As the blacks and the greys with the Browns and the bays feed in the moonlight spell.
The eerie clink of the hobble chains
Comes clear on the crystal air.
As the cattle tramp out wide of the camp and stare at the fire there.
The peg-dogs Crouch as they watch and wait to keep the mob at bay
As an old dog lies with drowsy eyes and dreams of a distant day
And I dream too, of another night many years ago when a nervous mob with hearts athrob was pacing to and fro.
As I sat alone by the fire-side watching the moon appear
An owl swept by with a piercing cry and the cattle swung off in fear.
As I call to my mates and spring for my horse I saw the first fence fall as the frenzied feet of the cattle beat. No hope of stopping all
The air soon filled with a thundering roar of hoves on the powdering ground.
And the boss cried out “it’s a desperate ride but we’ve got to turn them around”.
We caught them up in the timbers edge after following them through the trees. I tighten my grip on reins and whip and press closer with my knees.
Their heaving backs like ocean waves rolled in the moonlight glow as the weak were spent they fell and went under the hooves below.
The boss and Mike, farther on than me, were swinging on to lead,
when I heard a scream, and the living stream flowed over one fallen steed.
The boss stopped his horse and rushed to Mike and lifted the trampled head. Then called to me.” Dont stop to see. I fear mike is dead.”
We chase them down to the treeless plain.
As whips rang out in command. As they jostled and bawled and stumbled and sprawled then started again alarmed.
But we held them in as their longhorns clashed, as they staggered then swung about.
and they puffed and sighed and propped and shied. But we held them with whip and shout.
We buried Mike in the town next day, good stockman he had been but rather sly with a shifty eye. If you know just what I mean.
A week went by we were droving still one man and one horse less when a car drew up with two strangers spry, spruce in their city dress.
They asked for Mike and the boss replied that the man they sought was dead. “we wanted him for a murder grim”. the old man then said.
“You’re a week too late” the boss remarked for sentence has been passed. And the cattle trod with the wrath of God on a dreadful night that’s past.
There’s a homeless wind on the plain tonight and the ring of the drover’s bell and I hear as before The stampede roar the night that Michael Fell.
Jean Graham
This poem belongs to my daughter in law Lauren Vagg’s grandmother.
She was born on the Plains. Lived her early years at “Pine Park” Jerilderie
Published this poem in a collection with her Mother Elizabeth called Verse of the Riverina in 1975
She married a Thomas from Lake Cargelligo =. She has since deceased. She spent some time with my wife teaching her her poetry skills. She did this to help her with her brain damage. I was so impressed with this work “stampede” .
This poem was written and recited about 2013. It was posted to YouTube at that time. It can be found under my YouTube name Edvagg
We are all on the blunder bus.
All brandishing a blunderbuss a blunderbuss. Blowing out our brains to the strains of "We shall overcome" There's a blunderbuss of regulations
Coming from nervous nations Be aware, cosmic care Is there The force that sets the course The unconscious cosmic influence Surges through humanity. Devoid of vanity Everybody cheers the blundering bus.
There's very few jeers for the blundering bus Science drives the blundering bus Its an atomic powered blunderbuss Not the gun-powdered one of old Ignorance is onboard the blundering bus Parliamentary Acts are a blunderbuss of regulations They're coming from nervous nations All designed to deploy and destroy opponents that annoy Don't despair, cosmic care Is there. The force that sets the course The unconscious cosmic course Surging through humanity. Devoid of vanity Sages throughout the ages have written and still do With this power of intuition often thought taboo, pages and pages of music and verse From their pen to you Steering us from the god of reason Throughout every season.
Here, from my pen to you
without further ado:
I'm cold in this cocoon of warmth. I'm deflated in this pumped up world. I'm not worshipping the god of reason I'm considered unreasonable. I'm looking in a cave but finding no monsters. I'm looking to the mountains and see no gods. The ancient spirits have abandoned us disbelievers. No ancient altars of sacrifice to appease the gods. But there are sacrifices. With a stroke of a pen more powerful than a bolt of lightning a rainforest is sacrificed to the god of reason.
There's no native gods to pull us into line. To smote us with plagues. To point the bone at our unearthly throne. They have been disposed of Dispossessed. Dismissed from their custodial duties. There's great fears for the land they nurtured well The land despairs Rainfall repairs.
With the Gods gifts of bounteous rain What do we do? Inflict more pain What do we do? Gain more gain For the gravy train Its reasonable to run with the gods gifts Its reasonable to run down rangelands Its reasonable to run with excesses Run a race horse Run off to the races Rearrange your faces Run off the rails
Now, out of their twiggy forest pop holes. Comes the afflicted addicted depicted as lost souls The God of reason,* our new mythical monster In the form of a blind mole surges forth Emerges from the Underground it haunts Usurps these lost souls primitive urges And begins its scourges . Like gaunt emaciated sheep they are sacrificed Captured for the chop Drained of every drop of godliness Resort to splurges depraved urges. Reasonableness resurges No hunt, no hounds. Nature is outward bound In the automated towns. Insulated from the dust storms, norms as the earth warms.
Anarchy abounds in the surrounds. Those with compassion are lashed for a lash'n, leaded or beheaded. Their captors kill at will to satisfy an ill -gotten notion that they are the chosen ones with guns. The appointed, anointed sons of reason Commandos commanding in the killing season.
Holy cow! Stop it now! Bond yourself with the benevolent gods. Reconnect with their world, the sod. They're not unreachable. They're are unpreachable. I implore. Adore Restore Their sanctuary, the savannahs, the woodlands, the rivers And the oh so twiggy forests and Twiggy Forrest's plan for unemployed man** The plan, to have everyone work again with dignity. No mentally degraded. No poor bastard parading jaded In prisons yard. Hard drugs Too hard No poor unfortunate.
The Mythical monsters of old who once kept civilisation from shitting in its own nest, are no more. They have been kicked out the door. But we have created a new one. The devils son
The new Mythic God of Reason conquers nature. Changes the season. Extinguishes species. Lives in its own fecies. And ohhh Brother, rapes its own mother. To man its a mental menace. Drugs his panacea. Its menacing, Subjugating, Subordinating and decimating Mother Earth for all its worth. She has taken a stance, Led us on a merry dance. Thrown her humans out of tilter. They smoke with no filter, Create strife. Live life as if there's no tomorrow, Borrow From the future. If you stand in the way of their loot they'll shoot ya.68 Why, why Do the non humans cry? " human nature we hate ya." Well. we have placed ourselves above them,
We don't love them. We have bared the plains And stopped the rains. No more do our rivers deliver The life giver water as they orta. Flood plain gums we plunder. Their death cracks like thunder. Startles the cockatoo community, Trying to maintain its unity, While we march on seemingly free of impunity. But. We are not so, see, the cracks are starting to show. Watch the wind blow, Desiccating the treeless land, Shifting sand, Temperatures climbing, Species declining. Now the first living thing Throws its hat in the ring. The simple cell Is giving us hell, Bacteria and virus Defy us. Think you can kill us with your chemical stew says Giardia the harder ya try The more we defy. We are one with nature, not one above With no love. She is vulnerable. But when push come to shove, She has a winner They eat us for dinner. The virus Defy us She has these little ones, They have big guns, Fighting on a hidden front A guerrilla stunt. They are winning, Thinning Us. Multiple resistance Ensures their persistence. They frustrate those who think they can dominate, Annihilate. Panicky people are just as liable To re-interperate the bible. The lord told moses on the mountain With the mob below idolising. Take this tablet and you will be on the path to ecstasy.
The bibles been skewed. The message has been misconstrued With modern man As it can. Now we are taking ecstasy tablets, This wandering, aimless lost band still idolising.
Reference: **Article by Jared Owens in the Australian 31st July 2014 "Twiggy Forrest plan" * Youtube clip "Approaching the unconscious" by C.arl Yung
It’s not about profit and power; it’s about the people and our precious planet! Join the exhilarating journey of the Plain Train! Puffing Billy, Brilliant Billy, Brainy Billy—schooled at SFX Lake Cargelligo and soaring to the heights of the world’s greatest universities! Now, let’s passionately rally together and awaken the realization that we, as humans, need to rise above our ignorance!
R’esum’e-William Plain. History
2011 Emeritus Professor, Nagoya University of Foreign Studies
1998-2011 Nagoya University of Foreign Studies, professor, Educational Linguistics
1993–98 University of Tsukuba, Japan, professor, Educational Linguistics
1990-93 Niigata University, Japan, professor, ELT
1986-90 University of Torino, Italy, lecturer
1989 Teacher Trainers course at Pilgrims English Language Courses, University of Canterbury (Great Britain)
1987-89 MA TEFL from the University of Reading (thesis: ‘Awareness Training in the MA TEFL classroom’)
1988 University of Reading, Great Britain, teaching on EAP summer course
1985-88 Bank of San Paolo, Torino, Italy, teacher
1980-85 Independent Teaching Service, Geneva, director
1980 Development studies course at the Institut Universitaire des études de développement, University of Geneva (Switzerland)
1978-80 Certificat en français moderne, University of Lausanne (Switzerland)
1978-80 Cours Commerciaux de Genève, Switzerland, teacher
1976-78 University of Minho, Braga, Portugal, lecturer
1977 TEFL course by Pilgrims English Language Courses, University of Canterbury (Great Britain)
1975-78 British Institute, Guimarães, Portugal, teacher-in-charge
1974-75 British Institute, Bologna, Italy, teacher
1972-75 Diplomas (4) in areas of natural medicine from British colleges
1971-73 Export consultancy concerned with SE Asian – Australian trade
1969-70 Australian Department of Trade and Industry, export research
1965-69 BA (major in English Language and Political Science), University of Sydney (Australia)
Dear Bill Plain {my letter to William Plain 8th December 1922 seeking his support}
Re
Letter to Decimillennial Australia:
A Voice to the Nation
This edict of yours so impressed me when I started out to publish a book of Poems and Prose on the demise of the Lachlan Valley in Central Western New South Wales.
I have used it as an adjunct to voicing and reinforcing my opinions by way of poetry and prose.
I did go to school with you at Saint Francis Xavier in Lake Cargelligo.
But a bursary took to you further on.
Sincerely
Edgar Vagg
Ps. I wrote this letter earlier to let you know what I was doing. And now I have this wonderful letter from you. The flooding in the Lachlan is easing. At its hight it broke all records. Broke levies and flooded houses. But mine was high and dry.
{William Plain related to me sixth of December 1922}
Ed,
imagine my surprise to see someone making a contribution for my work on creative discussion, and in doing so providing a connection to a period aeons past when we sat in the same classroom in Lake Cargelligo, as though your gesture somehow establishes that year as a point of departure towards my lifetime of attempting to make sense of a few simple ideas, leading to my website, creativediscussion.org, arising from the insights of thousands of students, and the more recent earthsight.org, attempting to communicate with a much more recalcitrant audience of politicians and decision makers.
Your communication leads me to update my Earthsight project, and, in grateful recognition of your reminder, I have just now added a submission to parliament, “Act on Climate”, that I made in 2020 but hadn’t yet added to earthsight.org. Many thanks.
Eddie Vaggs description of this image (The magpie goose. We don’t usually see them in Cargelligo wetlands. But they were here in numbers in 2019 a particularly wet Summer.) Photo courtesy of Craig Cromlin and bureau of meteorology
Looking through my records, I find this email I am now replying to, and your reading of “A Country under the Weather”, with the insightful observation of “a people who knew that no land is won or lost by war”. In today’s moment of constitutional recognition, the assertion that “no land is lost by war” is a positive reminder that Australia has not been lost by a mere 2 centuries of invader wars, not when 2 millennia, 2 decimillennia, more accurately 6 or even 10 decimillennia, have created a civilisation, an exceptional people, with a unique export, a continental civilisation based on peace (peace between peoples and peace with country), as observed by Bruce Pascoe, as well as the transformative “I am responsible for country” (today we need to add: “and planet”).
In many of my Earthsight papers I have included a reminder from ancient wisdom that “insight is the key to creativity”, easily accessible in the simple process of Earthsight Discussion, a term I now use to refer to “Creative Discussion using Plain Pair Groups”, occasionally wondering whether this practice may unfurl the wings of the butterfly of chaos theory.
“Act on Climate” is my latest attempt to make a little suggestion, while “Decimillennial Australia” (earthsight.org, March 2019) indicates who we need to be listening to: the “product of wounded country”, who might even be helped by helping the larger world to actually see.
Decimillennial Australia has probably done this before, recovering from major catastrophes; surely the separation of Tasmania and loss of coastal plains (continental shelf), what we know as the Deluge, was one, and the present ongoing Anglo deluge calls not simply for a Voice to Parliament, but even more, a “voice to the nation”, First People generated and totally independent, arising from creative interaction within multiple communities, which, who knows, might perhaps be facilitated by the “creative ideas (that) ripple out across communities and organisations” of Earthsight Discussion.
Perhaps planetary change can start down along River Road.
Speaking of rivers, I hope you are not being flooded out at the moment. I’ve never driven along River Road, but using Google Earth I can imagine you may be at considerable risk. Murrin Bridge seems to be even more at risk.
On 30 Oct 2019, at 09:43, Edgar Vagg <edvag@me.com> wrote:
Bill.
I met you in Lake Cargelligo at your mother Molly ne Chanter”s funeral memorial service. Was impressed withCreative Discussion using Plain Pair Groups
Bringing Wisdom into Planetary Leadership
The drought and the severe stress created in the Lachlan Valley has brought a small group, Cargelligo Wetlands together. Conventional meetings are still being held and I will eventually bring up your ideas of plain pair groups. At the moment I have another important agenda. To release my book of poems spanning my life experiences in Lake Lake Cargelligo . I’m working on an EPUB for Apple Books of the contents. It’s poems and prose I have written and gathered together over the years . They are mainly environmental. And push the same agenda as you that humans are stupid. I have mentioned your work from
creative discussions.org. I can send you a link for your perusal. It’s a draft at the moment. Created on Pages on an Apple MacBook Pro laptop. I’m aiming to have an impact on citizens attitude towards global warming with its release. At First an E-book with audio readings of the poems on Apple Books and eventually a hard copy with audio included. I’m including a sample poem in audio in a following email.
Edgar Vagg
703 River Road
Lake Cargelligo
NSW
2672
Phone 0428981287
Billy Plains Edict
This his his letter to Decimillennial Australia.
A Voice to the Nation published in Earthsight.org in March 2019
Description of image by Eddie Vagg (Lake Ballyrogan an original ephemeral lake against the Lachlan Range not far from ‘”Atholstane” Bootawa Road where William Plain was raised. It was converted in the 1950s to Lake Brewster water storage linking it to the Lachlan River.)
The already established Anthropocene Mass Extinction, the 6th major extinction, for which the dominant world civilisation is responsible, is now leading us in the direction of exponential global warming and civilisation collapse, or even worse.
We need help, the world needs help, and the urgent need for long-term global sustainability seems to point to First Peoples, and particularly the Australian indigenous civilisation, as among the few who hold the keys to the future. The very long term continuous and highly successful nature of Australian culture and land management over multiple tens of thousands of years means “Decimillennial Australia” needs to establish a “voice to the nation”, to advise on the best way to transform the totality of our civilisation so as to assure that there can be a future. There is a continuum from homo sapiens sapiens to homo stupidens stupidens which englobes whole cultures, entire continents, over centuries and millennia. Ours, the so-called ‘western civilisation’, in many key respects is at the homo stupidens stupidens end of the spectrum.
(Francis Xavier School Lake Cargelligo. William plane received a bursary from here to further his education.)
The Australian decimillennial culture in its historical dimension is undoubtedly at the homo sapiens sapiens end. I am inviting those in the indigenous community with ‘access’, to reach back beyond 1788, beyond the two centuries of destruction and belittlement, back into the depths of that culture, and bring forth the knowledge, the wisdom, the essence of 100,000 years of an ever-developing culture, community and responsibility for the earth. Today, this century, that knowledge may well be the key to the future, the key to there being a future. The new Australian culture of two centuries, along with that of much of the present world, is destroying our planet. That’s the meaning of the term, ‘the Anthropocene mass extinction’, which has its origins with the industrial revolution – about the time the doctrine of Terra Nullius arrived on Australian shores.
Caption
(Governor Phillip. “We decided to compromise. We keep the land. The mineral rights. Natural resources. Fishing and timber. And in return we will acknowledge you the traditional owners of it”.)
We don’t realise what we have done, and don’t know how to change. But our problem is now the problem of all peoples, those who have caused the present situation, as well as those who have always worked to contain the damage and respect the planet. It is to be hoped that the most ancient of those wisdom cultures, perhaps the most peaceful and the most responsible, can now become the guide that can advise our leaders and our people – and find ways to lead them to listen and be informed. Looking at the world today, much of the planet is the detritus of the brutality of the Western search for domination and conquest – ever perfected by today’s corporatocracy, financeocracy and oligarchy. The Earth herself is now looking to you, to the people who have tended the earth for 100,000 years, spanning geological catastrophes that today we seek to ignore, while closing our eyes to similar ecological catastrophes we have already created in ‘our’ epoch of the Anthropocene. The 10 millennia that has seen the development of what is now the ‘western civilisation’ that dominates, destroys and is slowly reducing to detritus the major part of the entire world population and its natural diversity evidently do not carry the seeds of wisdom we are desperately in need of today. On the contrary, the 10 decimillennia of Australian civilisation, the peoples who eschewed the deceptive riches of quantity for the wealth of quality, can present the essential understanding that can lead this country, and the entire planet, to a new world, a world of people and planet, rather than a world of profit and power for the few.
We need your assistance to avoid a futurecide that could be worse than the Permian Mass Extinction. The dominant world culture does not have the answer. Any attempt to avoid the risk of exponential warming while using the same technologies and structures that caused it is doomed to failure. We need something new, something ancient, the wisdom and expert knowledge that guided the most successful and sustainable culture and land management of all time, with its respect for life, for community, for country, for planet. There we may find a guarantee of a long-term future for our grandchildren and their grandchildren, and beyond. This process of creating a new world, a world with its origins in so many and varied traditions of sustainable agriculture and supportive communities around the world, would certainly make judicious use of the multitude of non-impactual aspects of the present world; much of our science and technology and culture can be compatible with a ‘planet with a future’. We also need to sustain a deep confidence in the evolutionary direction of the living planet over 4 billion years of dynamic homeostasis, despite the 5 major extinction events to date. We have now initiated the 6th, the first ever where a single species is uniquely responsible. But because we have caused it, through a species-wide reevaluation of our role in the ecosphere, we can initiate a process of fundamental and radical change that can make the world a much better place to live in, for all, and at the same time guarantee a future, for all. The threat of global warming can dissipate by quickly – very quickly – eliminating the causes of the Anthropocene extinction: the excessive human footprint and the carbon overload as well as the massive exploitation of both planetary and human resources.
To do this we certainly need to reevaluate the type of society and economy, the type of leadership, that have developed over centuries, if not longer. The important work of identifying and promulgating the values and the ways-of-being that can help us to draw back from the brink is the most urgent challenge our species has faced.
It seems this type of world that can guarantee that there will be a future has already existed, perhaps in many parts of the world, but on a very long-term continuous basis it has flourished most importantly in Australia. Today such a world desperately needs to be imagined, guided and nurtured into existence by those who have access in the not so distant past to a living culture that can inform our world today. By itself, our world seems incapable of achieving this.
Eddie Vagg.Member of Cargelligo Wetlands and Lakes inc.
I would also like to acknowledge the Wetlands Warriors in the boat on this cover post. Peter Nilsson and Richie Suckling who have allowed me to use their home turf to explore the Robinson Crusoe island and the extensive Cargelligo Wetlands adjacent to these properties. Photograph by Craig Cromlin
Three articles by Conversations journalists clarifying Uluru statement from the heart. Headed by a plea by Post author Eddie Vagg in the form of a poem.
Eddie Vagg’s poem First People inspired by ancient campsite, cries out for Truth Telling
I'm not kidd”n
I walk across an ancient midden.
I feel I just want to throw a spear.
There is something here.
I know about this tragedy.
But this is not a parody.
There is a spirit in this clay pan
where a spirited race once ran.
The flint flakes
Shells from Rivers and lakes
And the honing stone
Petrified bone.
An energetic race once called this spot home.
The energy is sometimes there.
Strongest in the spring morn.
When they had the cool late winter burn
green shoots would return.
then the roo’s were Ambushed and speared.
I amble further on
the energy is gone.
So has the tribe.
Sulphur Crested’s
The messenger bird
Rested in the trees.
their late evening screeching
smacks of violence
And the campfire silence
The Voice: what is it, where did it come from, and what can it achieve?
This is the first article in our three-part series explaining Voice, Treaty and Truth.
This week, the government will introduce a constitutional amendment into parliament to establish the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. If successful, it will go to a referendum likely in October or November.
We now know the wording of the amendment and referendum question the government is proposing. But what exactly is the Voice? Where did it come from? And what it can achieve?
What is the Voice?
The Voice provides permanent representation and recognition for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Constitution.
The Voice will be a new body that represents Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from across Australia to provide their input into the decisions, policies and laws that are made by the government and parliament.
This is consistent with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which says Indigenous peoples have a right to participate in government decision-making in matters that affect their rights, through their own political institutions.
Across the world, similar types of institutions and relationships have been established, including in Sweden, Norway and Finland with the Sami people, and with the Māori in Aotearoa. There are also many similar relationships that Indigenous peoples have with the state in North and South America.
However, it’s also important to remember the Voice has been developed as a response to our local circumstances, and in particular, the lack of formal agreement – such as a treaty – or formal recognition of the rightful place of First Nations in Australia.
In Australia, the Voice will be constitutionally enshrined. This means successive governments can’t overturn it. It will be established as a new constitutional body in a new chapter (Chapter 9) at the end of the Constitution.
The key function of the Voice – to make representations to the government and parliament on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – will also be constitutionally protected. But the government and parliament cannot be compelled (for example, through litigation) to follow these representations. As such, this body would not have “veto” power and is not a “third chamber”.
Rather, the Constitution is setting up a mechanism designed to improve decisions, policies and laws through First Nations input on matters that affect them. These matters might directly affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, such as changes to the native title law, but it could also include broader laws and policies that have a particular impact on them, such as environmental protection laws or electoral laws. These decisions would be improved through their input.
Other details about the Voice will be decided by parliament through the normal legislative process. This ensures the Voice’s design can be flexible and evolve as required. These details include:
how many representatives will comprise the Voice
how they will be selected
what its internal processes will be
what powers it will need to perform its functions, such as accessing government information, and
how the Voice will interact with parliament and the executive.
As many constitutional experts have explained, establishing the key principles and leaving the detail to be determined through the legislative process is a normal – and desirable – way to design constitutional institutions.
That is not to say we don’t know what the Voice will look like – there has been significant work done on this. Most recently, the government has released a set of principles that will guide the initial legislative design of the Voice, should a referendum be successful.
The Voice also performs another important constitutional role: it recognises Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the First Peoples of Australia in the Constitution. At the moment, the Constitution is entirely silent with respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Where did it come from?
The Voice has been proposed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the best solution to respond to their overwhelming feeling of disempowerment and structural disadvantage.
The concept of the Voice, when understood as recognition and representation, has a long history. The advocacy for greater political representation for Aboriginal people stretches back to a 1938 petition organised by Yorta Yorta man William Cooper.
The modern advocacy for constitutional recognition stretches back to Prime Minister Paul Keating’s response to the 1992 High Court native title decision known as “Mabo”. This included a social justice reform package that recommended constitutional recognition, to be determined through a series of conventions and negotiations with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
This never happened, however. It wasn’t until 2010 that constitutional recognition was raised again as part of Julia Gillard’s minority government negotiations with independent MP Rob Oakeshott. This resulted in the establishment of the Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians, which reported in 2012.
The panel recommended recognition should be achieved through a series of changes, and most controversially a clause in the Constitution about racial non-discrimination. The Labor government never responded to the proposal and the Coalition dismissed it as a “one-clause bill of rights”.
Following this, in 2015, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders developed the Kirribilli Statement, which requested a new set of consultations to break the stalemate on recognition.
This led to the bipartisan establishment of the Referendum Council and a A$10 million commitment to undertake nationwide consultations with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – as had been proposed back in the 1990s but never happened – as well as non-Indigenous consultations.
At the same time, groups like the Cape York Institute under Noel Pearson began significant work on a proposal for an Indigenous representative constitutional body, which would lay the conceptual foundations of the Voice. This included the development of some initial drafting by constitutional expert and professor Anne Twomey.
The Indigenous members of the Referendum Council, under the leadership of Aunty Pat Anderson, Megan Davis and Pearson, designed a series of locally led dialogues to understand the reform priorities of First Nations people across the country.
Each dialogue selected representatives to attend a First Nations Constitution Convention. After days of negotiations over such pressing questions as sovereignty and how best to achieve aspirations like a treaty, the convention endorsed the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
This called for two stages of reforms. First, a constitutionally enshrined Voice. Second, Makarrata, which is a Yolngu word for “coming together after a struggle”, to include agreement-making (a treaty) and truth-telling. Voice. Treaty. Truth.
What can it achieve?
The Voice is both a practical and symbolic reform.
Practically, the Voice is informed by decades of research and the experience of people on the ground, that decisions, policies, laws and most importantly outcomes are improved when Indigenous peoples are empowered and involved in the process.
Symbolically, the Voice offers Australia a chance to design a more inclusive narrative of nationhood, informed and strengthened by the participation of First Nations people.
In Australia, we have tried to address these issues before, including through bodies like the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee and the National Aboriginal Conference in the 1970s, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) from 1990-2005, and smaller ministerial advisory bodies.
These bodies did good work and made a real difference, despite having limited power and resources. They often faced hostile political environments where a change in government would undermine the progress made.
But none of these bodies were enshrined in the Constitution, and each was dismantled, often at times of heightened political tension with the government. So, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were not able to have independence, stability, continuity or the necessary capacity to engage with government in a meaningful, ongoing way.
The Voice offers a highly practical reform, which for the first time will offer independence and stability through constitutional enshrinement.
The Voice is also an important stepping stone towards other key reforms in the relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the state – in particular, treaty and truth as described in the Uluru Statement.
The sequencing of Voice, Treaty, Truth has been given significant thought.
Voice precedes Treaty because fair, modern treaty negotiations require first the establishment of a representative Indigenous body to negotiate the rules of the game with the state. It can’t be left to the state alone, and the state must have a group of people with whom to negotiate.
In Victoria, this was achieved through a specific representative institution – the First Peoples Assembly.
Truth follows Voice and Treaty, because, as Torres Strait Islander political scientist Sana Nakata explains, Voice ensures Truth will matter more than just “continued performance of our rage and grief for a third century and longer”. Voice establishes the power for Treaty, and Treaty establishes the safekeeping of Truth.
As historian Kate Fullagar explains, truths about Indigenous history in Australia are well-known – there have already been royal commissions into colonial violence, the stolen generation, and Black deaths in custody. But they have been too easily forgotten, and they have not led to change.
The Voice presents an opportunity for improving the relationship between First Nations and the State through stable political empowerment that will give all Australians an opportunity for a better, shared future.
Lecturer, Griffith Law School, Griffith University
Disclosure statement
Gabrielle Appleby is a member of the Indigenous Law Centre at UNSW (Sydney). She served as a pro bono constitutional consultation to the Regional Dialogues and First Nations Constitutional Convention that delivered the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
Eddie Synot is a Senior Engagement Officer with the Uluru Dialogue and a Centre Associate with the Indigenous Law Centre at UNSW (Sydney).
First Nations people have made a plea for ‘truth-telling’. By reckoning with its past, Australia can finally help improve our future
What actually is a treaty? What could it mean for Indigenous people?
This is the second article in our series explaining Voice, Treaty and Truth. Read the first article in the series here.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart calls for Voice, Treaty and Truth. These aspirations are intended as a sequence of reforms, that advance towards a just settlement with First Peoples.
The federal government is committed to holding a referendum later this year to put an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice in the Australian Constitution. The government has also agreed to implement the Uluru Statement “in full”.
Following the referendum, it’s expected attention will shift towards a Makarrata Commission to “work on a national process of treaty-making and truth-telling”. In fact, reports suggest the government might move even faster.
But while Treaty has long been part of the political landscape, it is not well understood. Many Australians wonder what a Treaty is, what it would achieve, who it would be negotiated with, or for whom, and how. We’ll explore some of these questions here (in brief).
Why does Australia not have a Treaty?
When European colonial powers encountered Indigenous peoples, they often negotiated treaties. These agreements dealt with a range of matters, including trade and military alliances. They also set out rules to share the land and maintain peaceful relationships.
These colonial-era treaties were regularly broken. However, they recognised Indigenous peoples had the right to deal with land and exercised sovereignty over that land.
The British did not engage in treaty talks in Australia. They never sought to negotiate with the owners of this land. Instead, they claimed the land belonged to no one and took it for themselves.
Historians have debated why the British took this approach. Some have argued as a penal colony with a substantial military force there was no need to negotiate trading relationships with the original owners. Others have argued the racist attitudes of the day were influential.
Whatever the reason, the result is Australia is an outlier. As a result, many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples believe the moral and legal basis of the nation is “a little legally shaky”.
What is a Treaty?
The absence of a Treaty is one of the major challenges facing the Treaty debate in Australia. Without a history of treaty-making, the concept of what a treaty is or involves remains vague for many people, including government.
It means some people can argue a Treaty is dangerous or it would lead to the breakup of the nation. This makes little sense because a Treaty is a marriage not a divorce. It’s about bringing communities together and building strong relationships based on self-determination.
Governments might argue they’re already engaged in treaty-making. There are many examples of bureaucracy adapting its policy formulation and delivery to reflect community aspirations for a greater say in the delivery of services.
Such “partnerships”, “co-design” and local decision-making with government are valuable. They mark an important shift in promoting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ participation in policy development and service delivery. But simply calling an agreement a “treaty” doesn’t make it a treaty.
Australia has signed up to a range of international legal instruments that concern the rights of Indigenous peoples. These legal instruments set a clear standard for what makes an agreement a treaty. A treaty must satisfy three conditions.
A treaty acknowledges Indigenous peoples are a distinct political community different to other Australians. This is because Indigenous peoples are the only group of Australians who owned, occupied, and governed the continent before colonisation. This recognition also acknowledges the historic and contemporary injustices that invasion has caused
A treaty is a political agreement reached by a fair process of negotiation between equals. Negotiation helps ensure everyone’s interests can be considered. But securing a fair negotiation process can be difficult. In Victoria, the First Peoples Assembly and State government have agreed to a Treaty Negotiation Framework that sets out principles to guide Treaty talks
Treaties involve both sides committing to responsibilities, promises and principles that bind the parties in an ongoing relationship of mutual obligation and shared responsibility. Most importantly, while the outcomes of any negotiation will differ according to the parties, a treaty is built on the recognition of Indigenous peoples’ inherent sovereignty. As part of this, a treaty will provide for some degree of self-government. What this looks like in practice will be worked out in negotiations.
A treaty will also include a range of other elements. It could include financial compensation, return of land, formal recognition of historic wrongs, and symbolic gestures of reconciliation, such as apologies.
Treaties are unique agreements. As Professor Megan Davis explains, they are aimed at “settling fundamental grievances, and establishing binding frameworks of future engagement and dispute resolution”.
Modern treaties are different from historic treaties
There is a long history of treaty-making all over the world from which Australia can draw lessons. But it’s important to note modern treaties differ from those negotiated in colonial periods. They are more technical and legally complex. They are also negotiated against a long history of inequitable relationships.
They will also be subject to Australian law. While colonial-era treaties were international agreements between two sovereign communities, modern treaties will be subject to Australian law.
Progress has been slow, but important steps have been taken at the state and territory level. For instance, in February this year, the Queensland government introduced the Path to Treaty Bill 2023 into the state parliament. The bill will establish and finance an independent First Nations Treaty Institute to “help prepare and support First Nations people for treaty negotiations with the state”.
That same month, the South Australian government introduced a bill to establish a Voice to the Parliament, with a treaty process to follow.
In Victoria, after several years of patient work, negotiations between the First Peoples Assembly and state government are expected to begin by the end of the year. Similar processes are underway in the Northern Territory, Tasmania and the ACT.
Every treaty process has its own challenges and complications and it’s too early to tell whether these processes will result in meaningful settlements. Nevertheless, they demonstrate two key things.
First, Treaty is a matter of political will, not legal impossibility. Second, looking towards the referendum later this year, the existence of treaty processes across the country suggests Australians may be willing to deal with the unfinished business of colonisation and its consequences.
Lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney
Disclosure statement
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
State refusals to respond to truth have led to renewed calls for processes that will detail the impacts of colonisation in the everyday lives of Indigenous people. These calls were an important part of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which sought “the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution”, complimented by “a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history”.
As legal scholars Gabrielle Appleby and Megan Davis have commented, the call for truth-telling in the Uluru Statement is just one part of a wider call for structural reform intended to ensure improvement in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Why truth?
Beginning in the 1980s, formal truth-telling processes (usually called truth commissions) emerged as a method of reckoning with the past in deeply divided societies around the world. Perhaps the most famous example is the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which aimed to address the gross violations of human rights that happened under apartheid.
Truth commissions like this are generally temporary, state-sanctioned inquiries that typically last from one to five years, with a remit to investigate particular events and examine specific violations over a defined period of time. This typically involves collecting testimony from victims and (sometimes) perpetrators.
It is only relatively recently that truth-telling processes have been used as a response to settler colonial violence, most notably via Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which arose after a class action lawsuit on behalf of the roughly 150,000 First Nations children taken from their familes and placed in residential schools.
The Uluru Statement isn’t the first time First Nations on this continent have called for truth-telling. Since colonisation, Indigenous peoples have insisted that Australia must not look away from their experiences of dispossession and survival.
When these truths have been told, however, they have all too often been met with denial, defensiveness or even aggression. For example, when the Stolen Generations inquiry pointed to evidence of the forcible removal of Indigenous children that, it charged, constituted a breach of the UN Convention on Genocide, there was an immediate conservative backlash. The Howard government rejected the findings of the inquiry in one of the earliest salvos against what conservatives have termed a “black armband” view of Australian history.
There is a reason settler governments have been reluctant to engage in truth-telling. First Nations often seek truth as a means of changing an untenable status quo, reshaping society’s attitudes so as to improve their own future prospects and reaffirm their distinct sovereignties and their right to self-determination.
As the non-Indigenous Canadian political scientist Courtney Jung has argued, while settler governments may try to use the conclusion of a truth commission to “draw a line through history”, First Nations seek to build “not a wall but a bridge”, using truth-telling to “draw history into the present, and to draw connections between past policy, present policy, and present injustices”.
Whose truths? What truths?
Broadly speaking, First Nations peoples seek truths that address three key themes: narrative and memory; trauma and healing; and responsibility and justice.
We have described this potential as “the promise of truth”, in which truth-telling leads to a kind of agreement between Indigenous and settler peoples, rather than being a process centred on the state and its violence.
The promise of truth is that it will change national narratives and produce a new, shared collective memory that acknowledges crimes of the past; it will contribute to the healing and recovery of Indigenous people who have been harmed by colonisation and dispossession; and it will compel settlers and their institutions to take responsibility for the harms of colonisation.
This approach stands in contrast to what we have called the “colonisation of truth”, through which truth-telling is seen primarily as rehabilitative of the settler colonial state while obscuring ongoing injustices. When truth is colonised, it may reproduce narratives that restore aspects of settler legitimacy and treat injustices as being solely in the past. Alternatively, this version of truth may treat First Nations people merely as victims, telling stories of harm and trauma without delivering reparation. Or it may suggest that the demand for responsibility and justice has been fulfilled simply by engaging in the truth-telling process, rather than treating the telling of truth as a starting point for a fairer future.
Truth, then, is complex, and what it may achieve in the Australian context is not yet clear. As treaty processes progress in several Australian jurisdictions, the commitment to truth-telling seems likely to be a part of future negotiations. This close connection between treaty and truth is unique to the Australian case and confirms the strongly held belief that truth has transformative potential. We do not yet know whether the linking of truth and treaty will produce the transformation in relationships that is so urgently needed.
Victoria, which announced a commitment to treaty in 2016, is the jurisdiction most advanced in testing this proposition. In 2022, Victoria established the Yoorrook Truth and Justice Commission (Yoorrok is a Wemba Wemba word meaning “truth”), marking a new era in Australian truth-telling focused on the history of invasion and colonisation of First Nations’ territories. Until the creation of Yoorrook, no previous commission, royal commission or inquiry into colonisation in Australia has included the word “truth” in its official title.
Yet still, truth is not a straightforward proposition. “Truth burns,” as Indigenous academic Marcia Langton recently put it. Sometimes, truth-telling is painful and connects directly to harm and injustice.
Truth is tricky. It can appear to open spaces for new understandings, while simultaneously shutting these spaces down and reinforcing the colonial status quo.
Ultimately, truth-telling is uncomfortable but necessary, as change in any relationship inevitably is. But this is where the possibility lives. As new truth-telling takes place across this continent we have an opportunity to imagine what it might mean to be in a relationship that does not deny the truth of First Nations’ lives, or the truth of how Australia has come to be.
Professor, School of Social and Political Sciences, Co-Director, Indigenous-Settler Relations Collaboration, The University of Melbourne
Disclosure statement
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
To bring you up-to-date on this post. If you are interested in Frank Brennans article . He was a noted participant in constructing approaches to the voice. This article is awash up of the failed referendum vote. This article is available on Apple Books
The inspiration for my book called CargelligoWetlands available on Lachlanriverlung.com
Billy Plains edict
Dear Bill Plain {my letter to William Plain 8th December 1922}
Re
Letter to Decimillennial Australia:
A Voice to the Nation
This edict of yours so impressed me when I started out to publish a book of Poems and Prose on the demise of the Lachlan Valley in Central Western New South Wales.
I have used it as an adjunct to voicing and reinforcing my opinions by way of poetry and prose.
I did go to school with you at Saint Francis Xavier in Lake Cargelligo.
But a bursary took to you further on.
Sincerely
Edgar Vagg
Ps. I wrote this letter earlier to let you know what I was doing. And now I have this wonderful letter from you. The flooding in the Lachlan is easing. At its hight it broke all records. Broke levies and flooded houses. But mine was high and dry.
{William Plain related to me sixth of December 1922}
Ed,
imagine my surprise to see someone making a contribution for my work on creative discussion, and in doing so providing a connection to a period aeons past when we sat in the same classroom in Lake Cargelligo, as though your gesture somehow establishes that year as a point of departure towards my lifetime of attempting to make sense of a few simple ideas, leading to my website, creativediscussion.org, arising from the insights of thousands of students, and the more recent earthsight.org, attempting to communicate with a much more recalcitrant audience of politicians and decision makers.
Your communication leads me to update my Earthsight project, and, in grateful recognition of your reminder, I have just now added a submission to parliament, “Act on Climate”, that I made in 2020 but hadn’t yet added to earthsight.org. Many thanks.
Looking through my records, I find this email I am now replying to, and your reading of “A Country under the Weather”, with the insightful observation of “a people who knew that no land is won or lost by war”. In today’s moment of constitutional recognition, the assertion that “no land is lost by war” is a positive reminder that Australia has not been lost by a mere 2 centuries of invader wars, not when 2 millennia, 2 decimillennia, more accurately 6 or even 10 decimillennia, have created a civilisation, an exceptional people, with a unique export, a continental civilisation based on peace (peace between peoples and peace with country), as observed by Bruce Pascoe, as well as the transformative “I am responsible for country” (today we need to add: “and planet”).
In many of my Earthsight papers I have included a reminder from ancient wisdom that “insight is the key to creativity”, easily accessible in the simple process of Earthsight Discussion, a term I now use to refer to “Creative Discussion using Plain Pair Groups”, occasionally wondering whether this practice may unfurl the wings of the butterfly of chaos theory.
“Act on Climate” is my latest attempt to make a little suggestion, while “Decimillennial Australia” (earthsight.org, March 2019) indicates who we need to be listening to: the “product of wounded country”, who might even be helped by helping the larger world to actually see.
Decimillennial Australia has probably done this before, recovering from major catastrophes; surely the separation of Tasmania and loss of coastal plains (continental shelf), what we know as the Deluge, was one, and the present ongoing Anglo deluge calls not simply for a Voice to Parliament, but even more, a “voice to the nation”, First People generated and totally independent, arising from creative interaction within multiple communities, which, who knows, might perhaps be facilitated by the “creative ideas (that) ripple out across communities and organisations” of Earthsight Discussion.
Perhaps planetary change can start down along River Road.
Speaking of rivers, I hope you are not being flooded out at the moment. I’ve never driven along River Road, but using Google Earth I can imagine you may be at considerable risk. Murrin Bridge seems to be even more at risk.
On 30 Oct 2019, at 09:43, Edgar Vagg <edvag@me.com> wrote:
Bill.
I met you in Lake Cargelligo at your mothers funeral. Was impressed withCreative Discussion using Plain Pair Groups
Bringing Wisdom into Planetary Leadership
The drought and the severe stress created in the Lachlan Valley has brought a small group, Cargelligo Wetlands together. Conventional meetings are still being held and I will eventually bring up your ideas of plain pair groups. At the moment I have another important agenda. To release my book of poems spanning my life experiences in Lake Lake Cargelligo . I’m working on an EPUB for Apple Books of the contents. It’s poems and prose I have written and gathered together over the years . They are mainly environmental. And push the same agenda as you that humans are stupid. I have mentioned your work from
creative discussions.org. I can send you a link for your perusal. It’s a draft at the moment. Created on Pages on an Apple MacBook Pro laptop. I’m aiming to have an impact on citizens attitude towards global warming with its release. At First an E-book with audio readings of the poems on Apple Books and eventually a hard copy with audio included. I’m including a sample poem in audio in a following email.
Edgar Vagg
703 River Road
Lake Cargelligo
NSW
2672
Phone 0428981287
Billy Plains Edict
This his his letter to Decimillennial Australia.
A Voice to the Nation published in Earthsight.org in March 2019
The already established Anthropocene Mass Extinction, the 6th major extinction, for which the dominant world civilisation is responsible, is now leading us in the direction of exponential global warming and civilisation collapse, or even worse.
We need help, the world needs help, and the urgent need for long-term global sustainability seems to point to First Peoples, and particularly the Australian indigenous civilisation, as among the few who hold the keys to the future. The very long term continuous and highly successful nature of Australian culture and land management over multiple tens of thousands of years means “Decimillennial Australia” needs to establish a “voice to the nation”, to advise on the best way to transform the totality of our civilisation so as to assure that there can be a future. There is a continuum from homo sapiens sapiens to homo stupidens stupidens which englobes whole cultures, entire continents, over centuries and millennia. Ours, the so-called ‘western civilisation’, in many key respects is at the homo stupidens stupidens end of the spectrum.
The Australian decimillennial culture in its historical dimension is undoubtedly at the homo sapiens sapiens end. I am inviting those in the indigenous community with ‘access’, to reach back beyond 1788, beyond the two centuries of destruction and belittlement, back into the depths of that culture, and bring forth the knowledge, the wisdom, the essence of 100,000 years of an ever-developing culture, community and 19responsibility for the earth. Today, this century, that knowledge may well be the key to the future, the key to there being a future. The new Australian culture of two centuries, along with that of much of the present world, is destroying our planet. That’s the meaning of the term, ‘the Anthropocene mass extinction’, which has its origins with the industrial revolution – about the time the doctrine of Terra Nullius arrived on Australian shores.
We don’t realise what we have done, and don’t know how to change. But our problem is now the problem of all peoples, those who have caused the present situation, as well as those who have always worked to contain the damage and respect the planet. It is to be hoped that the most ancient of those wisdom cultures, perhaps the most peaceful and the most responsible, can now become the guide that can advise our leaders and our people – and find ways to lead them to listen and be informed. Looking at the world today, much of the planet is the detritus of the brutality of the Western search for domination and conquest – ever perfected by today’s corporatocracy, financeocracy and oligarchy. The Earth herself is now looking to you, to the people 21 who have tended the earth for 100,000 years, spanning geological catastrophes that today we seek to ignore, while closing our eyes to similar ecological catastrophes we have already created in ‘our’ epoch of the Anthropocene. The 10 millennia that has seen the development of what is now the ‘western civilisation’ that dominates, destroys and is slowly reducing to detritus the major part of the entire world population and its natural diversity evidently do not carry the seeds of wisdom we are desperately in need of today. On the contrary, the 10 decimillennia of Australian civilisation, the peoples who eschewed the deceptive riches of quantity for the wealth of quality, can present the essential understanding that can lead this country, and the entire planet, to a new world, a world of people and planet, rather than a world of profit and power for the few.
We need your assistance to avoid a futurecide that could be worse than the Permian Mass Extinction. The dominant world culture does not have the answer. Any attempt to avoid the risk of exponential warming while using the same technologies and structures that caused it is doomed to failure. We need something new, something ancient, the wisdom and expert knowledge that guided the most successful and sustainable culture and land management of all time, with its respect for life, for community, for country, for planet. There we may find a guarantee of a long-term future for our grandchildren and their grandchildren, and beyond. This process of creating a new world, a world with its origins in so many and varied traditions of sustainable agriculture and supportive communities around the world, would certainly make judicious use of the multitude of non-impactual aspects of the present world; much of our science and technology and culture can be compatible with a ‘planet with a future’. We also need to sustain a deep confidence in the evolutionary direction of the living planet over 4 billion years of dynamic homeostasis, despite the 5 major extinction events to date. We have now initiated the 6th, the first ever where a single species is uniquely responsible. But because we have caused it, through a species-wide reevaluation of our role in the ecosphere, we can initiate a process of fundamental and radical change that can make the world a much better place to live in, for all, and at the same time guarantee a future, for all. The threat of global warming can dissipate by quickly – very quickly – eliminating the causes of the Anthropocene extinction: the excessive human footprint and the carbon overload as well as the massive exploitation of both planetary and human resources.
To do this we certainly need to reevaluate the type of society and economy, the type of leadership, that have developed over centuries, if not longer. The important work of identifying and promulgating the values and the ways-of-being that can help us to draw back from the brink is the most urgent challenge our species has faced.
It seems this type of world that can guarantee that there will be a future has already existed, perhaps in many parts of the world, but on a very long-term continuous basis it has flourished most importantly in Australia. Today such a world desperately needs to be imagined, guided and nurtured into existence by those who have access in the not so distant past to a living culture that can inform our world today. By itself, our world seems incapable of achieving this.
Wow I got hold of this book. An amazing library of poems and prose.
Salvaged them from the wreckage of the Anthropogenic Era error. From the black box of the wreckage. Out in barren back blocks of the scorched continent. Got them. Now. Hurry, last rocket to the moon space port. Smuggled the box recording through. The alien custom officials. cajoled, bought. Now. Much to do Think outside the box , I’ve landed on the dark side of the moon No radio signals just dust and rocks Tucked up in my life support cocoon. I’ll go to work soon I’m in the dark as to what approach . Exposing this. I could be liable. Nah, not a subject I have to broach I swear on the bible. They are for humanity’s clawback, got to be told. So here I go, bold
A voice to the nation The already established Anthropocene Mass Extinction, the 6th major extinction, for which the dominant world civilisation is responsible, is now leading us in the direction of exponential global warming and civilisation collapse, or even worse.
We need help, the world needs help, and the urgent need for long-term global sustainability seems to point to First Peoples, and particularly the Australian indigenous civilisation, as among the few who hold the keys to the future. The very long term continuous and highly successful nature of Australian culture and land management over multiple tens of thousands of years means “Decimillennial Australia” needs to establish a “voice to the nation”, to advise on the best way to transform the totality of our civilisation so as to assure that there can be a future. There is a continuum from homo sapiens sapiens to homo stupidens stupidens which englobes whole cultures, entire continents, over centuries and millennia. Ours, the so-called ‘western civilisation’, in many key respects is at the homo stupidens stupidens end of the spectrum.
The Australian decimillennial culture in its historical dimension is undoubtedly at the homo sapiens sapiens end. I am inviting those in the indigenous community with ‘access’, to reach back beyond 1788, beyond the two centuries of destruction and belittlement, back into the depths of that culture, and bring forth the knowledge, the wisdom, the essence of 100,000 years of an ever-developing culture, community and 19responsibility for the earth. Today, this century, that knowledge may well be the key to the future, the key to there being a future. The new Australian culture of two centuries, along with that of much of the present world, is destroying our planet. That’s the meaning of the term, ‘the Anthropocene mass extinction’, which has its origins with the industrial revolution – about the time the doctrine of Terra Nullius arrived on Australian shores.
We don’t realise what we have done, and don’t know how to change. But our problem is now the problem of all peoples, those who have caused the present situation, as well as those who have always worked to contain the damage and respect the planet. It is to be hoped that the most ancient of those wisdom cultures, perhaps the most peaceful and the most responsible, can now become the guide that can advise our leaders and our people – and find ways to lead them to listen and be informed. Looking at the world today, much of the planet is the detritus of the brutality of the Western search for domination and conquest – ever perfected by today’s corporatocracy, financeocracy and oligarchy. The Earth herself is now looking to you, to the people 21 who have tended the earth for 100,000 years, spanning geological catastrophes that today we seek to ignore, while closing our eyes to similar ecological catastrophes we have already created in ‘our’ epoch of the Anthropocene. The 10 millennia that has seen the development of what is now the ‘western civilisation’ that dominates, destroys and is slowly reducing to detritus the major part of the entire world population and its natural diversity evidently do not carry the seeds of wisdom we are desperately in need of today. On the contrary, the 10 decimillennia of Australian civilisation, the peoples who eschewed the deceptive riches of quantity for the wealth of quality, can present the essential understanding that can lead this country, and the entire planet, to a new world, a world of people and planet, rather than a world of profit and power for the few.
We need your assistance to avoid a futurecide that could be worse than the Permian Mass Extinction. The dominant world culture does not have the answer. Any attempt to avoid the risk of exponential warming while using the same technologies and structures that caused it is doomed to failure. We need something new, something ancient, the wisdom and expert knowledge that guided the most successful and sustainable culture and land management of all time, with its respect for life, for community, for country, for planet. There we may find a guarantee of a long-term future for our grandchildren and their grandchildren, and beyond. This process of creating a new world, a world with its origins in so many and varied traditions of sustainable agriculture and supportive communities around the world, would certainly make judicious use of the multitude of non-impactual aspects of the present world; much of our science and technology and culture can be compatible with a ‘planet with a future’. We also need to sustain a deep confidence in the evolutionary direction of the living planet over 4 billion years of dynamic homeostasis, despite the 5 major extinction events to date. We have now initiated the 6th, the first ever where a single species is uniquely responsible. But because we have caused it, through a species-wide reevaluation of our role in the ecosphere, we can initiate a process of fundamental and radical change that can make the world a much better place to live in, for all, and at the same time guarantee a future, for all. The threat of global warming can dissipate by quickly – very quickly – eliminating the causes of the Anthropocene extinction: the excessive human footprint and the carbon overload as well as the massive exploitation of both planetary and human resources.
To do this we certainly need to reevaluate the type of society and economy, the type of leadership, that have developed over centuries, if not longer. The important work of identifying and promulgating the values and the ways-of-being that can help us to draw back from the brink is the most urgent challenge our species has faced.
It seems this type of world that can guarantee that there will be a future has already existed, perhaps in many parts of the world, but on a very long-term continuous basis it has flourished most importantly in Australia. Today such a world desperately needs to be imagined, guided and nurtured into existence by those who have access in the not so distant past to a living culture that can inform our world today. By itself, our world seems incapable of achieving this.
CargelligoWetlands 