A recent email from a very good and much respected mate down south got me thinking about a term you hear pretty frequently up here, 'white fella dreaming'.Basically, the term refers to the the commonly held conception by many white fellas that all Aboriginal people, and especially those in remote and isolated communities, are defined by some sort of amazing, intriguing and somewhat mystical makeup; that their days are filled with ceremonial and cultural practice, in between living off the land through bush tucker and spiritual beliefs.
The dreaming bit comes into play when those same white fellas see a community up close and personal, and discover that cultural practice is replaced by abject poverty, bush tucker is little more than chips and Coke, and spiritual beliefs come a distant second to the spirits more often found in a 750ml bottle.
There's no question that Aboriginal Australians still have a tremendous cultural connection with their land, and the myths, stories, and belief systems that go with it, but sadly, this is disappearing, particularly among the younger generation.
Take, for example, the 'Westside' crew of my community, all of whom waste no time in telling me just how expert bushmen they are, and how I, as a shoe-wearing, pink-skinned, city-slicker, wouldn't stand a chance out bush. I agree, jumping at the chance to see how it's really, truly done by expert bushmen such as these, and the challenge is set.
I tell the crew to meet me at 7am Sunday morning - we'll walk from the community to the coast and back, a 36km round trip. Each is free to choose their own route, and bring along whatever supplies they can fit in a small backpack.
So, come Sunday morning, I leave Darwin at 0500; with me, walking shoes, gaiters, 2L of water, a Powerbar, some instant noodles, matches and a knife.
When I arrive at 0700, the entire crew is asleep, and when woken, most are hungover. They insist on taking my 4WD rather than going by foot; stopping by the supermarket for a cask of water instead of sourcing from the many springs; and a 12-gauge shotgun replaces the Nula-Nula [a heavy wooden club].
Granted, the crew wins on the bush tucker front - shooting, skinning and cooking a wallaby - but fails on pretty much everything else, including remembering the matches for the fire. Lucky that pink-skinned city-slicker brought some along.
It's no big issue, and I suspect the icy-cold can of beer at the end of the day was equally deserved by everyone, but the episode is the first eye-opener to my own world of white fella dreaming in the new-day black fella world.
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3 comments:
In a particularly "white fella" fashion I was gonna ask you what the general view of your subjects is on being photographed? Does thst change if they are a bit older?
Keep up the posts... it feels like you are on another planet, certainly not just your own country... are you missing civilisation? Will you miss where you're now when you've left?
Re photos - I'm yet to find one person (age or sex indifferent) in any of the communities I'm working in who has objected to their picture being taken. In fact, once people know you've got a camera, and will bring back prints (which I do), they never leave you alone. In the pic above, you don't see the other 8 guys behind me, lining up to have their pic taken holding the shotgun or wallaby, or both.
And yes, I'll miss being up here - despite wanting to get away from it all sooner, rather than later. I suspect it's a case of being stuck between two worlds (aboriginal and western), and having no idea about what to do to overcome the contrast, conflict and confusion between both.
Good post, mate. Gets to the heart of the problem I think. It's a similar issue up in PNG where the higlanders have only been exposed to western culture since the 1930s. That's not much time to go from subsistence gardening to a modern culture and economy.
I think it's a matter of finding your place in the world. No-one can go back and change things, so how do you maintain an indigenous culture while surviving the mainstream culture.
Slightly off the topic, there's an interesting article in The Monthly by Noel Pearson talking about Obama's chances in the election and drawing on theories of guilt and responsibility when it comes to race relations.
I'd back up your photo comments as well. PNG highlanders couldn't get enough of posing in front of the camera. It made road-side stops take a while. There are some good photos of an Aboriginal community near Alice in the latest Big Issue as well.
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