A number of papers in the Quadrant Special Edition, August 2023, critique the idea of sacred sites, and especially the anthropology that Aboriginal tribes lived on the same land for 50,000 (it has reached 60,000 + now) years with a continuity of sacred knowledge being passed down for tens of thousands of years making this the “oldest living culture,” and therefore highly special. Hence, special treatment must be given in deference. Only a slight reflection in epistemology, the theory of the justification of knowledge claims, should give pause to this. How could this possibly be known, merely from the archaeological records which exist? The time period of 60,00 years is vast, and debates exist about what humans were doing at that time, as well as archaic human subspecies such as the Neanderthals. Do we really know that in that time other human groups did not co-occupy this land mass?
Peter Purcell, “The Ruse of Tradition,” shows that there has been evolution and changes even within contemporary times. As he says, what is known about the past conflicts with the romantic Leftist notions founding the Voice: “Highly romanticised and poorly informed views about traditional Aboriginal culture now prevail among the general public, including many Aboriginal Australians of mixed heritage. In most descriptions, Aboriginal culture is barely recognisable as anything resembling its traditional pre-contact forms, even allowing for normal cultural evolution. The realities of the pre-colonial Aboriginal past, with all its hardship and violence, the revenge killings and infanticide, the sexual abuse and sorcery, have been replaced with visions of a noble and idyllic society, free of the avarice and inequality deemed characteristic of contemporary capitalist Australian society. All ills are said to have been learned from the “invaders”, without whom Eden would not have been lost. These views have become the popular wisdom, are ubiquitous in the media, and are now taught as fact in schools. This pessimistic view of Australia’s founding AngloCeltic cultural heritage has been developing and deepening since the 1960s. Suffice to say here that this intellectual drift—demise might be a better term—involves a loss of faith in Western culture, religion and technology, and a turning back to nature, even a worshipping of it: what historian Geoffrey Blainey called the Great Seesaw. The idolising of nature and “native” cultures has deep roots in the Western psyche: unhappy urban intellectuals hate the “city” and bemoan the ruination of man’s inherent nobility by Western civilisation. Aboriginal people, especially those in more remote settlements, are seen to be closer to nature, with a culture that is socialistic in its sharing and caring. In this paradisial perspective, it is only a return to country and the reclaiming of culture, in the imagination if not in reality, that will restore a natural nobility to urban Aborigines and ensure a life free of burden or want. This, of course, is the age-old urban intellectual fantasy— flight from the despoiling city to the forests of his origins will restore man’s soul—but the fantasy is now pervasively spread through the broader community. Nowadays, of course, the flight is metaphorical, seeking lift from a constitutionally enshrined Voice, but with Treaty, Reconciliation and Reparation in the wings.”
