|
February 9, 2008
A quote from Paul Keating's Redfern speech:
I said we non-indigenous Australians should try to imagine the Aboriginal view. It can't be too hard. Someone imagined this event today, and it is now a marvellous reality and a great reason for hope. There is one thing today we cannot imagine. We cannot imagine that the descendants of people whose genius and resilience maintained a culture here through 50 000 years or more, through cataclysmic changes to the climate and environment, and who then survived two centuries of dispossession and abuse, will be denied their place in the modern Australian nation. We cannot imagine that.
That phrase "we non-indigenous Australians should try to imagine the Aboriginal view" is apt, given the way Indigenous artists have painted the landscape or the country. We have great difficulty in learning to read the country from their traditional perspective. We could imagine that point of view though.
|
