Reflecting on the ancestors.. This post is from 3 years ago but it hightlights how indigenous cultures honor their ancestral continuity and ‘dead’ with a reverence sometimes missing in patriarchal culture.
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These six words were spoken by Daniel Browning the presenter of Radio National Australia’s, Away, programme on indigineous issues to describe the inherent connection and way of living of the earliest ancestors of his aboriginal family. The programme today was about the repatriation of the remains of a famous elder, Mungo Man, which were disintered many years ago by non indigenous archeologists without permission from the aboriginal people. Western, white sensibilities so often show a lack of implicit understanding of how deeply interconnected indigneous people were to the land, to the elements, and to their ancestors. Ancestral spirits are acknowledged and sensed, they are not forgotten or rejected in indigenous culture.
On the programme today people were describing how the spirits made their presence felt in a mass of tiny whirlwinds when they visited certain areas of the land. The aborigines had real rites of mourning and…
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