indigenity

went to the MWF session on writing about indigenous issues yesterday...not as focussed on the questions as it should have been, I thought, particularly questions of ownership of stories and ways of addressing the inevitable prejudices and cross-cultural losses/perspective shifts when those stories are told in Western ways (as they must be to some extent to reach a Western/non-indigenous audience). Two interesting comments from Gary Presland, who has a new book out on pre-European Melbourne: first, that very early on the Kulin people of Melbourne and surrounds were treated as "just there", to be observed, not listened to, with the consequence that very little of their real voice was recorded (I think this also goes for art and so on; there's a bit and what there is is fascinating, like the sketches of Europeans held in the SLV's collection) and second, that the Western view of the past 400 years is very much "parcelled up" or divided into categories, whereas the indigenous view was very holistic.