Who Came Before?
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: We’re on our way to Japan, which is much further from Melbourne than you might think. I’m sad to leave Australia, but spring is calling.
Who Came Before?
The first thing I noticed when we landed in Sydney way back in March, even through my jet-lagged, crack-of-dawn brain fog, was an Acknowledgement of Land. I had never seen anything like it, and while it was interesting, I sort of assumed that it was some kind of messaging from Australia’s tourism ministry. We often see interesting or unusual advertising in airports.
I was wrong. Acknowledgements of land are everywhere, in both Australia & New Zealand. What is an acknowledgement of land, you ask?
It’s a sign or plaque acknowledging the traditional, historical inhabitants of a spot. Usually it says something like We acknowledge the traditional owners and sovereign custodians of the land on which Collingwood Yards is situated, the Wurundjeri people of the Woiwurrung language group.
Okay, that particular one is a bit more detailed than some (it goes on for two more paragraphs), but it’s not unusual. (Also, that’s a direct quote—and no, those are not misspellings.)
When I did the bridge climb in Sydney Harbor (great fun—highly recommend), the experience began with a very short film acknowledgement of land. We even saw signage on the highway, sort of like a city limit sign, or a county line, acknowledging the indigenous history of the land.
We had lunch with some Canadian nomads a few weeks ago, and when I mentioned how amazed I was with these acknowledgements of land, as very open recognition of a difficult history, they seemed mildly unimpressed. It turns out Canada makes similar efforts to recognize the history of the land.
I don’t know whether it makes any quantifiable difference in the living standards of people whose ancestral lands were stolen from them during colonization, but it seems to me that breaking cycles of violence and poverty and oppression has to start somewhere. Awareness is perhaps only a starting place, but you can’t get anywhere if you don’t start somewhere.
From my writer’s notebook:
In 1897, British troops sacked the palace of the Kingdom of Benin, in what is now Nigeria. Thousands of precious works were taken by the troops; the entire loot is now known as the Benin Bronzes, and they were sold off by the colonizers to museums and collectors all over the world. The Nigerian government is lobbying to have them repatriated, but it’s a slow process.
I wonder—how much of what we gaze at in museums was acquired through violence and conquest, rather than by means of ethical sales? We humans have been stealing each other’s stuff for a very long time.
Take care,
Lisa
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