This morning we went to the Botanic Gardens in Melbourne where an aborigine led us among the plants and trees. His tribe used to live along the river in what is now Melbourne.
He looked almost white. In New Jersey he could pass for Italian. But both he and the government regard him as an aborigine. At the age of four he was taken from his mother and sent to Tarana to be schooled and brought up as a white boy. He did not see his mother till 34 years later. His mother went to the judge to ask to see him, but the judge said it would not be in his best interests. He was taught the white man’s ways instead of those of his tribe.
His tribe’s language is dead and forgotten and so are many of the old ways, the ancient wisdom and knowledge of his tribe. But not all, some of which he shared with us.
Many of the trees and plants had surprising uses, which he knew. From one tree you could make a dark brown liquid that you could pour in the water and kill a school of fish by making it impossible for them to breathe.
Australia is a land with no great river and, before the British came, no grain grew there, not even in the wild. This made life largely a matter of moving from one place of water and food to another. To endure took a deep knowledge of plants.
Of the first three white men who tried to cross Australia, only one lived: the one who learned from the aborigines. The other two would not learn and one night ate a black berry (Duboisia hopwoodii) that kills you unless you cook it first.
He showed us a map of Australia. Not the one with the states, but one with hundreds of countries, coloured just like the maps of Europe. Each country had its own tribe, its own language. This is the other Australia, the one that whites have been destroying. How many of these nations are now lost for ever?
The aborigines are a very ancient people. Some of these nations go back thousands of years, back before the beginning of Egypt and China. Much of their hard-won knowledge has now been lost.
The whites thought they knew nothing – they were merely black primitives who would die out by 1900.
After 1900 when they refused to die out, the government tried to make them forget their ways. That is why our guide was taken from his mother – a practice that did not stop till 1970!
At the gift shop at the Gardens I saw Anna Pavord’s beautiful “The Naming of Names”. She writes about gardening for the Independent.
After the Gardens we went to the museum, the new one across from the grand Victorian Exhibition Hall. There we met another near-white aborigine, who showed us some dances. Leo got to do some of the dances with him.
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being an expatriate in melbourne…I have seen the aboriginal people. The 2 I spotted were sitting on a bench outside a Cole’s Grocery in Coburg Suburb…they had silver paint on thier mouths and noses, apparently from where they were huffing paint…they were looking like 2 dazed frightened children. The other instance of the aboriginals, and how they have assimilated into life, were 3 women with children walking down the shopping section near St. Kilda Suburb…they were rather loud and unconvincing to thier child, and threatening to the bystanders who could not resist but to look at the spectacle…needless to say, yes, your comment that the place is like America, I back that 100%. Melbourne seems a cross to me of Chicago, New York City, Washington DC and perhaps a hint of Miami.
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OH and without the Spanish latino flare….
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Thanks. I was disappointed that suburban Melbourne seemed so much like Generic America, but Melbourne itself has a character of its own that I liked. Not as much as New York, of course….
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Gosh that was soo horrible. What the fuck was wrong with those Europeans of the past. I doubt the original people from everywhere BUT Europe would do such horrible things to other countries if the whites hadn’t started it. North America, South America, Africa, Australia.. all pretty peaceful til the whites came in. Asia is lucky in that sense. Actually no.. since their invasion of India was wrong too. And the Hiroshima & Nagasaki bombings, and other things. Haha the Europeans/white people of the past wrecked a lot of shizz in the world. They’ve done the most damage out of any race. I mean Im not saying its wrong to move to other places but it was stupid how they acted like they owned the world and everything.. ugh.. I want to go to the past and smack them in the face! I think whites are the ones who caused racism.. cause people from those other countries, I dont think they even really minded the Europeans as long as they were peaceful with them, while the Europeans thought that everything not like them was uncilivized and inhumane. The twits. I dont think white people have still learned.. because apparently in the U.S. it was okay to steal the land from the Natives, and its okay to steal Palestine and give it to the Jews, just because of the Holocaust (and there are a lot of high powered Jews in America! NO BIAS AT ALL *wink wink*). And who caused the Holocaust? More Europeans! Spreading joy everywhere!
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Dee — I think you have a few really good points, especially about the Europeans’ general disrespect of other cultures. However, your last two comments don’t sit quite right with me. Suggesting that white people started racism is a bit much, I think. For example, if you look at the Bible, and the context of the time that it provides, it’s clear that those people were hight prejudiced without ever coming into contact with those you cite as the creators of racism.
Secondly, the suggestion that the US “[stole] Palestine” to “give to the Jews, just becayse of the Holocaust”… well, after doing an in-depth study of the situation in Palestine/Israel, all I can do is face-palm at your stunningly single-sided view of the situation. Now, I wouldn’t be so cruel if you hadn’t followed that opinion with such a stunningly racist remark. Practise what you preach, Dee, and if you’re going to make remarks about that particular conflict at least get them right. The US had really very little to do with the signing over of Palestine. In fact, most of the work was done long before America came to be the world power it is today. That’s not to say that they didn’t have anything to do with it… oh, I’m not getting into this. I’ll be here all day. Just read a book about it.
And I’m not even going to touch Nazis = all Europeans ever.
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What a nice site!- As an Australian, its great to get your views on our country, and curiously, you have published the most detailed map of Aboriginal lands anywhere on the Internet!
Ive live in Perth , WA and have lived in Sydney for many years, visiting Melbourne a few times; Melbourne seems eccentric to me, with a curious, literally dark edge to it, and the best coffee & cafe life in Australia. the city owes much to the great Gold-rushes of the 19th century for its architecture, and it has been a slowly-unfolding revelation to me that Australians ‘like’ their high-rise buildings [like the US], whilst Europeans generally dislike them.
Thanks for being here guys.
Brandon
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hahaha-sorry about that Avatar- mustve come off my little website on WordPress my little sideline venture called D-DAY- very politically incorrect!
LOL http://www.d-day.com.au
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“hahaha-sorry about that Avatar- mustve come off my little website on WordPress my little sideline venture called D-DAY- very politically incorrect!”
Yes, because liberating Western Europe from German occupation was just so wrong and politically incorrect…. so, so ‘intolerant’ of German culture at the time… pea-brain.
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@ Dee
“North America, South America, Africa, Australia.. all pretty peaceful til the whites came in.”
How do you know that? You do not.
All those places lacked written history – all were, and still are, violent places.
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fascinating stuff. i can see you do your research.
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A lot of my family are aboriginal Australian. I’d just like to make note that many aboriginal Australians are offended by the term ‘aborigine’.
It is as you said. Some of the first missionaries to Southern Australia, from Germany, actually weren’t so bad. They worked with the Kaurna (mainly), Parnkarla, Nukunu, Ngadjuri and Narranga elders to establish strong relations between the locals and the colonies. They got most indigenous Australians literate in Latin-transcribed formats of their language, and got many colonies to learn the local languages. It all changed when white-supremacist blokes from England basically banned the ‘primitive languages’ (funny thing is, if we’re going by grammatical complexity, these languages were far more ‘advanced’ than English ever has been) and enforced English. He also began segregating and attacking Kaurna settlements. Today most of the Thura-Yura languages of South Australia have no more speakers, although there are revival efforts I here.
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Something I have noticed growing up in Australia is the double standards even progressive (I guess ‘liberal’ in American terminology?) people have towards Indigenous Australians. People who are just fine with Sudanese, Hazara, Ethiopian and Vietnamese peoples, and will even show up to anti-racist rallies, still have disgusting racist views and stereotypes of Aboriginal Australians. I do think that this racism is deeply ingrained and is a remnant of colonialism, repression and displacement, and the ‘cycle of aggression’ that comes along with it.
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