Celebrating our national day on the date of British settlement in 1788 has never been a date that brings all Australians together, no matter how many flags we wave or happy barbecues we may enjoy. For many Indigenous Australians, the date is no holiday but a reminder of their country being taken over by others. It completely disrupted a way of life that had been undisturbed for 50,000 years. The early British settlers considered Australia Terra Nullius, in effect an empty place that would be subject to British law and customs and the indigenous people were, for the most part, invisible and discounted. Fortunately, in the last few decades most Australians have changed their views on this. We now understand that the first Australians lived here for countless generations in balance with the fragile Australian environment. Using fire and moving lightly on the land, they not only nurtured the environment, but developed a rich and remarkable culture that has survived longer than any civilisation in history. The more we appreciate this remarkable story of human endurance that we are now part of, the more we have come to understand how much Indigenous Australians can teach us about carefully managing our natural wonders. Our modern economy is built on furious growth and expansion and it is not building the foundation of a society that will survive anywhere near as long as Aboriginal culture. Quite simply, our way of life is becoming unsustainable. We cannot dig and deforest forever, our cities must soon enough stop expanding and the mad rush to own more and more will end badly. Exponential growth in a finite world is an impossibility. For some years now I have been arguing that a step we could take towards building a society that will prosper for countless generations is to recognise that out national day must start with celebrating the truth: that is that Indigenous Australians were here before the new settlers and our national day should not be built around the day the First Fleet and its cargo of convicts arrived in Sydney Harbour. Its not an opinion that has always been popular. (from the article) - [Cat]
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 22:33:47 +0000
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