Indigenous Australians have a rich and tangible connection to these lands now called Australia. They can trace their heritage back 60,000 years according to science. I can trace my family tree back three generations now. That just starts to get to people who came to Australia from other places. None of them came from Scotland, but with "Scott" as a surname, red hair and skin that frizzles in the sun, I guess that's where I come from. I have some great family traditions, a sense of pride and precious relationships going back two generations. But further back than that I have pretty much nothing - a few stories that have been handed down and some old newspaper clippings. Pretty paltry compared with 60,000 years and places that are still scared, and oral traditions and languages that are still alive. It is a rich and wonderful heritage that Indigenous Australians hold. Those of us it are rightly jealous and are alone and adrift by comparison.
With the Scottish, there is probably some English is my heritage. My children have some Chinese heritage as well. Like most Australians our heritage is mixed and a bit of a mystery. You have to look to the newest of Australians to find heritages of one culture only. Most Indigenous Australians have a mixed heritage - some that is Indigenous to Australia, some that is not. So, if we classifying everyone as conquered or conqueror and assume that the people of today carry all the prejudices and all the responsibilities of their ancestors, we get to a paradoxical place where Ingenuous Australians who have non-Indigenous heritage are both conquered and conquerors - oppressed and oppressors. So let's not divide people using this artificial binary. We are all Australians. We are all responsible for injustices that were done and for unjust systems that persist. We are make use of the benefits of the invasion. What we need is a way forward that doesn't polarise us.
People with Indigenous Australian heritage are paving that way. Their rich, 60 millennia old heritage is being shared. When there is a big event a local person welcomes everyone to their land. They don't tell them where the fence is or ask them to pay or even make rules about how the land is to be used. They just welcome them. People with Indigenous heritage are leading the way in preserving their culture, their sacred sites, their ancient ways of being. The are preserving them not just for themselves but for all Australians. We are all enriched by the presence and preservation of sacred sites, culture and language. I can say I live on the land of the oldest living continuous culture. A land that still holds the people who were first given charge of it by the Creator - the oldest living culture on earth. This is my heritage too because it has been shared with me. At smaller events when someone recognises the people of the country we are meeting on, I am reminded of the generosity of people who welcome others to their land - perhaps this is because they are in touch with the reality that they were given it in the first place.
So I am rightly jealous of Indigenous people - people of Indigenous Heritage - it is a gift passed down to be shared not a polarising classification of peoples to put them at odds with each other. But there is one more important thing to be said.
As I listened to brothers of Indigenous heritage I heard a little of their pride, but I soon heard a much more disturbing truth. Overwhelming the pride of owning 60,000 years of living culture is the reality that an indigenous heritage means carrying 230 years of debilitating, demeaning oppression in your genes. The most prominent thing about being Aboriginal is knowing your ancestors were treated as second-class citizens for the last fifty years, and that they were treated as less than human for the 180 years before that. I might be jealous, missing of a long, rich and stable culture that has continuity right back to the Creation but I am not jealous of massive rates of incarceration, appalling health and education levels and prejudice which still allows murder in custody for which no one is held to account.
We are all indigenous people. We are almost all people of mixed heritage. We all own our history. We all own our future. Together we will find our place. Welcome to country.
