From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>
To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [permaculture] Book reference: The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia by Bill Gammage
Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2011 11:20:03 -0500
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-first-farmers-20110930-1l1gv.html
Joseph Lycett's painting, Aborigines Using Fire to Hunt Kangaroos
(c.1817), depicts fire burning away from trees to a grassy area,
driving kangaroos to the hunters' spears. By shaping the land carefully
for grazing animals, the Aborigines paved the way for pastoral
occupation. ''The more carefully they made the land, the more likely
settlers were to take it,'' he writes. ''The Dreaming taught why the
world must be maintained; the land taught how. One made land care
compulsory, the other made it rewarding.'' Charles Darwin called
indigenous Australians ''harmless savages wandering about without
knowing where they shall sleep at night and gaining their livelihood by
hunting in the woods''. Gammage believes we have not learned enough from
them: ''Europeans defined civilisation as being like them. They thought
Aborigines didn't know anything.'' He writes: ''We have a continent to
learn … we must begin to understand our country. If we succeed, one day
we might become Australian.'' The Biggest Estate on Earth: How
Aborigines Made Australia by Bill Gammage (Allen & Unwin, $49.99). Read
more:
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-first-farmers-20110930-1l1gv.html#ixzz1ffXmnbkT
[permaculture] Book reference: The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia by Bill Gammage,
Lawrence F. London, Jr., 12/05/2011