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Hellena Post - Creatrix

I've tried on so many uniforms and badges that now I'm just me - mother of 8 children and all that entails, flowmad, and human animal parent. Writer of this living book of a blog, philosopher, and creatrix of hand dyed and spun crocheted wearable art. I gave up polite conversation years ago, and now I dive into the big one's.....birth, sex, great wellness, life, passion, death and rebirth.


Showing posts with label indigenous. Show all posts
Showing posts with label indigenous. Show all posts

Saturday, April 6, 2013

The Roman Empire Never Died......


Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears, for all roads really do lead to Rome, unless like me, you’ve neglected to realize that we’re ROMANS living in a very Roman society.  One of the greatest heists that has ever been, and it’s gone on right under our noses, and stolen all of our cultures and ancestries and religions and possible blossomings of diverse societies…….while we’ve been trained and educated about how the Roman Empire was the greatest that ever was, but only lasted 500 years, and then the Roman Catholic church was only incidentally the most powerful and old state religion on the planet that ruled and created western civilization.  And also incidentally, championed by the Roman dude in the bible, Paul, who never even met Jesus.

The Roman Catholic Empire church, that is only just now being revealed for what it really is despite the robes and censors and pretty latin words.  With attitudes spawned millennia ago by the likes of Calligula and Nero, an evil aristocracy has been hiding behind the monstrous machine of Western Civilization – just like the wizard of Oz, but nowhere near as nice.  Being first the conquerors of the known world, bringing ancient civilizations to their knees and robbing them of their treasures, and then sheathing their swords in the gloves of priests, and spreading their state religion like a cancer to the world, propogandising their victories and culture eating, as civilization and education.  Encouraging us all in our western nations to continue their legacy, bringing Roman civilization, genocide and destruction to every paradise we find……just like they destroyed ours long ago. 



At this point in time, every single Catholic diocese in Australia is under multiple investigations for paedophillia.  I assume that this is the same the world over.  Cancerous at the core, the most recent news I heard was that the man high up in the evil empire who was put in charge of investigating claims worldwide……..was done himself for paedophillia, after being sprung with over 4,000 pictures of boys being abused and tortured on his computer.   The recently retired Pope, was so complicit in his role as Evil Emperor Over Them All, that he has been promised permanent sanctuary in one of the oldest countries in the world – The Vatican.  Or as I like to think of it, Smaugs monstrous dragons hoard, where the cruel and hulking dragon of the Roman Catholic Empire has been dragging back it’s stolen treasures for nearly 2 and a half thousand years. 

Are you confused?  Just think for a minute.  Right now, we’re smack bang in the middle of western civilization, based on Greco/Roman principles of democracy and governance.  All of our sciences including astronomy, botany, medicine, maths, and geography, have Latin names and concepts, and were shaped by a murderously reigning Roman Catholic Empire in their infancy.  Our names for our days and months are Roman.   Our education system is still graffitied with latin, especially in the upper eschelons, yet it’s only one of thousands upon thousands of possible languages that could reflect the legacy of our white European lineages.   Our legal system still quotes Latin at itself, not to mention our western history only represents the story of the victorious – in this case the Roman Catholic Empire.  We have Greek and Roman mythology in our libraries, and latin is the root of many of our words without us even being aware of it.  For example.  The word vagina, was the latin word for the sheath in which a Roman soldier cloaked his sword.  I think I’m never going to use that word again.  Our calendar is Roman, we call the constellations Roman names, not to mention all of our Christian religions…….are all based around the King James version of the bible, which was the version agreed upon by the Roman Catholic Church.  Walk down the street and see the roman numerals on a clock.  Or see the date written in roman at the end of a movie or program. A tiny nation.  In the middle of Europe.   Is at the basis of our entire western civilization that has spread like a virus around the planet. And our history and our sciences and our theories have all sprung from the Roman fountain, as a history written by the conqueror.



A victorious conqueror that straddles the planet to this day, with its ancient tradition of genocide, destruction of family bonds and community, money and gold as god, growth at all costs, dividing and conquering, and keeping large amounts of people subjugated, obedient, and easy to manipulate.  First learning its tools of destruction and colonisation through military might, and then employing those tactics through its invasion of the world, using religion, wheat, sugar, tea, alcohol, education, disease, rape and desecration of communities, and destruction of family units.

Some say it was lead poisoning, and some just mention that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but the Roman Empire went from the first democracy, to turning their Emperors into gods, and then creating their own version of Christianity…….colonising our minds in order to maintain even more power and control.  And during the degeneration into ‘godhood’, they very quickly took on a depraved and lusting nature.  Spoiled with the goods and treasures from a thousand indigenous traditions, the very rich quickly set sail in pursuit of how evil human nature could become.  Filling their ampitheatres with people and exotic animals, they couldn’t work out if they were more turned on by sexual or physical violence.  Brutal and deadly gladiator battles or vast circles of men and animals buggering each other, it was all the same really wasn’t it?  Calligula and Nero were the height of brutal human evil, and their spawn still live today as the Roman Catholic priests, that have created a gloabal paedophiles ring, with too many boys as their victims. 

When the rest of the world started getting wise to the debased Roman Empire, it increased its power in a number of exponential ways, when the decision was made to combine religion with government.  In 325AD when Constantine created the Roman Catholic Church, and made the Emperor of Rome the head of it, a transition was begun from turning the flagging military might, to spiritual and political power and control.  And using religion as a tool to keep their addiction to the acquisition of land and power and treasures sated.  Along with the destruction of the strong family bond, through the instructions of desexed priests, forced and choosing to repress their sexuality into the abuse of young boys, fragile women, and the mentally differently abled, souring and spoiling family relationships for generations to come.

And here’s where my personal ancestry and the Roman Empire collide.  In 0BC the Romans did a survey of the tribes in Europe, and the Friesians are the only people living in the same place, and speaking the same language.  My ancestors have seen the Romans appear through numerous guises and armies, for thousands of years now, in an age old struggle to conquer lands to appease the gods of domestication and civilization, and then to keep the conquered people subjugated, and easily managed.  The Romans had limited success with my Viking ancestors in a militaristic way, but had far better results colonizing our lands with religion.  Even though one of Frieslands favourite kings, Radbod ( who Merlin is named for ), was known for his rather enthusiastic protection of his pagan land in the form of killing priests, and later on it fell to one of the last Friesian freedom fighters Balthazar (and you guessed it, I’ve got a son named after him too) to fight for that indomitably free Viking spirit………the Roman Catholics got us in the end, not with might, or religion, but with the almighty power of the dollar.



And at this point I think we should separate the Roman Catholic church from Christianity.  Because according to my research and that of Dan Brown and many other academics and brotherhoods around the world (and also the book written by his great a many times grand daughter), the original dude that Christianity sprung from, Jesus, had a very different life to that recounted in the bible.  In terms of marrying Mary Magdelene, and wanting her to be the continuance of his religion, and fathering two daughters who ended up in France.  And being a lot more in tune with all the other indigenous and earth traditions around the world.  The real early Christians traveled all over the world after being chased from their homelands by the Romans, finding empathy, connection, and common-unity with the other cultures they encountered, whereas the Roman Catholic Christians wielded their religion as a tool of suffocation, land acquisition, genocide and torture.  And they persecuted those early Christians both in their  early ampitheatres, and later on during the Great Inquisition, which was conducted for 400 years, (strangely coinciding with the Dark Ages), killing over 9 million pagans, herbalists, midwives, gypsys, nomads, early christians…..read anyone who wasn’t a staunch Roman Catholic, or clever enough to hide their real empathies.  Realisations and innovations had to be cleverly introduced to a heavily christianised world, in order to not be branded heresy.  They had a stranglehold on power, land, control, and information……at least until the introduction of the printing press anyway.  Which heralded in the age of enlightenment, which was actually the decreasing in focus of the Roman Catholic church, to be splintered into a thousand little mini viruses of differently named religions, that increased the power of their original host regardless.

Despite the splintering, the wealth, secrets, treasures and remnants of countless civilizations have remained to this day, housed deep beneath the Vatican, in vast catacombs and caverns.  The early spoils won by conquering Emperors rub shoulders with modern booties from world wars, civil wars, and all sorts of global intrigues that the Roman Empire has involved itself in, using a supposedly neutral and spiritual role, whilst snaffling all the treasures they can lay their hands on, to bury beneath the Vatican on the way.  Corporations, Governments, Bankers, World Trade Organisers, Slavers, Colonialists…..all of these have to recognize the Roman Catholic Empire as the Great Great Great Great Grandaddy of them all.  Set up on the principles of divide and conquer, beautifully executed by hierarchies.  Which by their very nature disempower and disconnect people from each other and themselves.  The antithesis of what Ghengis Khan told his sons on his deathbed, when trying to work out how to divide his massive empire between his many sons.  Handing round a bunch of sticks he invited them to break them.  They couldn’t.  Pulling out one stick, he asked them to break it, which they did easily.  He concluded for them, that together they were strong, but apart they were broken easily.

We’ve been, and let ourselves become, so separated and categorized, so  consumed with judgement on ourselves and each other, so splintered into our factions with tiny differences, that we’ve forgotten there’s a whole other world of peoples and cultures and societal models that have been explored in our collective history than the Roman ones.  And multitudinous ways of governing and self governing within communities to explore.  We’ve been conquered and domesticated and turned into the perfect slaves who don’t even know that we’re slaves.  We’re living and propogating the culture and history of the murderers of our ancestors.  We’ve been trying to fit our diverse and magnificent ways of being in the world into a very narrow Roman paradigm.  We believe that we have to be ‘made’ to do the right thing, and forced to learn.  We’ve bought our educations, that teach us that there is an empirical way to view the universe, and you have to go to school and learn at your appropriate age and level, in order to obtain the keys to the magical levels.  We’re the victims of a very whitecentric, Roman, hierarchical, victors perspective on the world and its victims.

Meanwhile, on the rest of the planet, while Rome has been perfecting the art of colonizing our landscapes and our minds……..India has always been, and will continue to always be, the heart and soul of our collective spirituality on the planet.  Even Rome couldn’t conquer India.  The English, who thought they’d colonized India, found that in the end, India had far more impact on them, than they had on India.  A rich and womblike melting pot for religion and spirituality from the beginning, India has taught us time and time again, how every spirituality can find its commonality and connection with every other……..if it has the courage.  During the ‘Dark Ages’ in Europe, India had a rough young king that decided that if he picked one religion it would result in war, so instead he created a university, and invited religious representatives from all over the world to come and find what they had in common.  And they’re still doing it to this day.  The Middle East was in the height of the blossoming of it’s civilization during the dark ages also, developing maths and astronomy, and numerous other philosophies and civilized pursuits.  The Mongolians scared the crap out of Europe, and used their wild natures and horses, to create the greatest nomadic empire that ever was.  All through the South Pacific, Polynesians were forming all sorts of civilizations and self sustaining societies, having performed incredible feats of sailing that have only recently been proven.  In Australia, there were over 600 sovereign indigenous nations and languages spoken, there was sea trade, and permanent settlements where climate allowed, advanced cultural and societal bonds, a rich spirituality that is current to this day, an intricate structure of trade and marriage and ceremony, and alternative forms of land management all over the country.  They also built the oldest known manmade structures, the fish traps of Brewarrina, 50,000 years ago.  North and South America was covered in a rich and diverse civilization with cities, and trade, and civilization based on cohesion and harmony with nature.  Even more cultures and languages and lifestyles were explored, with often a circle of council employed to self govern, recognizing absolutely everyone and everything as equally important to the wheel of creation.  China had an intricate civilization exploring medicine, astronomy and time, on a whole other level to the Romans and Greeks, that is only just beginning to be fully understood, as did the Mayans.  All throughout the world are pockets of tribes, cultures, societies, and civilizations, based around different ideals and navigations than the Romancentric view that we’ve all been born into. 



But to fully explain the heinous crime that I believe the Roman Catholic Empire has imprinted on our collective soul, I really need to go back a bit, and relate to you a brief history of the world, from my perspective.  A lot of modern science has been so henpecked by a querulous and jealous religious aristocracy, that it hasn’t been able to fully discuss and explore the issues of….for instance….evolution.  In a heavily Romanicised and thereby Catholicised society, just to discover evolutionary patterns, can be considered heresy, and an aggressive stance against god. 

So lets just start with life.  In the beginning was the Big Bang, or thought, or god, or a schism in the singularity, or maybe even a black hole de-engulfing itself of all the life it swallowed.  Whatever it was, it sent life exploding from that singulariy into all directions.  It richocheted and bounced into itself and created suns and orbits.  And around our sun, all the bits bumped to the point that earth could exist, at just the perfect distance from the sun for life to begin.  Life emerged from the warm soup of our seas, and then found a whole heap of different ways of being out of water.  Most of which have been dinosaur like for the majority of earths lifespan so far.  Some creatures, like the dolphins and whales, had come out of the water and become pig like creatures that lived on the shores, and decided that back in the sea was actually where they wanted to be, and went back.  And still have the remnants of their skeletons and arms and legs and digits that they grew like us, before they returned.  Some of those pig like creatures became elephants and other mammals, and other little mousy creatures became our early ancestors.  Our little strain of humanity branched off from the chimpanzees, but most recently the Benobo monkeys, a matriarchal society that solves all their problems with sex.  Some time after the split from the Benobo’s, we decided to try and walk, and as we continued this trend, we also started thinking more, and increasing the sizes of our brains.  These two events combined to make our heads grow, while our pubic bones couldn’t get any bigger, or we’d fall over.  So we adapted and evolved by birthing our babies about 9 months before they would have been born before these changes.  And then we had to adapt to bond, and create rewards for bonding, so that we’d hold our babies close enough that they’d survive. 

Early in our collective infancy, we can trace our ancestry back to 7 women, to whom we’re all related.  Even though many cultures (like the Chinese) like to believe that they’re a separate arm of evolutionary progression, modern DNA lore has led us to the feet of these seven women, who were the mothers of the migration throughout our worlds continents, as Pan Gaia continued its split from it’s original unified land mass.  With an unsteady climate, and ice ages coming on in the seeming blink of an eye and eating land with ice, our early populations were all nomadic, travelling with migrations and the cycle of the seasons.  Oral traditions and hand held icons were all that could fit in the travelling kit of a nomad.  Flowing on a route through powerful ley lines and sacred stones set to tell the time and the seasons, as well as weather and food sources.  And then in the Middle East, a group of our ancestors discovered the early form of wheat, and how it could be used to eat, and from there, how it could be propogated.  And something that has puzzled me for a long time occurred.  They decided to settle.  To stay in one spot.  Despite the migratory paths of their fellow humans, and a rather extended period of hardship, starvation, and privation, some of them endured nonetheless, to claim the title of settler. 

And the trend took off.  And wheat became connected with agriculture and domestication, and took an equally migratory path around the planet. Just recently, a mad genius friend of mine, who’s given this issue similar deep thought, suggested that perhaps our ancestors settled, so that they could understand the stars.  When you think of our early mothers and fathers, spending their days employed in the human animal arts, and by nights sitting round fires…….the great and sparkling innumerable lights in the sky must have provided endless fascination, as they still do.  And how they moved, both during the night, and through the seasons.  Maybe the desire to understand the movements of the heavens was enough of a motivation for a mob of them to decide to stay put.  Maybe near the early form of wheat, was also an early form of a stone calendar or clock as well. 



But whatever the reason to settle, once that objective had been achieved, one of the first lessons learned, was how changing the soil and disrupting the layers of humus and bacteria, changed a fertile patch from lush to denuded and infertile, in a matter of years.  In Platos time, when there was still enough room for the settlers and the nomads to coexist, he mentioned the spread of erosion and infertility in the wake of the agriculturalists.  It’s no coincidence that all the early human settlements are now in the middle of deserts…..  After settling, the next problem to solve was how to keep acquiring land, in order to keep supplying the food for the people who decided to hang up their nomadic skins, and take to the agricultural life.  Often this land happened to be in the migratory transits of the still majority of nomadic cultures, and before they knew it, the early agriculturalists started to have to think about creating some kind of strong arm force, in order to keep growing their lands and ability to produce food in a settled way.  And yet another art of the settler started to become known.  That of keeping records.  When you lived in a town that grew to a city and had the room to store things, all sorts of things started being created, in order to keep our storage rooms full.  Like any good animals, when we had the space to collect for the winter, we found we were more industrious than expected.  And a lot of our early records were the story of this monumental time in our history, the transition from nomadic to settled. 

Early scrolls told of the change of culture from nomadic to settling dynasties.  Many of those scrolls made it to the Old Testament, talking of the black tents of the desert nomads, and I’ve heard it argued that the story of Cain and Abel was the tussle between the nomad and the settler.  Cain had the fruit of the nomad – a goat, whilst Abel had the fruit of the settler – fruit and vegetables, and the new agricultural god made short thrift of the nomad. 

Having the room to acquire meant that we could start collecting all sorts of things, one of which was the slaves that we took from the lands that we conquered, that helped to grease the wheels of the growth of civilization.  And ultimately has resulted in where we find ourselves today, as the western overlords of a sick and injured world, where all the things that we own that have ended up owning us……..would be totally obselete in a nomadic world.  And we’re all slaves, to the work and the dollar offered up as a reward to settling down.  Can you tell me how many shops and business would exist, if we could only own what we could carry in our nomadic kit?  No room for whitegoods on the back of a camel along with the yurt. 

Probably most of the conquered lands and peoples were bonded family groups and tribal nations, springing from a reflection of the nature they witnessed themselves as part of, and a semi nomadic lifestyle.  Around Europe, The Middle East, and North Africa, where the Romans spent their main efforts in land acquisition, they were encountering our white indigenous ancestors.  As strongly bonded and connected spiritual people, and a reflection of the chaotic harmony and consciousness present in the whole cosmos .  And on meeting the Roman Empire in the form of it’s deadly army, they were among the first to learn to respect the might of organized separation.  Its ordered genocide in the hands of mercenaries and slaves, held together by the power of the dollar.  All in the interest of growth at all costs.

When I first started piecing this alternative history together, I felt the rage of my ancestors singing deep in my blood, reminding me of all the different faces that the Romans wore in their dedicated attack on the nomad, and the conscious connection to land and family. Turning life blood and land into acquisitions and hollow wealth. Howling like a banshee for the blood of  millions of innocents to this day, spilled on a weeping world.  The cream and perfection, the full blooded and fertile mothers and fathers, and brave strong youth, would have been the ones that went into battle.  Leaving the very old and infirm and young behind them.  To mourn and grieve the promise of their future that was lost. 

And now I’m just angry.  I feel like we’ve all been ripped off.  In continued thought and conversation on this topic, it occurs to me that Australia, Canada and America were really the culmination and birth of the Western Roman Civilisation.  All these countries are constructs, that reflect our Roman calendar.  The Romans decided that the world started in 0 Before Christ, and our white colonies start on specific dates.  Colonies of Europeans that violently carved their nation on the backs of genocide, slavery, and prison states, we made the names up for them, as well as the identities of the people.  All the other civilizations have lands and histories of their own, yet the largest groups of westerners live in countries that are Christian constructs.  Australia isn’t named Australia by the people that lived here for  50,000 years or more……and I’m ashamed to say that I don’t even know if there is a name agreed on by the indigenous folk of this land I’m standing on.  But I do know that Captain Cook called it terra nullis – another latin term – for empty land.  Just like America wasn’t the name given by the folk of that land, or  Canada.   It’s almost like we’ve twice removed ourselves from our original cultures.  Firstly, by leaving our original homes and living in a Roman society, and not having them represented or speaking our languages, or knowing our ancestry or stories, but secondly by moving to a country whose name we’ve made up to reflect our modern stories. 

So now I’m a Friesian, living in Australia ( which is actually not it’s real name), and being educated, trained, and shaped by a Roman Catholic Western culture.  How can us white fellas in lands with made up names, that have been viciously wrestled from their original inhabitants, ever feel complete pride and love for our history?  Or connection to our land and culture?  Honour in our family history??



Now that we’ve let television into our lives again, on the promise that there’s about to be an explosion of more everyday and real people covering news, humanity, global culture, the environment, and green technology, I’ve discovered National Indigenous Television.  And I’ve been crying a lot.  So beautiful to see and hear and witness so many stories.  And I’ve been so inspired by seeing how the indigenous folk all over the world are coming together to help, inspire, network, support, educate, and love.   And late one night, when I’d fallen asleep putting the babies to bed, and then woke up to a sleeping house and couldn’t get back to sleep again, I sat up watching NIT.   And there was this beautiful documentary about Native Spirit ( I think) Productions, who specialize in creating movies and short films in language.  And they were all talking about how important it is for a sense of identity and belonging, to hear and speak your language, and see your culture represented. 

And I don’t know about you, but I’m off on a quest to discover my identity.  To learn my language.  And my cultural stories.  And De-Romanise my life in every way possible.  There was this thing I saw on facebook a while ago that really grabbed me.  And it was something about how the ancestors want us to remember them, and that we’re the result of a thousand generations of their love………..and I’m gonna find me some of that love. 

As for the Roman Catholic Western Civilisation……..I think some apologies are in order for a start.  And I think maybe opening up those catacombs under the Vatican, and returning all our treasures and secrets and lost scrolls, along with a humble apology, and giving up of all stolen treasures and gold as at least part reparation, would be a good start.   Maybe some confessions of their dastardly deeds in the past, and some recognition of the real origins of Christianity.  Maybe they could take a leaf out of that Indian Princes book, and create a space where all religions can come together and work out a wholistic way forward between them all.  And use that obvious great power and persuasion they have for GOOD in the world!  The confessions of an ex- conqueror.  Or something like that.  And maybe some of those stolen goods could be used to fund great cultural centres all round the world, especially in the places where they’ve done the most damage, to rekindle some of the love of those thousands of generations of ancestors with whom we’ve lost touch. 

And maybe we can all now get back to the business of finding where we belong on the planet, and finding our communities, and speaking our languages, and telling our stories, and exploring our pasts and the spectacular array of our possibilities for how to do it all…….better. 








Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Ode to Sovereignty Day....

I got to the ripe old age of 27 without hardly ever seeing a black fella. Or woman for that matter. I remember the first time I saw a black African, whose skin was shining blue black, and I couldn’t help but stare, as I’d never seen anyone like him. I grew up around the Blue Mountains, spent lots of time in Sydney, travelled up the east coast, moved to South Australia and lived in the hills……and barely a black fella was seen. I didn’t even know that this country had been populated by indigenous people until year 5 at school, when we had a relief teacher who read us a story about Pemulwuy. It came as a bit of a shock. And not long after I was watching telly with my stepfather, and saw on the news the Tent Embassy in Canberra, with some fascinating looking coloured people, and when my stepfather explained they were asking for land rights and they were the traditional owners, it made complete and instant sense to me that if the land had been theirs, we should just give it back!! He didn’t quite agree. I heard vague stories about how they got all sorts of special attention, and got more money from the D.S.S. than anyone else, and had special services at schools and universities, and got free land and houses and all sorts of myths that typically abound about people that are ‘different’ (like refugees). I also got warned about Redfern in my forays to Sydney, and told that I’d be in danger if I went there. I had a friend years later who went to university and stayed with a white woman in Redfern, and I went to visit her quite regularly, but even then, the indigenous folk were kind of shadowy background figures that didn’t really impact on me, except for my fascination when I saw them. I was also brought up a Mormon, with it’s inbuilt racism, and taught from day dot that black people were somehow inferior – Cain’s punishment had been to be turned into a black man, and the creation myth of my religion stated that all black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American and folk other than white fella’s, were getting punished for being fence sitters in heaven, by being sent to earth as a colour other than white. So when I did see an indigenous person, I found it hard to not leave with a slight distaste in my mouth…they were somehow more uncouth, animal like, dirtier and unknown in a potentially scary way.


I left my childhood religion and realized my taught racism (sexism, homophobia, etc), and did my best to transcend it. After leaving home I spent some time in the area around Bathurst, where there was still the odd Aboriginal. I hung out with an indigenous girl at school for a while, and was surprised that there was not much difference, and she didn’t really want to talk about it much. As I got older I hung out with dykes and witches and goddess worshippers and started hearing better things about the indigenous folk of this land, but not as much as I did about Native Americans and Eastern mystics and Voodoo religions. Then nearing the age of 28, and Saturn Return, I decided it was time to check out the desert. It was time to take an initiatory trip through the middle of the country in the middle of summer and really learn about the country I lived in, as well as facing my fears and setting myself a challenge. To tell the truth, I didn’t really think much about the indigenous folk I might meet, or even realize that I was about to enter the main country that had been left to them to inhabit, after the white folk had divided and conquered the more alluring coastal and farming areas.


So off I set, car serviced, spares onboard, lots of water stored, and all my hippy and witchy artifacts along for the ride. The first place I stopped after Adelaide was Port Augusta, where there were more black fella’s around than I’d ever seen in my life. I had no idea what to do so I just smiled, and got lots of smiles back. They were in fact the only people who did smile at me, and made happy comments as I passed them. I was staying at a youth hostel, when I started getting the warnings that I became used to as my journey unfolded. I was told to stay away from a certain pub in town cause it was a black pub, and they’d probably either harass me, steal my money, or try to rape me. And also to stay away from a bridge on the other side of town cause that’s where the indigenous kids hung out and jumped off to swim in the surrounding waters, and that was also a dangerous area. Port Augusta was also the first place I came across where valuable assets – like the drive through bottle shop, and a very luxurious caravan park which I camped at for a while – were surrounded by high razor wire….suggesting that violence occurred that the white fellas needed protecting from. So I kept smiling at the black fella’s, and went and parked my car surreptitiously near the bridge and watched all the kids jumping off the bridge and having a ball. There was a certain un-domesticatedness about them that I found really attractive, but I was still very new to the whole situation and unsure about everything.


I guess it was around this time that I realized there was a whole other part to my journey that I hadn’t suspected before. I’d never really had firsthand experience of Aboriginals, and had heard a lot of guff, which I knew from life experience was most likely exaggerated or just untrue, and also realized that I knew nothing, and that any preconceptions I had would most likely be far from the mark. So I decided it was time to learn about this amazing land I was entering, and it’s traditional care takers, without making any judgements at all until I felt like I’d learnt from my own experiences.


After a few days I got ready to head into the desert….in my 84 Gemini that was tending to overheat, afraid of the heat, afraid of the unknown, afraid of being on my own, afraid of all sorts of things. For about the first hour driving out of Port Augusta towards Coober Pedy, I was shaking….legs barely managing to stay on the pedals…totally terrified of my big adventure into the great unknown.


Every petrol station I stopped at on the way up, when the attendant saw I was a white woman travelling on my own, took it on himself or herself to warn me that I was entering dangerous territory, and I got told over and over again that if I saw any black fella’s on the road, even if it looked like I hit them, to just keep going and not stop, cause they’d steal, rape then murder me as soon as I did. I was quite bewildered by this, and realizing I still knew nothing, just decided to keep observing and see what panned out.


In Coober Pedy there was a lot more unhappy, obviously drunk and scarred indigenous folk on the streets. I watched the locals treat them like scum and animals, and the tourists try to deal with them and have an ‘authentic’ outback experience. A lot of Aboriginals were asking for money, and a lot of locals were disparagingly telling them to fuck off and get drunk somewhere else. I was still paying attention, but also a bit distracted by the international tourists that I was bumping into and my own trip of self realization and fear facing. From Coober Pedy I went out to Uluru. It was suprising how few black fella’s were actually at or around the luxury resort of Yulara, and how easy it was to have a totally white experience of the heart of the country without an indigenous person in sight. The guides were white, the hoteliers were white, even the shit kickers were white – though they were all very happy to be selling Aboriginal paintings and boomerangs and all the other tourist clap trap that suggested we were an integrated country that honoured it’s original inhabitants………


Anyway, if I were to tell you every story that happened for me to form a conclusion about the indigenous inhabitants of this land, it would end up being a very very long story, and I really want to just tell a simple story for this day in our country – Invasion or Survival or Sovereignty Day – otherwise known to rather heartless folk who don’t mind celebrating genocide, as Australia Day. 


In Alice Springs I learnt a lot. I met a lot of racist white folk and a few beautifully behaved white folk. And I met lots of chocolate brown folk in varying states of sobriety, and totally understood the desire to be out of it, in the face of so many inequalities and downright disgusting behaviors of many of the white residents in town. I heard stories from all sides of the fence and understood them. I noticed the fact that the town existed in unofficial apartheid. There were black taxi’s and white taxi’s, black toilets and white toilets, black pubs and white pubs, and a whole heap of extra special rules that were designed to keep indigenous folk out of shops. And on my way out to work at a station as a Jilleroo, my car broke down and about 4 white folk, and 1 very nervous indigenous man, stopped to ask me if I wanted help. I asked them all to ring the station I was on my way to, and get them to come help me, and out of all those people, it was only the indigenous man who actually rang. 


SNAPSHOT......... I’m standing at a big row of phones in Alice Springs about to make a phone call, when a black man walked up to me not speaking much English. But his name was Leonard Possum, and he wanted me to help him use the phone so he could ring his woman, and he didn’t know how a phone worked. I was delighted to help, and he gave me the number on some paper and the coins for the phone, and we walked two phones down to where he wanted to ring. In the space of that time, two very white men obviously leant out from their phones to glare at him and watch his every step. The harsh woman who I was working for stomped up to us while I was dialing, and started speaking to him like he was a recalcitrant, deaf and dumb child…. “Where are you from?! Where’s your community?! You go ring them and get them to help you?! Leave her alone?!” To which I of course replied, “I’m doing this gentleman a favour, which I’m happy to do, and you can bloody well leave him alone!” Leonard was kind of cringing the whole time we stood there, and we were watched by about another 4 white men the whole time I was helping him. I felt ashamed.


Overall, I saw the white folk using a few black fella’s getting drunk and showing some undomesticated behaviours, as an excuse to act very very badly……. Bone jarringly badly. As if they weren’t even human.

SNAPSHOT......... The same harsh woman I worked for who had me busy in my Jillerooing duties of cleaning her house, decided to take me to her daughter’s, so I could clean her house too. On the way there she threw a beer bottle out the window, saying “We can blame the boongs for that one!!”, with a jackal like leer on her face. At her daughters house, after a day of cleaning in 50 degree heat, we barbecued by a waterhole. They told me with glee it was a sacred men’s site, as they threw more bottles in the water. The sweet faced young white couple were talking about how good it was that the canoe tree in Goolwa had been ringbarked. “It’s about time someone got the black bastards back!!” They said. Got them back for what? For being victims of genocide?? For walking nervous and shaky through the streets, unwilling to look at anyone?? On the way home, the woman I was working for saw a flock of galah’s, and sped up to try and hit one, managing to kill one on the bullbar, where it got stuck, head lolling and feathers flying, right in front of my window. I felt sick and ashamed. 


So many other things happened. I met an indigenous man called Billy White, who wore a white cowboy hat and white clothes and lived on White Street. He was the most gentle, philosophical, thoughtful and compassionate man I met in Alice Springs. In lots of places actually. And a sweet white hippy woman who treated the black fella’s like absolute gold, and gave me a beautiful example of how best to treat the native owners of the land.

And then I’d had my fill, had been around town for over a month, and decided it was time to head up through the middle and then strike for the east coast. On my way out of town, about 11 o’clock at night, I got overtaken by a low slung holden, spewing smoke from it’s exhaust, packed tight with huge hulking people. Not far down the road I wasn’t surprised to see them pulled over by the side of the road, and would you believe it, but all the warnings flooded my head and I went to keep driving. Till I came to, remembered all the things I saw and people I’d met and stories I’d collected, and I pulled over to the side of the road, did a u turn, and headed back. Where I met 5 huge indigenous men, who asked me if I could give them a lift to their community so they could get help to come back and tow the car. I told them I only had room for one passenger, (hippy artifacts take up a lot of room you know!) and they nudged forward an old fella who got in the front passenger seat. Before we drove off, we introduced ourselves, (he didn’t speak much English) and I said to him, “You’re welcome in my car. There’s my cigarettes, and there’s my water, and there’s the music if you want to listen to it, just make yourself at home." Nearly the whole way to his community, about 100kms or so, he kept telling me in every way he could think of, how alike we were. He was grabbing my arm and saying “You’re white”, and then grabbing his own arm and saying “I’m black”, and then waving his fingers between us saying “We’re the same…..we’re the same”. I grinned. And I laughed. And I felt such overwhelming gratitude that this heartfelt man wanted me so much to know how similar we were. We got to his community and before he got out of the car, he grabbed my hand and kissed it. I instantly kissed his hand back, and we both parted richer and warmer and happier from the whole experience.


And I’d like to leave my tale on that note. A perfect metaphor for the whole trip, and what I learnt from it. My family and I have gone on to travel to a lot more places and have had a lot more experiences, and every single one of them has been respectful, connected, and significant. The native caretakers of this land are some of the most beautiful, deep, and spiritual people I’ve ever had the privilege to meet. And I’m real glad that my skin colour doesn’t prejudice black fella's as much as a lot of white fella’s let skin colour prejudice them, to connect, and share, and increase understanding and awareness.


Sunday, January 11, 2009

Letter to the Zeitgeist Movement





Firstly, I contemplated how many other movies and movements have similar aims of saving the world in their particular way... For example "What the Bleep" and "Down the Rabbit Hole" and "The Secret" are dealing with similar topics, but in a very Quantum Physics kind of way. Showing how our thoughts create our realities, and how this concept has been used by a few to keep us buying the whole monetary/political system. Also how our focus on it creates a hell of a lot more of it, and we'd be better off to visualise and focus on more positive realities if we want to live in them. Fritjoff Capra wrote a book called "The turning point of civilization" in the 70's, which goes into details of the great bodies in our society - law, religion, science, medicine - and how they thought they were doing a good job by taking away an element to study, and thinking this would help them understand the whole. But you kinda have to study the whole to understand the whole. He also explained how it was all falling apart, and it would be the alternative cultures who would show the way into a new reality.

I also thought about the community movement the world over, where people share resources, land and ideas, and have been doing so since the 70's, in an effort to learn how to share and get along with the earth as well as other people. A rather famous and successful example of this is Damanhur in Italy, where they have thier own form of currency, and are nearly totally self sufficient. Everything is done with a sense of reverence for the thing made, and where it's come from, and they eat together, make thier own clothes, grow thier own food, and have an outdoor temple with huge pillars where they study and co-create a spiritual belief system based around self and responsibility.

Another important and relevant movement is the homebirthing movement, where people are striving to reclaim birth from unnecessary medical intervention, and work out the best way to welcome people into the world and educate them for a healthy life. There is also a movie connected to all of this - "What babies want" - that brings into focus how we presently give birth, which is often highly medical and disempowered. We all know the cute story of putting a baby sheep with humans as it's first contact, in which case the sheep bonds with humans and thinks it is one - what is the impact of taking baby humans and putting them with machines??


But this is all fairly modern - what about examples from the past about all the issues you raise? The indigenous folk of Australia have been living in a cash free, resource rich society for over 50.000 years before the white fella's got here, as well as the indigenous folk of most other countries. They have a lot to teach about how to live with the land and each other as well. For that matter, us white fella's have this knowledge too if you look far enough back. For a good 60,000 years pre about 4,000 BC we mostly lived in earth mother focused, matrifocal, non-violent societies. L.Robert Keck wrote about this in 'Sacred Eyes', and he also wrote an essay about how humans aren't by nature violent. It's all a fairly recent invention.

I totally agree that if you gave folk all they needed for a comfortable life, as well as the freedom to find thier individual passions and selves, we'd live in a wonderful society. It would be arranged in as many different ways as there are shades of colour in the spectrum, cause one of the best things about humans is their diversity. One of the best things about everything for that matter. I personally think one of our greatest mistakes is to seperate ourselves from our planet and all the other species, as it's so obvious that we've all got the same bits as the other animals. And I've often wondered about the frontal lobe - which most scientists believe to be where our consciousness comes from - when dolphins and whales have huge ones!!!

And I reckon there's also a lot to learn from the Friesians. When the Romans did a survey of the tribes in Europe in 0 AD, they did a very complete job, and the Friesians are the only ones still in the same place, and speaking the same language! 700 years before the French Revolution, the Friesians were practicing autonomous anarchy in essence - there was no ruling class, monarchy, or political system - they all practiced thier own beliefs in their own way, and respected everyone elses right to do the same. There is a saying that every Friesian was born a noble, and basically they were a peaceable race - unless you messed with thier freedom. And then hell hath no fury like a Friesian unfree!!!!

That's another group that have parrallels to the Zeitgeist movement - Crimethinc - an anarchist group aiming towards sovereignty and autonomy. "Days of War, Nights of Love" is definitely worth a good read.

And a modern concept coined by our local governments (they're not all bad!!) called 'community capacity building'. This basically recognises that all individuals are equal, and have thier own particular skill to add to the whole. Also acknowledges that all systems are based on heirarchys which don't work, and only disempower folk from finding their own 'thing'. My partner and I started a market in the hills that changed our world, based on this concept.

So all in all, I totally agree with most of the concepts in Zeitgeist, but you don't have to totally reinvent the wheel, as there are a lot of similar groups and beliefs going on, that have a lot to say about where to from here. I don't necessarily believe the only solution is a completely scientific and technical one - as I've mentioned, there is a lot to learn from our collective past.

And as Ghengis Kahn illustrated with his dying breaths, we are stronger together than apart. Trying to work out how to divide his huge empire between his many sons, he took a stack of sticks and held them together, and asked his sons to break them, which they couldn't. Then he pulled out one stick and asked his sons to break it which of course they could. And he told them to remember that lesson. Together they were strong, but alone they were easily broken.

As you may have noticed, I have a tremendous amount to say about all of this, and would be more than happy to elucidate on any of the points I've raised. Hope this is usefull!!