In this article, Effers offers us a first-hand account of her experiences, of which this is Part 2. We are grateful for this glimpse into. . .

This is a very brief look at a civilisation which has its complexities like any other. Part two is based on a bit of knowledge gained from meetings with books and museums Down Under. Not everything is referenced here, as some is based on memory of things learned from a trip to Australia by myself, a white English woman from London, England a few years ago.

Estimates suggest the first people arrived in Australia around 40,000 to 60,000 years ago. . . possibly before Homo sapiens had reached much of Europe. Europeans arrived in Australia a few hundred years ago.

It could be said that the gulf in understanding and thinking is too large to be bridged at all between humans coming from such radically different traditions, without an unacceptable corruption of the thing trying to be understood. But there can be a connection so long as the gulf is always borne in mind and respected. It wasn't always in the past.

Using modern English as a way of thinking is problematic. Language informs thinking.

The one term Aboriginal is usually used to describe the indigenous peoples of the continent of Australia. But there were huge numbers of tribes across the whole continent by the time Europeans arrived. . . Most are extinct now, and vast numbers of different languages were spoken.

Land or 'country' as many Aboriginal people's refer to it in English, is the concept around which culture revolves.

A white European is unlikely to be able to grasp the full significance of 'country'. Thinking is founded on country. . . .and this is connected to the Dreaming.

How to understand the Dreaming? It's to do with inner and outer reality and it's to do with the past and how country was created. . . but country is being created all the time. . . like a kind of timelessness. . . . . so is also always present.

And a Dreaming can be a Quantas Dreaming flying overhead.

Paintings were to do with making country. The point is country is as much inside a person as in the landscape. Paintings are maps. . . to mind and matter. They can be about hunting and gathering of plants and animals for food. . . but also social bonding and community. . . and other things.

It is a very sophisticated conceptualisation of the connection between psychic reality and the world in which one lives. The outer world informs the inner.

A mistake is made if it is supposed this has any relevance to the western Abrahamic conceptualisation of 'spirit' being something above and disconnected from land and the earth. If one went back far enough in western history though, we were all once part of hunter gatherer communities without ownership of land. . . although territory would have been important.

But again it's all too easy to suppose a kind of universalism to cultural traditions.

The pragmatic business of hunting and gathering and the whole business of staying alive will be primary though for any culture.

Best collection of paintings from various tribes and attempt to understand the paintings on their own terms rather than impose a certain interpretation divorced from their cultural context. But in terms of aesthetics and the effect on one's mind, at what ever level they are quite overwhelming.

'To understand our law, our culture and our relationship to the physical and spiritual world, you must begin with land. Everything about aboriginal society is inextricably woven with, and connected to, land. Culture is the land, the land and spirituality of aboriginal people, our cultural beliefs or reason for existence is the land. You take that away and you take away our reason for existence. We have grown that land up. We are dancing, singing, and painting for the land. We are celebrating the land. Removed from our lands, we are literally removed from ourselves.   – Mick Dodson (former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Justice Commissioner)

Although this site is about selling paintings essentially. . . at least an attempt is made to explain traditional ideas to a westerner. . . and Aboriginal peoples themselves now choose to sell work.

They still choose to be secretive and not talk about the most important knowledge in the works.

Dreamings from Arnhem land region traditionally done on bark.

Also on rocks. Such places would be highly sacred.

People are asked to not visit certain features in the landscape. . . certainly not to climb Uluru (Ayres rock) as vast numbers of tourists still do everyday.

There are lists of things in books that Aboriginals traditionally used for survival. . . techniques involving spears and spear throwers, boomerangs, plants used for, eg, drugs and fishing, making baskets etc. . . etc. It can start to seem like a litany of hunter/gatherer 'stuff'. . . the usual as it were. But underlying the evolution of techniques required for survival, was an exquisite development of observation of nature. Rather than skimming over a lot of stuff, one pragmatic survival tradition will be mentioned. . . .fire burning. . . .but it will also have cultural meaning, ie, 'cleaning country'.

Kakadu in the far north of Australia is a World Heritage site for both cultural and natural heritage reasons. At the beginning of the dry season the Bininji/Mungguy, burn small areas of bush, this patchwork of burning encourages new growth of bush plants which attracts animals that can be hunted. It also helps prevent large and destructive bush fires, destroying vast areas of bush. This is now done in co-ordination with the park rangers.

In the official visitor booklet there is a poem written in English by a Bunjiti man that says it best.

Effers

21.05.12 Front Page

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