Australian `rite of passage’ to connect with Country.

Eugene Eades at Nowanup, east of Albany, where he runs `rite of passage’ camps

Some years back in the recent past, I studied Aboriginal Cultures with Open University.  It was my first experience at tirtiary study on line, and I found it a challenge even before opening its content.  I was awarded a High Distinction, equivalent to an A+, which improved my University average slightly.

It has always been my belief that eventually Australian Culture will become endemicized, if that is a word.  Had British settlement happened much earlier and more slowly, it would have been absorbed into the traditional Cultures that existed all over Australia amongst the hundreds of different language groups, which all had long, and complex oral cultures.

Country is perhaps the most important concept in Australian Culture.  As more Australians are conceived and born here, so will the endemic population gradually revert to what it might have gradually evolved into, had the change in culture not been so sudden.  When you add another bucket of water to the tub, at first there is a big wave that seems to suck out all the rest of the water, but eventually it subsides and the level is even again, but at a different level from what it was.  Had the water been added gradually, it would have ended up at the same level, but without the destructive wave.

"How could it be?" I used to ask myself, "that eventually all Australians will be part of indigenous, revived if not perpetuated, Aboriginal culture."  Now, I have seen what could be the start, in the article I have linked this too.

All Australian Aboriginal cultures had some form of rite of passage.  Some included male circumcision at puberty.  They all consisted of coming into contact with Country and learning about it.  Instead of a written history with marks on paper, Aboriginal history is written in the landscape.  Songlines are ways of singing the story through the Country itself, but also acknowledging that Country is a living Ecosystem itself with which one participates individually and as a human or totemic group.

That somehow this tradition has been joined with the Australian Criminal Justice System is a miracle.  Nothing could be better for all young, would-be offenders, to have this sort of experience in communicating with Country.  I write this as  Justice of the Peace with some genuine knowledge.  In fact, all Australians could well eventually participate in this sort of "rite".  So my dream looks like it was a valid insight into the future that is coming to pass.