.
We now know from close examination of numerous explorer’s journals that Aborigines did build houses, did build dams, did sow, irrigate and till the land, did alter the course of rivers, did sew clothes and constructed a continental life-system that generated peace and well-being.
It’s time we put away the ‘hunter-gatherer’ tag because it was, and is, a construct to justify dispossession.
Australia has a shameful “black” history. One has only to read books by Henry Reynolds like “Why Weren’t We Told” or “The Other Side of the Frontier” to gain a clear picture.
Atrocious and violent massacres occurred in all eastern states. There was deliberate stifling of the truth and two major lies perpetrated to justify occupation:
- Terra Nullius – that no-one owned the land when white settlers came here, and
- That hunter/gathers were a savage and debased people.
This stain is deep in our chalk and until we can accept what the explorers saw as part of our national story then any debate about our origins, character and attributes is based on ignorance.
The hidden truth is that Aborigines nurtured and cared for country and everything in it. The whole continent was held in common and it was the responsibility of every person and clan to preserve it.
They had their law (better understood as lore) and customs of commerce and trade. The glue that held them together was religion or spiritual beliefs and practices – and songlines which interconnected them all.
They had enormous respect for creation and their ethos of caring and sharing came closer in its workings to the Christian ethic than any other people or culture.
The entry of the British brought the culture of personal ownership, particularly land and fences and greed.
Currently we cannot manage our environment and climate change. Modern private enterprise and science needs to be directed in a way that does not destroy our planet.
Hedonism, the prevailing creed that one’s personal pleasure is the chief good, needs to be supplanted by Aboriginalism, not capitalism – a system that is failing to protect key resources such as air, soil and water quality.
We may have said sorry to Aboriginal Australia but have we said thanks? We, second Australians, would start to do this by acknowledging the true history of country and Aboriginal social and philosophical achievements.
Ray Wilson, Kangaroo Flat
Journalist’s opinions of no interest to majority
The latest guest of the Bendigo Writers Festival, Masha Gessen, proves my earlier assertion: that writers’ festivals are an indulgence of the far left.
Do they interest the majority of residents in Greater Bendigo? I doubt it.
But they most likely do scare them.