Jamie Graham—Guest Lecturer on Aboriginal Australia: Oral Culture’s Identity with Ecosystem

    The guest lecturer who spoke about Aboriginal Australia told us about the land battles the people face in the present day. People invaded to mine the land of valuable materials, leaving devastating effects on clans there. When large corporations attempted to take land from the Aboriginals to industrialize it, the women wept. They did not cry for themselves, but for the animals who would be affected by this invasion. This made me consider the connection that indigenous people experience with their ecosystem, and how this is so different for us today.

    The selfless act of the profound grief of these women shines light on the huge gap between two opposing world views. For the corporations seeking to gain profit, the land is viewed through the dominant Western lens: it is dead property defined by what value may come of it, a source of minerals and profit. But for the Aboriginal people, the land is understood as a vital part of their extended kinship. They are not the owners, they are the maintainers responsible for the health of their non-human relatives. 


    This difference in perspective is the root cause of ecological disaster. Modern industrial society has long operated with a staggering ecological disconnect, separating human beings from the natural processes that sustain them and treating the environment as a supply cabinet that exists for us, rather than a community that includes us. The tears wept by those women serve as a heartbreaking example of that separation.


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