Antinuclear

Aboriginal cultural heritage depends on remaining on homelands

If Aboriginal people are forced off their land, who will pass down the stories?, Guardian, Kelly Briggs 22 May 15 Imagine what an unbroken link to the land, thousands of years old, feels like. IndigenousX host Kelly Briggs on keeping the light of culture burning bright “…………….  People in this town work tirelessly to reinvigorate our languages, keep our stories strong and pass strength on through keeping the lights of pride in our culture burning bright.

While we reinvigorate our culture, communities that already have an incredibly strong connection to ongoing traditions may be closed. The thought of it just seems grotesque.

I have read article after article about the forced closure of remote communities. Some of these communities have unbroken ties to their lands. Customs and values thousands of years old. I imagine the link I feel to my home country and cannot even begin to wrap my head around what an unbroken link must feel like.

I try to picture coming home and finding no one here, and my heart grows heavy. This will never happen though, because many white people live here.

But what if tomorrow there was no cotton, no wheat, and no white people? Will we be forced to move to a different “home”? Put on the outskirts of a different town, where our link to our land is further smashed? Who will look after our sacred sites? Who will pass down the stories about that particular rock? That lagoon? The great warrior buried there in that place? The countless memories and stories that have shaped us as a people? Who will be there to tell others no, you can’t mine there, to do so would be “sacrilegious”? No you can’t build that there, put that there or take that from there?

No one. There would be no one. And within one to two generations the stories and memories will be gone. The link rusted. The beginning of the destruction initiated. Our old ones will weep while we are forced to forget.

This is not about governmental failure, financial woes, thoughtless policies or grandstanding apartheid devil’s advocates. This is about people, their lives, their cultures and their absolutely inalienable right to determine their own way of life. If that includes a desire to reside at home, then who is anyone to deny them that right? http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/22/if-aboriginal-people-are-forced-off-their-land-who-will-pass-down-the-stories

May 23, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | aboriginal issues, AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL