"DNA sequencing of a 100-year-old lock of hair has established that Aboriginal Australians have a longer continuous association with the land than any other race of people", reported ABC Online on September 23.
The DNA taken from an Aboriginal man in from the Western Australian Goldfields in 1923 revealed he was a descendant of people who migrated from Africa into Asia around 70,000 years ago. Dr Joe Dortch, an archeologist at the University of Western Australia said: "It shows Aboriginal Australians have the longest branch of history in one particular place of anyone in the world. No one else in the world can say 'I am descended from people who have been here 75,000 years'."
I read this article after spending a weekend in Kakadu National Park, a stunningly beautiful part of the country - world heritage protected, Ranger Uranium Mine notwithstanding.
We had the opportunity to check out some spectacular rock art while we were there. (I call it rock art in my ignorance, not knowing what important stories, legal issues etc it represented - see my Yirrkala Bark Petition blog post for more information.)
Some cave walls had different layers of painting overlapping each other, and you could see different styles from different eras. We were looking at some of the X-Ray and cross-hatching styles- you maybe familiar with the style: outlines of people and animals with incredibly detailed anatomical information within the outline (X-ray style). I overhead a ranger telling some tourists that this was the modern art style for this region. I guess that's why it was over the top of more simple, faded designs.
Anyway, without missing a beat, having identified it as the modern style, he went on to say "So we're looking at 8,000-10,000 years ago."
I think my heart skipped a beat. Or something happened inside me, anyway. Aboriginal people have been living on, and caring for, this country, for a very very long time. Which I guess we all know, although you wouldn't think there was anything special about that if you were to consider current government policies.
I thought about European art, and how every century or so heralds a new "age" in art. And once we get back to before the birth of jesus, we're delving into "ancient" times - ancient languages, ancient civilisations. I used to want to study Latin or Ancient Greek, I thought it would be fascinating to learn a language spoken in "ancient times".
And here I am, living and working, and learning the languages of, people who have been here for tens of thousands of years. And are still here, speaking those languages. At least, some of them. Australia has the fastest rate of language extinction in the world, according to UNESCO. Go to this site and type in Australia for country: http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/index.php It gives you a sense of the state of Australia's first languages - though I think the situation is probably worse than the map indicates, given there is nothing marked for Victoria, very little for South Australia, etc.
So, what do we make of this picture? We have on this continent some of the world's oldest cultures, oldest languages, and people with the longest continuous connection to the land. The Aboriginal languages are the only languages adapted over thousands of years to the Australian environment, and the contribution these languages could make to understanding the environment, and to climate change mitigation, is unmeasured- although we do know, from exemplary researchers such as Jon Altman that people living on country and practising customary land management does contribute to ecological sustainability.
And then we have the government. The monolingual, introduced, capitalist Australian governments that are hellbent on banning bilingual education in ther Northern Territory, moving Aboriginal people off their traditional lands and into larger regional centres, "mainstreaming" them, and withdrawing all support from homelands and outstations.
And that is all I have to say today.
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