The Indigenous Australian people have confused outsiders for centuries. The Dreaming says on page 6, “It took well over half a century for Europeans to realize that, behind the outward show, was an inward structure of surprising complexity” (Dreaming, 6). This complexity stems from how they view their own existence, which then carries itself into practice by how they live. The first example of this unfamiliar thinking is in the faith of the Indigenous Australians. “The Aboriginals have no gods, just or unjust, to adjudicate the world. …No notion of grace or redemption; no whisper of inner peace and reconcilement; no heaven of reward or hell of punishment” (Dreaming, 64). This view of a nonexistent divinity is clearly defined in the book Carpentaria. In chapter 5, “Mozzie Fishman,” Mozzie says quite blatantly what he thinks about religion and a just God who comes to the rescue of His people. Mozzie says, “Biblical stories lived in somebody else’s desert” (Carpentaria, pg 142). Mozzie also mocks the familiar Biblical stories and their values. When Will Phantom is about to return home to Norm Phantom’s home, Mozzie makes reference to the tale of the prodigal son. He mocked the idea of love and grace involved in the ideological story and chose instead to accept things how they would happen in his desert. Neither do they see a separate divinity as all knowing, nor do they view nature as something to be exalted. “They neither dominate their environment nor seek to change it. ‘Children of nature’ they are not, nor are they nature’s ‘masters.’ One can only say they are ‘at one’ with nature” (Dreaming, pg 65). Mozzie shows this philosophy through his example of what to do if a car in his procession broke down on one of the steep mountain passes. He says if the spirit wants to take your car (i.e. it breaks down), then you should just get out of the car, and let it roll back down the pass. At first glance, it seems that nature that is higher than the Indigenous Australians; nevertheless, Mozzie continues. He says not to worry about losing the car, because it will be returned to them once they die. To use the words of Disney’s The Lion King, it seems that the Australians are a part of the great Circle of Life; thus, nature and man are equal, both receiving from and giving to each other. |
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As the Indigenous Australians have no gods to create a just or unjust world, they see things simply as happening. “…unlike us, [an Indigenous Australian] seems to see ‘life’ as a one-possibility thing. This may be why he seems to have almost no sense of tragedy” (Dreaming, pg 68). This is clearly exemplified in the case of the murder of Elias Smith. The instant Mozzie and his caravan see that Elias, a white man, is dead, their first reaction is not to express grief or shock. Instantly, they realize what has happened and move on because they do not want to be blamed for the death of a white man. “Nobody would be hanging around for long, not if there was a dead white man sitting out there. It looked bad” (Carpentaria, pg 147). It did not matter that the ‘dead white man’ was someone all of them knew; now that he was dead, they had to move on with life. Nevertheless, Will Phantom was affected by the death, and he stayed behind with the body once the caravan had moved on. Here is where we find another instance of pushing away grief, again in Mozzie. “How surprising had been the feeling of relief of not having Will for company anymore, although he had cherished the young man like his own son” (Carpentaria, pg 151). Although Mozzie had just lost the company of a man he cherished as a son, he was glad to see him go; there is no sense of loss or grief, not even a goodbye. Having read Carpentaria, I can understand why the Indigenous Australians have confused outsiders for as long as they have. Their culture is completely unlike our own; however, we must open our minds to how they think and our eyes to how they see the world. Once we do this, we can begin to understand their struggles, and then we can begin to help one another create a world where peace and understanding rule over ethnicity, language, and color. |
