The European based characterisation of Australia's First
Peoples as 'hunters and gatherers' makes a mockery out of the
totality of their lives.
Why is it that this particular aspect of the First Way is
selected out in the official European representations? It is
part of a series based on the narrowly defined materialist
means of subsistence - hunting and gathering; horticultural;
agricultural; industrial.
This series excludes more from understanding than it includes.
It excludes, in particular, the whole of the life management
practices of First Peoples which are directed towards the
reproduction of the foods they take - in return - from their
countries.
The non-recognition and exclusion of this part of First
Peoples life is important to European minds because it
justifies State policy and State practice predicated on the
denial of the existence of an original form of life government
and management in Australia.
To acknowledge the existence of the original system of
government in areas such as those categorised as 'National
Parks' would raise questions about its existence in areas such
as Crown leasehold and freehold properties in the White
Homeland of Anglo-Australian wealth.
To acknowledge the existence of the original form of
government and management poses a real threat to the mountain
of vested interest (financial and emotional) which has been
built up during the reign of the doctrine of terra nullius.
That doctrine is dead. Life, complaining about the
mismanagement of dominating Europeans who have no
understanding of what it is they seek to control, moves to re-
instate its own self-government processes. These are not based
on bounded notions of nation states but on the songlines of
experience which link up all parts of life - and allow for the
flow of messages from one part to another.
Life is a transformation of energy. Yes, people take food on
one level but they also redirect their surplus energy back
into the ecosystem by the complex of activities which the
simple-minded materialist dismisses as mere ritual or
primitive ceremonies.
In doing this the materialist intellectual serves his or her
master well since this approach paves the way for others to
expropriate the energy investment of First Peoples on the
basis that they have not contributed any energy into the
'natural' reproduction of life's resources.
'Nature' is a category of thought of a particular ideology -
it is not something which exists independently. The invention
of a supernatural-less 'Nature' and the exploitation of the
non-European world go hand and hand. 'Nature' is unnatural!
Additionally, 'Hunting' and 'gathering' are both loaded
terms - they carry intellectual baggage. In particular, they
fit in with a European fantasy of First Peoples in which
people simply wander around collecting the spontaneous produce
of 'nature'.
This mode of subsistence was not part of indigenous Australia
where the practices of First Peoples were marked by a complex
of behaviours which were part of the regulation of the orderly
reproduction of life. In European terms, you could say these
behaviours are a combination of religion and ecological
management.
European terms have so fragmented the understanding of life
that it is difficult to fit the rounded way of living of real
people into any category or combination of categories.
Without going into all of that, the point to be made here is
that the acknowledgement of the relationship between First
Peoples and their living countries in 'National Parks' needs
to extend far beyond the simple-minded materialism of 'bush-
tucker man'.
It is not a case of back to 'nature'. A whole cosmology is
involved - and this puts life on a higher level altogether.
In that cosmology, the lives of people are part of the meta-
neural system of a living planet - a parent which generates us
all.
Don't hold your breath waiting for State Governments to
embrace this cosmology - you will damage your brain for lack
of the life-giving air which is freely available and all
around you.
All you have to do is open up.
Bruce Reyburn
31 January 1994