Stories. Such a powerful way of learning, remembering, sharing.
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Stories from the mists of time, stories of today.
Stories connect across civilisations, nations, communities, families.
They help shape our understanding, can open our hearts, allow us to see from another perspective.
They can also confuse, shame, unsettle, challenge.
So what is the story of this continent? Of Australia?
Is it the story many of us know so well – of the tall ships sailing to a new land, of a brutal convict beginning, of hardship, triumph over adversity?
Of a “young” country finding its way in the world?
Or is it a longer story – a story that begins in the mists of time?
A time so long ago it is almost impossible to comprehend.
A story of adaptation, survival.
The science of story was recently explored in SBS’s The First Inventors series.
Using incredibly effective memory systems, a storytelling information delivery system using songs and dance, allowed the oral recording of such cataclysmic changes as the rapid rising of the sea levels to be passed on through countless generations to today.
And science is still catching up to this knowledge.
The rise of the sea levels has only been widely known for about 150 years and yet ancient stories from at least 22 First Nations groups along the coast of Australia, tell of ancestors who lived in places that were later submerged by rising water.
Underwater archaeological work off the coast of Western Australia, conducted by the Flinders University Maritime Program, has confirmed the presence of shaped tools in the Flying Foam Passage.
The area was a dry valley with a freshwater spring around 10,000 years ago.
Now there is scientific evidence to support the oral histories: word-of-mouth documented real events.
As Yindjibarndi Traditional Owner, Vince Adams reflected: “This is important for all of us.”
It is part of the story of this continent.
The oral documentation of eruptions, changing landscapes, management of the landscape by fire, knowledge of plants and astronomy is all part of the deep knowledge of our land.
Oral stories are now being shared in a format many of us are more comfortable with – the written word.
Expanding our knowledge, telling stories in a way we can understand.
Helping us to connect to different ways of being and learning.
We come with this place.
Five simple words.
But it is the inclusion of the word “with” that gives this short sentence so much power.
It gives a sense of belonging, of being an integral part of place.
Not something added in later.
It is the title of a book by Gundanji and Wakaja woman, Debra Dank.
It is a book about stories. Stories that come from Country, that are part of being.
They are words that invite us into another space. A space to listen.
A space from the deep past where Country whispers.
Stories from long ago, but stories of now.
Stories told in the landscape.
Stories that guide and teach.
Stories of ingenuity and strength.
But also, stories that have not always been welcomed into other places of learning such as schools and libraries.
Stories that ask to be heard, that reach out to our hearts.
That share a deep love of family.
But there are also the stories that cry with the pain of country – hunting, shooting, deaths.
The trauma etched into the fabric of the land and the people.
The sound of horses racing, metal clanking, gunshots.
The fear of children being removed.
Different expectations, limitations on education and opportunity.
“A social hierarchy based on skin colour, historical untruths and a true empty silence”, as Dank describes it.
The story of Australia has another part to it.
It is also a story of determination and exclusion.
Determination to shape the country according to the vision of founders of the new nation – a white nation.
Of those who could not imagine a story that reached back into the mists of time – beyond the ice age – of thousands of generations whose footprints touched the land lightly and, in whose footprints later generations walked.
Of the “true, empty silence” that enveloped the forgetting of part of our history.
And exclusion.
Exclusion of First Nations people – people who have been on this land since time immemorial and who were not counted as part of the population until the 1971 Census.
One of Australia’s most influential Aboriginal leaders, the trailblazing land rights fighter Yunupingu, wrote a remarkable essay in The Monthly in 2016.
Entitled rom watangu, it told the story of his father and the frontier violence he managed to survive.
It is an extraordinary story of the fight for cultural identity, leadership and the reality for First Nations peoples of inaction of all governments.
It should be read by all Australians.
“What Aboriginal people ask is that the modern world now makes the sacrifices necessary to give us a real future. To relax its grip on us. To let us breathe, to let us be free of the determined control exerted on us to make us like you. And you should take that a step further and recognise us for who we are, and not who you want us to be. Let us be who we are – Aboriginal people in a modern world – and be proud of us. Acknowledge that we have survived the worst that the past had thrown at us, and we are here with our songs, our ceremonies, our land, our language and our people – our full identity. What a gift this is that we can give you, if you choose to accept us in a meaningful way.”
The powerful words hang.
“What a gift this is that we can give you, if you choose to accept us in a meaningful way.”
We have a chance to recast the story of our country. To find a different path.
So let’s step aside from the fear, division, untruths and look to the future.
To unity, hope and an amazing gift that can complete the real story of this place, Australia.
The First Inventors could be viewed on SBS On Demand
We come with this place by Debra Dank, Echo Publishing, London 2022
To read Yunupingu’s essay rom watangu visit www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2016/july/1467295200/galarrwuy-yunupingu/rom-watangu
Reconciliation column