Are we really going to have the same conversation this Australia day?

From where I stand, it looks to me like a both sides are fighting for understanding. The traditional owners of the land feel robbed of their land, culture and origins, and the newcomers (English settlers) feel defensive that they are attacked for being and doing what they have always known to do.

Instead of having a discussion/argument/debate about whether Australia day should be celebrated or not or whatever it is that people of the day have an issue. How about we actually acknowledge and summarise the historical event for what it actually — just humans being humans.

It’s really is that simple.

Traditional owners were doing what they knew what to do. And the English settlers were doing what they know to do. That’s it. It’s basic human behavioural psychology.

Think about every “new thing” that you encounter. In Traditional tribes you would have had a story, a routine that you would follow to deal with it. Oh there’s a predator lurking in the dark, no problem, if it’s shaped like this and makes these noises then all you have to do is…[insert trained response].

What happens when it’s something that none of the training or scripts that your tribe could prepare you for? A completely new and unknown “threat” even if it might not be a threat per se. Our nervous systems don’t know the difference actually, it consider all news things as though it is a threat/predator.

A great example is when Aboriginals met the English for the first time. This would have been a huge emotional experience and that’s what is meant to happen in order to evolve. We need to treat new things with caution and then after a few repeated exposures you gain more information, like oh these Englishmen (probably didn’t call them that lets be real!) have similar structured bodies to us but they are different colours and they cover themselves up with some sort of sheath, coating and they carry these black tools that have smoke coming out of them. Oh wait when they lift them up and aim them one of our buddies dies. That seems like a threat to my own survival, hmm conclusion? English men = bad. And that biologically encrypted information has now been passed down to each of their generations.

It got a bit trickier with the English people having an agenda to breed the Traditional owners out as well. Forced sex is never good for future generations, so there you have children being born out of the mindsets of victimised women. Great [sarcasm]…even more biological information encoded in the minds of future generations.

So what’s going on in the human mind, all humans (not just Aboriginal ones) when we experience something new? For sure, we are inundated with questions. Remember what it’s like being 5 years old where you are confident enough to have enough vocabulary to ask ALL the questions! You hear something new and immediately you’re like what’s that? Why is it like that? Why do we do this? Why do they do that? What are we doing here? Where did they come from? We need to have a mechanism/response that is inbuilt in us to tell us whether we are safe or something is a threat and proceed to run away (or attack) or to stay and gain knowledge. Because it is in your best interests as a human, as a species to master your environment so that you can behave in a way that benefits your survival and the survival of your children.

Ok so now that I have mentioned this do you understand why it is so very naive of English people to tell Aboriginals to just “get over it”.

I understand that I’m probably making English species of human (of which I am one by the way!) get all defensive because essentially at the core of what I am saying is making you feel uncomfortable about your own ancestry and heritage the thing that your great, great grandparents did to be the ‘heros’ — winners — surviving culture. So naturally, your mind will take anything that I mention personally and try to solve the problem from the same perspective of which your ancestors solved the problem hundreds of years ago. Again, human behaviour psychology.

So it is my hope that this year, after a couple of years that we have all had time to inwardly reflect and review all that has happened up until this point, that I can present this information to you that is palatable by both sides.

The purpose of gaining a better vocabulary or script surrounding an event will help you improve your response to such events in future and probably assist in you being a better and more evolved being than your ancestors. Great!

Possibly what frustrates me most when I hear the back and forth of the historical accounts of countries that have been colonised is how nobody seems to acknowledge the natural facts of what happened to these humans on both sides. Rather there only seems to be discussions on which persons version of history is correct as though they couldn’t possibly be all correct at once.

My hope would be that in pursuing understanding of these type of events and look at the biological basis of behaviour that we can transform the stories to one that benefits everyone regardless of race and region and we learn how to make less biased decisions so we can once and for all stop repeating history!

So… if that was the perspective of the Aborigines, what was the perspective of the English through the same lens of surviving in a new environment? When you start stepping into their role and their mission it will truly help you in understanding why it may have gone down that way.

Imagine, being given the task to sail across an ocean and this was during a time when people still thought the earth was flat mind you. So hey you lot, go find some new land for us, it’s getting too crowded here and we need some space, there is a probability you might die on this mission, but that’s ok we have plenty more where you came from, but if you do happen to succeed, well there is plenty of honor and pride to go with that success. Honor and pride — the basic human emotions we are motivated to work towards, sure Mr King & Mrs Queen.

Fast forward. Some of them die at sea before they even get there. Just stop there for a minute. You are one of the crew members on that ship. You are doing this ‘mission’ and you’re thinking, geez, will it be me next tomorrow? So these guys are on alert mode and just hoping, praying they will get through to the next stage of the mission which is to arrive on land. So now that we have framed the fact that these guys were in a real life game of survival of the fittest whilst their chummy pommy’s back home are sipping on beers and probably eating lovely roast potatoes, they are there looking for something they don’t even know exists yet.

Right, so they see land. Sigh of relief. Oh wait, well they have seen land before but this could be land that holds different “predators” (animals). So no relaxing for you Captain and co. Go find those predators first before they find us.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a well trained explorer all the biological mechanisms you have as a human would have been activated because of the constant threat of death and continuing into the unknown just from and having to rely on previous accounts of travellers and explorers who had completed missions similar to that.

Back to the Aboriginals perspective. They would have been best to run away at this point. Also, they had the basic human/animal response of protecting their territory. Which is ok, but in that type of “game” the ones who survive are the ones with the deadliest weapons, and the Aborigines lost that one which explains the feeling of helplessness for many generations of Aborigines who were born after these events took place.

Ok, now the Englishmen come off these boats and they see movement, potentially notice there are settlements of sorts that appear to mimic that of a humans (that they know) but different to what they have grown accustomed to.

From a psychological perspective, the priority of survival from just arriving on land is to find shelter and find food, create a safe base of which the crew can rest and start building up from there so they can send the news back home and get their prize that is so promised to them.

Lets return back to the aboriginals perspective. By now they would have discovered these humans have killed some of their kind. So really they have one of two options at this point. Move out of their way, far, far away so they won’t be bothered. Or stay as mentioned earlier.

Take into consideration, they have lived on this land for as long as their ancestors/stories begun so as a tribe they feel a sense of responsibility to their tribe to maintain their sense of control over their environment as they would have routines/scripts that help them be masters of that land/environment. The only problem for them was, it was a zero sum game to fight against the English, so they find a way to welcome these people to their tribe and gather more information. Hoping they won’t use those big black smokey tools to kill them off.

This is where it gets interesting. Obviously the species with the most effective defensive/attack mechanism will be at the top of the “food chain” (animal kingdom) whatever you want to call it.

So the year/decades following were (to put it in an analogy) a display of what happens in any ecosystem when it is over taken by an introduced species. Some species might grow better that didn’t before, some species die off all together because they had no adaptive mechanism to survive and some continue surviving but in lesser numbers than before even though they may have once been thriving in that environment prior to the introduction of this species (which are the English, if I have lost you in this analogy).

Having imagined what actually happened from both sides, can you really imagine it going down any other way? Humour me for a moment.

Picture the alternative one that didn’t end in so many Aboriginal lives being taken and women and children being separated. As in, imagine a version where the Aboriginal tribe won.

English men arrive. They go to speak to these ‘black men’, realise they don’t understand anything they speak. That’s ok, they are tired, weary, they have less hope after seeing a quarter of the men on the boat die, but they want to be respectful to these people so they take a deep breathe. They got this, right the crew is now tasked to learn a new language to try to understand these people so they can negotiate with them in order for them to cohabitate on the land.

Oh and they completely embrace the nudity and the cloths that the Aborigines wear even though they aren’t at all accustomed to it. They throw their clothes in a fire pit in a big ceremony that says begone with your english culture we are free at last from the confines of these ungodly clothing. That’s right they turn into 60’s hippies! So there’s Captain and his remaining crew, who are probably seriously emotionally overwhelmed at this stage after a long trip, all they would be craving is some familiarity to feel safe. Hey, do these black people happen to have roast meat and potatoes and some sweets, they sure would love some of that right now. Nah sorry guys, we got grubs? Hmm, well heck we’re hungry so we’ll take anything at this stage.

Oh wait, weren’t we sent here on a mission from the King/Queen of England? What do you think they would say to us right now if we reported back to them? Oh no. It just dawned on them. After telling them the news of a successful mission, how would they explain this type of living to them and would they even send more people if they did tell them?

We have our own ideas of how we could survive on this land, I mean we didn’t go completely unprepared we do have people who are farmers who know how to grow from the land. So even though we don’t speak like you, dress like you, eat like you, hunt like you, I’m sure there is a way we can live in harmony and embrace your culture. It might just take a bit of time to adjust you know. What do you reckon…1,2,3 years? 10 years? 30 years? No? Ah make it 100 years.

Uhhh our brains hurt just thinking through those logistics. Too complicated. We have the tools to over power so lets just make them dress like us, talk like us and do as we do instead. Ahh brain is relieved from not having to change who we are and adapt to their ways. The alternative is every time we see them we kill them. But if you’re lucky we will even have sex with your women. Oh wait, no we will rape them. Because remember, when these men who thought they were on the brink of death, no creature comforts to relax them and make them behave “civilly” that a decent human is expected to behave in our current era, they reach for basic animal needs to be fulfilled to get through another day. Having sex with their women would help them feel more in control and help them relieve some stress and anxiety about being so far away from what is familiar and known.

As you can see, walking through the different scenarios, both sides are wrong when they talk about colonisation of Australia. Because both sides fail to understand the nature of humans. And that is how history should be told. Not from the perspective of hero’s and victims but from the perspective of empathy and understanding of human nature in the context of our animal instincts, trained behaviours and cultural programs.