permaculture

[Pacific Edge Permaculture + Media <pacedge@magna.com.au>]

This discussion seems to have gathered steam - guess it is something that
people are trying to resolve, given the different viewpoints expressed.
Guess that's  the advantage of email listservs!

I'll try to keep brief my comments on a number of items of  correspondence:

> Marcus wrote:
 
> Due to the 'Monsanta mindset' (my words), she says that 'white fella
> isn't ready'.  

This is an interesting notion, this mindset, because it assumes that
ordinary citizens are responsible for the machinations of global
corporations. That's akin to saying that all Moslems are responsible for the
attack in New York. It's a little unfair and does not take into account the
limited power of citizens in Western societies (the board of management of
Monsanto is not elected by the people and the support of the shareholders
for the company's actions is not called into question).

Is saying that the 'white fella isn't ready' not a generalisation better
made at the corporate sector?
 
> Russ, I also found your first reply to be very confronting and
> somewhat disrespectful to indigenious culture.

I never set out to be 'disrespectful' of anybody's culture. I'm not sure how
suggesting that someone generalises about others is disrespectful - I think
we all generalise - probably have to to make sense of the world, however we
should always keep in mind that there are always exceptions to any
generalisation.

As I see it, Aboriginal people are individuals with their own assumptions,
beliefs and attitudes, like the rest of us. There are good and bad
(something said to me by the same Aboriginal I mentioned in an earlier
email) as there are good and bad in our own society.

That's why it was suggested to me that it most appropriate to treat
Aboriginies the same way we treat anyone else (though this might be a
challenge for even those supportive of Aboriginal rights as certain
assumptions about Aboriginies have been inculcated into us since primary
school) - I understand that this is what Aboriginies would prefer (if not,
perhaps someone with more knowledge of Aboriginal societies and with direct
experience of them, like Felicity, could point that out).

>Science isn't some kind of God that needs endless sacrifices and must be
worshipped above everything else.

Well, science might have taken the psychological space of religion in the
West, for non-religious people, in as much as it attempts to provide answers
to existential questions and provides an approach to decision making (the
scientific method).

Having said that, I agree that science is not any kind of God nor should it
be treated as such - and I assume most scientists would eschew such an
association. To do so would contradict the scientific method of empirical
enquiry and would signal the end of science as we know it.

>I reiterate that SHE IS SHARING HER KNOWLEDGE
>ACCORDING TO HER CUSTOM by word of mouth!!! She IS DOING WHAT SHE CAN
>do with her limited resources, limited access to people and technology
>and limited education.  She doesn't have emails, can't be refered to
>websites, doesn't do the lecture circuit, and has been ripped off
>constantly by the "99 in 100" - she's just a simple woman with a lot
>of history.  You guys just want, want, want! LMAO

By sharing this knowledge with Marcus, this woman was sharing traditional
knowledge with someone from another culture. This indicates that she might
not want to 'lock up' the knowledge and, as other writers have suggested and
as the Aboriginal educator I mentioned in an earlier email told me, perhaps
she really is being protective of the knowledge because she fears commercial
exploitation.

>Bill Kearney wrote:

>How have we established that she does not have access to e mail or the web
>Australian Aboriginies have axcess to some of the best legal minds the
>country has to offer at no cost to them.  The Australian Government spends
>more on its indigenous population than it does on Defence or its  War
>Veteran community   Lets not presume she has no access to anything, least of
>all support for her wishes.

I have seen in media reports that Aboriginal communities do have access to
online media in some cases. I also suspect, but can provide no evidence,
that the total number of such communities remains small.

Lack of access is not peculiar to Aboriginal communities, of course. I am
aware that areas in urban Australia also lack such access and that these
same urban communities have a number of indicators of poverty in common -
poor services, high unemployment, low income, poor education. Is poverty a
connecting theme, whether Aboriginal or Euro-Australian?

Then there's the issue, one that figures in Australian politics, of online
access by rural people. Australians on this listserv will recognise that
this issue figures prominently in the proposed sale of the remainder of
Telstra. 

Access is commonly portrayed as a technology issue - access to broadband, to
hardware and so on - but, things being complex in reality, technological
issues (and the economic challenges of delivering online services to
isolated, rural people in a country the size of Australia (same size as the
USA,  for non-Australian readers, but with a population only now approaching
20 million - a small tax base or corporate income base on which to develop
costly telecommunication services)) are bound up with education, economics
and so on.

Perhaps the issue of online media access for Aboriginies is embedded within
the wider context of online service delivery to rural populations? Are
Aboriginal rural communities treated differently than non-Aborignal rural
communities?

> Georg Parlow wrote:

> i agree and resonate with you on the issues of cultural dominance, greed and
>exploitation. but why is whitefella dominant? Guns, Germs, and Steel: The
>Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond was quite a revelation to me. as a
biologist he looked at it scientifically... and clearly answered: it is not
because of genetic superiority... it is not because of special
>greediness, cruelty, or any other ethical inferiority either. all societies
>of all races have been equally ruthless as soon as they got a chance to
>dominate. and they all did so whenever they got a chance, with all the nasty
>details right down to genocide, be it whitefella, blackfella, redfella,
>yellowfella or anyotherfella.

As Georg says, 'Guns, Germs and Steel' (author: Jared Diamond) really is a
book worth reading because it takes a different view of human and societal
development. It shows, as Georg writes, that there is no ethnic or cultural
basis for dominance. We happen to be living in a period when Western
civilisation has been the dominant influence.

While I have identified with Ghandi's answer to a journalist's question
"What do you think of Western civilisation, Mr Ghandi?" (Ghandi replied: "I
think it would be a good idea!"), Diamond's book helped me take a step away
from blaming the woes of the world solely on the West (as many critics,
especially those of globalisation - are prone to do) - Diamond places
Western dominance in a historic/ ecological/ geographic context.

This perspective was visited last year following, I recall, a UN conference
in Africa. There, some developing nations raised the idea that European
countries should pay them for deriving benefit from the enslavement of some
of their peoples in the past. This never happened, of course, because
commentators pointed out that, in justice, the Arab states should also make
payments for their exploitation of African tribal societies for slavery.

Opening the past to repatriation claims opens a real can of worms for many
nations - just how far back do you go? It also somehow makes the present
generations in those societies responsible for the actions of their
forebears who lived in a different context with different ideas, beliefs and
attitudes. It is perhaps more appropriate to acknowledge the past as a basis
for doing better in the future - something the Australian prime minister
could have done had he simply apologised for past misdoings to Aboriginal
peoples.

As for Western civilisation, Samuel Huntington explains in his book 'The
Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order' (paperback edition -
Simon & Schuster, UK, 1998) that Western civilisation and modernisation,
which grew from Western cultures but now has a life of its own, are
frequently confused. Nations, Huntington says, seek to modernise but not
Westernise. In Huntington's frame of reference, critics of Western
civilisation frequently confuse the two. This book, like Diamond's, is
another book worth reading because it describes global dynamics post-Cold
War as diverging into blocks based on cultural commonality (such as Western,
Islamis, Sinic and so on) rather than ideology.

>so i am afraid the attitude you can observe in todays indiginous people is
>simply a result of the fact, that at present they are the dominated

This explains their resentment and would also explain the desire to retain
exclusivity of some traditional knowledge.

>flick wrote:

> Sometimes it's just not possible for people to understand how they form
>judgements from within their own culture

Flick...  I think it may be only people with cross-cultural experience, such
as yourself, and others who have worked in overseas development aid
in-country for an extended time that gain a perspective on the cultural
basis of our mental maps, frameworks and psychology.

Immersed in a culture of any type, it would be the rare person who can step
into the shoes of someone from outside that culture. In a way, the present
mood in Australia for reconciliation with Aboriginal peoples can be seen as
a cultural artefact too.

>because we're the dominant culture and so rarely experience any major 
>challenge
to our shared points of view

This is a reason for my statement above. All cultures - all civilisations in
Huntington's view - develop shared norms, beliefs and values which bind them
together and give them their character. In times, such as we have at present
with the rise of the Islamist movement across a number of Islamic countries
(Islamic civilisation), the associated September 11 attacks in the US and
the consequent war in Afghanistan, those cultural norms and practices become
more tightly bound. This makes appreciation of points of view from outside
that culture problematic.

We are all the creations of the culture we have been born into (most of us
anyway) and, for me, that means promoting the better aspects of Western
civilisation while accepting the presence of those less desirable. In the
development work in which I have been involved (which transfers
modernisation - even if it is the 'modernisation' of sustainable subsistence
farming and nutritional health), that means trying to transfer these 'better
things' to people of another culture. The processes our team uses does not
'impose' these ideas but allows people to trial and adopt/ not adopt them
(the development jargon description for the process is 'Participatory
Technology Development').

>Marcus wrote: 
> On a lighter note Russ, I saw in an earlier posting that you went to UTS - 
> me
> too :)  

Yes, I did the communications (media) degree at University of Technology  in
the 80s.

>I also grew up around Sutherland and fought many huge bushfires when I
> was there, so I emphasise with your current situation.

Although I'm not out firefighting now, these fires are a real doosey!

Sutherland - that you mention above - has its own problem with Royal
National Park (especially the tall eucalypt forest around Waterfall) and
Heathcote park presently engulfed in flames. Bundeena and Mainanbar were
saved.

On the northside, evacuations in the suburbs of West Pennant Hills and
Turramurra started yesterday and firefighters fear that the present fire
ripping through Lane Cove National Park will link with that in Pennant Hills
bushland to form one broad firefront.

The skies here have been blanketed by smoke since Xmas day... it was only
yesterday that we glimpsed blue sky! Today they're a smoky, bluey grey and
every so often you get that waft or burning eucalyptus leaves so familiar to
Australians. The city's pollution level, thanks to the smoke, is now ten
times normal and, as of today, all fire stations in the Sydney metropolitan
area have been deployed as have bushfire teams. Teams from South Australia,
Victoria, Tasmania and Queensland are being reinforced and a leader team has
just flown in from New Zealand.

You will appreciate what today's strong westerly winds, a relative humidity
of 5% and a temperature which might peak a little below yesterday's 39
celcius means!

...Russ Grayson