I thought it was a good idea at the time...

( My Aromantic Section )   

So today is the last day of Reconciliation Week, but the message is still as clear as any other year. The five dimensions of reconciliation should continue to be brought up in conversation and media reports, especially in the repositioning of the global focus back onto the Black Lives Matter movement. 

In March when COVID-19 began to struggle with the world there were Indigenous voices in the media. Their needs for community isolation were heard across the nation. We heeded the island mentality of isolate and quarantine, and when the virus was here we tried to protect the vulnerable. Because an Aboriginal Elder or Torres Straight Islander Elder is not only a loved member of a family but they are wellsprings of wisdom, knowledge, culture and language. Culture and language that might be rare, becoming rarer. Wisdom and knowledge that will probably be integral to Australia moving into a future of hotter summers and longer fire seasons.    

So I recently found an article that explains so much. Colonial powers have always had a bad history of wiping out Indigenous cultures and peoples all around the world.
Australia was known from early voyages to have unique flora and fauna, and lots of time and money and effort was expended to collect and document it. So basically from the beginning of white settlement there have been prominent botanist, scientific artists and biologists. However there were fewer or less prominent anthropologists around to document the existing cultures of Australia. So much is lost because they weren't around to document what they saw in a trained way while the rest of the whites carved up the land (including whoever was already there). 

Potentially the lack of prominent anthropologist, or the anthropologist's work being disregarded until they moved to more supported subjects, was because of the comments of one man. William Dampier was an explorer, he explored as a pirate and then a privateer but his claim to fame is really because he wrote stuff. He wrote about his experiences and journeys, and because his experience was interesting or unique he became popular and his words were read and favoured. So when he landed in Australia during a voyage and described the people living there his words were read and influenced the minds of those who read them.

Dampier was a Englishman during the first British Empire period (when everything was expanding and they were fighting with other European powers rather than the rebelling colonies) so he was very much in the mindset of 'I am the best' and everything that did not meet current European/British standards was scorned as inferior. Which he did in writing. He wasn't trained for science, he was literally a pirate and seaman. So why did people believe him and let his words choose how they thought of other's they didn't know? because he was popular? because other people believed him? 

I would like to say we are smarter humans now but I just read an article about the danger of celebrities supporting anti-vaccine propaganda. So it seems that if you are popular your words are believed by some which has the potential to severely hurt and kill others. 

Don't let popular people and celebrities make your mind up for you, cause then you are just repeating a circle of mistakes which goes back to 1697 and beyond.