Indigenous Australia: The Tent.

Thanking the traditional owners of the land. 02

 Share / Embed   

The tradition is always to thank the traditional owners of the land for being in the place of gathering. This is a very important part of indigenous culture. In the young white culture (only 6000 years old compared to the indigenous 50,000 years) everything is owned through contract and written law, the landscape is something you build on and nature is a beast to be tamed. In indigenous culture ownership is about guardianship rather than legality.

Ownership is passed through family and tribe not bought and sold to any passer by. The relationship with the land is a relationship with identity, history and culture not a relationship with economics. Indigenous culture has a heritage that lives and breathes within the landscape, a cultue which is part of nature and nature is part of it.

The whitefella sense of time as the clock ticking away, a mechanical measuring out of eternity into the commodity of seconds is not how the culture of the landscape sees time. In Indigenous times, for their are more than one, the past lives in the present and so it is right, when walking the landscape to thank the traditional owners for their courtesy.

This is not just a form of words but a deep respect for a history and culture that is what it means to be indigenous.