BUCKLEY’S CHANCE

William Buckley was a English convict who escaped from a ship in what is now Victoria and lived with First Peoples for 32 years, before that area was colonised. His account provides a clear case of how Australia's First Peoples regarded Europeans:

… and prayed long and earnestly to God, for his merciful assistance and protection. All night the wild dogs howled horribly, as if expressing their impatience for my remains: even before death, I fancied they would attack me.

At daybreak I went again onward, looking for any kind of food by which to appease my hunger, and at length came to a place the natives call Maamart, where there is a lake, or large lagoon, surrounded by thickly growing scrub and timber. Whilst searching for the gum already mentioned, I was seen by two native women, who watched me unperceived. At length I threw myself down at the foot of a large tree to rest. On observing me thus prostrate, and helpless, these women went in search of their husbands with the intelligence that they had seen a very tall white man. Presently they all came upon me unawares, and seizing me by the arms and hands, began beating their breasts, and mine, in the manner the others had done. After a short time, they lifted me up, and they made the same sign, giving me to understand by it, that I was in want of food. The women assisted me to walk, the men shouting hideous noises, and tearing their hair. When we arrived at their huts, they brought a kind of bucket, made of dry bark, into which they put gum and water, converting it by that means into a sort of pulp. This they offered me to eat and I did so very greedily They called me Murrangurk, which I afterwards learnt, was the name of a man formerly belonging to their tribe, who had been buried at spot where I had found the piece of spear I still carried with me. They have a belief that when they die, go to some place or other, and are there made white and that they then return to this world again for another existence. They think all the white people previous to death were belonging to their own tribes, thus returned to life in a different colour. In cases where they have killed white men, it has generally been because they imagined them to have been originally enemies, or belonging to tribes with whom they were hostile. In accordance with this belief, they fancied me to be one of their tribe who had been recently killed in a fight, in which his daughters had been speared also. As I have before said, he was buried at the mound I saw and my having the remains of his spear with me, confirmed them in this opinion. To this providential superstition, I was indebted for all the kindnesses afterwards shown me. In a short time they went away, making signs for me to remain and on returning, they brought with them several large fat grubs, which are found buried in decayed trees, and more particularly about the roots. These grubs they gave me to eat, and by this time, so changed was my palate, that I did so, thinking them delicious.”

Optical text scan from pages 38-39 “The life and adventures of William Buckley” (Thirty-two years a wanderer amongst the Aborigines of the then unexplored country around Port Phillip) by John Morgan and edited by Tim Flannery. First published 1852 – Flannery edition 2002 The Text Publishing Co Melb. ISBN 1 877008 20 6

Supra, infra and equi-positioning

Pierre Clastres wrote:

"In South America, those who butchered the Indians pushed this condition of the Other to the limit: the Indian savage (sic-BR) is not a human being, but simply an animal. The murder of an Indian is not a criminal act, racism doesn't play any part in it, since in practice it effectively implies the recognition of a minimum humanity of the Other. The monotonous repetition of a very ancient infamy: Claude Levi-Strauss, addressing ethnocide before the term existed, recalls in Race and History how the West Indians asked themselves whether the newly-arrived Spanish were gods or men, while the Whites argued over the human or animal nature of the natives." ('On Ethnocide', Art and Text 28 1988:53)

In both cases we learn crucial lessons about the situation of life in Europe and in the Americas as a result of what they are capable of projecting onto other peoples.

How instructive is it, then, of the humanity of Australia's First Peoples that when faced with a similar dilemma, they regarded the newly-arriving Europeans as dearly missed deceased family members returning from the land of the dead?

Australian history since 1788 demonstrates what Europeans thought of Australia's First Peoples in the scheme of things.

Isobel Coe, an indigenous activitist, says "End the psychic war."

One task for life's conceptual craftspeoples - as a step towards planetary healing - is to make this psychic war visible.