This is an interesting and balanced perspective. I get what you're saying about settlers and not judging them. I think for me the issue lies in yhe current prevalence of their continued views toward aboriginal people. Every time I hear racism I feel so disheartened and my thought is always "haven't we done enough damage?". Its time to stop. The aboriginal culture has many wonderful and fascinating ways. We could learn a great deal about kinship, spirituality, community and environmental management if we would just stop with the continued attitude of superiority. Hats off to you for broaching this topic.
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Agree! One of the most interesting things I've learnt about their culture was the purposeful abomination attitude to writing. This was so because the stories and guidance was shared based on merit of whomever was to receive it, so the culture as a whole purposely did not develop a system of writing. Instead a system of stories, symbols and imagery to be understood at many levels and so it was more secure. This is the same as the symbolic language of Western traditions too, it meant to be read at many levels. So for Aboriginal people, before knowledge could be passed down, people had to be assessed by someone who knew, writings could be potentially be shared by anyone and that would potentially be left with people not ready. It was irresponsible then to write because knowledge given to those not ready was considered a danger to their tradition.
That is fascinating. I did not know that the lack of written history was intentional in this way.