Interesting discussion on identity.
Rather than "going back to where you came from", i encourage
people to make good contacts with your actual surroundings.
I know where my genes come from (Scotland and England,
via New Zealand/Aotearoa).
But i resist all attempts of the dominant Western culture to
define me in those terms, and to tell me who and who is not
part of my family. I have my own mana (such as it is) to protect,
or it cannot protect me.
I ask, instead, how do other people with whom i have
important relationships see things - what is their
way if seeing and how do i relate with them on their
terms?
I will not have biologists telling me who i am or defining
who my family is. Their mind-set is deadly and they have
no understanding of life. The cultural master they serve
will sell your genes into captivity for all time.
Some years ago i gave a paper (whitefella sort of thing
to do) at an academic conference saying how part of
my Being had been 'Aboriginalised' as a result of time
spent in Warumungu country and with Warumungu/
Alyawarra people.
Of course, the norms operating in Australian life
do not allow this sort of thing! Easier to regard me
as somehow a mental aberration than to seriously
consider the implications of the possibility that
we could escape from the straight up and down
categories imposed from Europe and find new
ways of relating with our surroundings.
Why is it that forces operate to inhibit the idea
that you can join an Aboriginal religion, for example?
What form of racism is operating here, and whose
purposes and benefits does such a conceptual prison
serve?
My experiences do not entitle me to bring any
land claim or seek any other benefit reserved for
Aboriginal people. Rather, it requires me to adopt
a respectful position as a sort of Younger Brother
in relation to my senior or Elder Brothers who
have been in this country since the beginning.
Questions of identity are questions which
can be resolved by negotiation between the
parties, not by science nor by the State
which has a vested interest in a particular
way of seeing things and of defining relationships.
In a peoples movement, we cannot afford to
leave these vitally important matters to
'experts'. We must tap into the very best
part of our core experience and stay true
to that voice - all the way down the line.
Where do we come from, what is our
true home, where do we fit into the scheme
of things - from an orthodox Australian perspective?
And thereby derive a creative synthesis resulting from
the orthodoxy of First Peoples (thesis) and the
introduced anti-thesis brought with Settler Peoples.
We need not look overseas for these answers, since
it is in Australian life that these matters must be
resolved through lived experience - and rooted in
acts fo geuine exchange of things of real value. It
cannot be a mere intellectual exercise.
Well, that's my two bobs worth anyway.
In Songlines Solidarity
Bruce
2 may 1999
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