Hello everyone! I thought I’d give an introduction for myself and for this comm, so it doesn’t seem quite so empty.
I’m PugJesus - a terminally online user who blathers on about history altogether too much. I particularly enjoy the history of the Roman Republic and Empire, the medieval period, and economic history. I’m not a professional historian, or anyone special like that - I went to college and majored in History, but I was only an undergrad. Thus, my opinion is generally slightly more-informed than the average layman, but only slightly!
I’m very capable of being incorrect, so despite my penchant for convincing-sounding paragraphs, I beg you - don’t ever take my word as gospel, on anything! I’m extremely capable of being wrong, and that’s aside from the issue that history itself is rarely settled! I’m a lowly monoglot (shaming my ancestors) who can’t even read primary sources without a pre-existing translation, and despite my enthusiasm for history, much of my post-college reading has been from an eclectic selection of literature ranging from cutting-edge to hopelessly-out-of-date. A man buys what books and journals he can afford, after all 😭
I already mod more comms than I really want to. But people, otherwise, might be WRONG on the INTERNET, and we can’t have that! If anyone would like to assist with the modding burden - which I expect to be light - feel free to send me a message, and I’ll check your comment history!
If you feel you might be answering often here, feel free to introduce yourself below! Or don’t - all participation in this comm is welcome, at any level of expertise or involvement! We’re here to learn together, after all!
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I’m Vi- Grail and I’m learning Indigenous knowledges in Australia. I know a bit of the local language (I don’t feel comfortable saying which language for privacy reasons), and I think at this point I know more about precolonial Australia than the average Piefed user. I also have strong political opinions and acknowledge My positionality rather than pretending to objectivity.
Here’s a fun fact: In many Australian countries, people are given a totem by their family. That totem is a plant or animal that they are one with, and responsible for. If your totem is the grass tree, then you’re responsible for knowing all the uses of the grass tree. How to make fire from its stalk, how to use its sap for glue to make tools, how to turn its leaves into shelter, which insects live in it, how to prepare its sap for eating. You also need to hold sacred knowledge about the grass tree. Its stories, the spiritual matters associated with it, and secrets that nobody else is allowed to know. And you have to monitor the health of the population of grass trees. You decide how much sap your family can take from them. You have to keep an eye on how they’re doing with the burning. If a blight starts harming them, you need to be on top of that.
The totem system is a political engine that ensures appropriate conservation steps are taken. People look to the totem-holders to decide the law regarding that living thing. Holders of animal totems can’t eat that animal. If your totem is the blue manna crab, you can’t eat blue manna crabs. And you decide how many your community is allowed to eat. Whatever you say, that’s the law. This political engine decentralises power and responsibility, creating a politically engaged and empowered populace. Anarchists have a lot to learn from Aboriginal people, because they’ve been doing successful anarchism for 60,000 years.
That’s a legitimately fascinating form of specialization, decentralization, and knowledge preservation! Thank you for sharing!
You’re welcome!
Most Indigenous people who live a traditional lifestyle will get multiple totems over their lifetime. Different countries have different procedures, but where I’m from, you can have up to four: One when you’re born, one when you become a teacher, one when you become an Elder, and a fourth one I don’t understand yet.
Totems will often be granted after a spiritually significant experience with that creature. For example, if a baby is deathly ill but is then cured by the medicine of a particular tree, they might get that tree as their totem. Or if the Elders remark that a child walks like an emu, they might decide “since you’re an emu, you’ll be in charge of looking after the emus”. Sometimes people who are at the appropriate point in their lives to gain a totem will go into the bush and sit in the same spot for days, waiting to see if a totem will choose them. And sometimes the community needs someone to look after the turtles, so they’ll give the turtle totem to the new baby who’s just been born.
Nobody can remember ALL of a culture’s stories and practices. If everyone had to remember everything, random parts would be forgotten and lost forever. The totem system, as well as the separation of men’s business and women’s business, help people focus their efforts of knowledge preservation. Totems are often shared between grandparent and grandchild. That child knows that one day it will be their duty alone to safeguard that knowledge, because of who they are. The responsibility is wrapped up in identity. That’s one of many cultural techniques that give the First Australians the most accurate oral histories in the world.
Science has empirically confirmed that the First Australians have oral histories that are 10,000 years old. Dozens of communities all over the coast have stories of islands that were once connected to the mainland, when the world was colder. White people thought they were fiction, until scientists found out about the ice age. The First Australians still remember the ice age. Some Elders can look at an underwater terrain scan map and tell you stories about a particular area that has been underwater for 10,000 years.
Holy cow! Subscribe to aboriginal facts, please.
Sure thing!
The word Aboriginal should always be capitalised, just like a nationality. Even if you don’t typically capitalise nationalities, it’s important to put in the effort to show as much respect for the Aboriginal identity as the grammar nazis do for national identities, to help create a perception of equal importance. The same goes for the word Indigenous and First Australian.
Australia is home to dozens of Aboriginal countries. Here’s a map:
Each of the coloured splotches here is a distinct language or local dialect. Language is extremely local in Australia. Different families from opposite sides of a river might have different names for some things. Some Indigenous people grow up speaking several different languages at home. I listen to a hip-hop artist named Baker Boy, from Yolngu country up north. You can find his homeland on this map if you look closely. He says English is his third language. And he’s lived in Australia his whole life!
Before colonisation, when all the countries had good sovereignty over their land, there were procedures for crossing a border that worked a lot like a visa. They aren’t always followed these days, but the tradition is kept alive where it can be. I’ll tell you the old way, and then the new way. It’s called a welcome to country.
Before colonisation, you would walk to the border of your land with another family’s land, and go to a campsite that is maintained for travel purposes. You light a fire and put some damp leaves on it to send up smoke. Then you wait and watch the sky. When they send up smoke, it’s an invitation for you to go meet them. You give them a gift, and they teach you the song of the path through their land to where they’re going. Every path has a song, and together they form a songline. Songlines are Indigenous Australia’s maps. Over days or weeks, you’d learn the songline. You learn which hills and river bends to look for so you can follow the paths. You learn the stars that point the way. And it’s all in a song that tells a story. Narrative and rhythm aid memory.
These days, welcomes are held a lot faster. Instead of several weeks, they often take five minutes. They must be held by an Elder or a traditional owner. The traditional owners are the families who are recognised by the government as having authority to negotiate over the land. Not every Aboriginal person can hold a welcome. But when a welcome is held, you’ll often be told some knowledge, or a story, to broaden your cultural horizons.
Some Indigenous people will refuse to travel if they don’t get a welcome to country. It’s important, because traditionally it teaches you the laws and how to behave properly. It tells you where the men’s or women’s spaces are so you don’t go in a place you’re not supposed to. It tells you how to avoid upsetting the spirits.
As a non-Indigenous person, My duty is to amplify the voices of Indigenous people, not to speak for them. I can’t tell you everything, I can’t even tell you most things, because I don’t know them. I can tell you what I have permission to share and what’s freely available on the internet. Everything I’ve said here is pretty common knowledge and not specific to any one country, other than the bit about Baker Boy (and I got that from a published interview). When working with Indigenous people, make sure to cite your sources and seek permission to share information. And don’t position yourself as an authority. Only people within a culture are authorities on it.
But there’s plenty more I can share if you’re interested.
Before colonisation, you would walk to the border of your land with another family’s land, and go to a campsite that is maintained for travel purposes. You light a fire and put some damp leaves on it to send up smoke. Then you wait and watch the sky. When they send up smoke, it’s an invitation for you to go meet them. You give them a gift, and they teach you the song of the path through their land to where they’re going. Every path has a song, and together they form a songline. Songlines are Indigenous Australia’s maps. Over days or weeks, you’d learn the songline. You learn which hills and river bends to look for so you can follow the paths. You learn the stars that point the way. And it’s all in a song that tells a story. Narrative and rhythm aid memory.
Brilliant uses of music that go beyond art, something often forgotten in modern Western societies.
To compare and contrast with my obsession of choice (if you don’t mind, I apologize if this seems to lead elsewhere; I mean it genuinely as a point of comparison to highlight that I find the songline notion interesting), in Ancient Rome, getting directions even in one’s own city could be confusing, with directions given by vague and ad-hoc notions of subjective descriptions and distances. We often underestimate or outright ignore organizational technology because it’s not tangible, yet cultural practices utilizing/creating organizational technology like that are incredibly beneficial, on multiple levels.
I’m also reminded, though a much less friendly notion, of Genghis Khan training his soldiers to pass down orders through structured songs, since Mongols were illiterate before Genghis commissioned the Mongol alphabet, but still needed to remember orders verbatim.
Thank you! I feel like I’m hoarding you. There has to be a community that you can share this wealth of knowledge more broadly. Like a c/anthropology or something.
When the white invaders first arrived in Australia, they wrote in their journals that the land looked like a garden estate. Green grass plains with scattered trees bearing nuts and fruit. The perfect environment to go for a stroll or hunt some game. European aristocrats would hire groundskeepers to tend to environments so idyllic. And sure enough, since the white people started putting up fences and banning traditional practices, most places don’t look like that anymore. The First Australians were keeping the country in such a beautiful state. But how did they do it, without diesel mowers or full time groundskeepers?
The answer is cold fire. Most Australian countries use fire to terraform the land. White people build fences and breed animals, but the First Australians’ version of animal agriculture was to create a healthy ecosystem that would produce a lot of game and make it easy to hunt. This method was so efficient that before colonisation, Aboriginal people only had to work a few hours a day to feed their family.
These fires aren’t like the wildfires you see on the news. They don’t even climb to the tops of the trees; they’re not hot enough to do serious damage. Traditional fire keepers watch the weather and choose a time of year when there’s a lot of moisture in the ground and the plants, but not so much that the fire won’t start. An experienced Elder can look at a handful of dirt and tell you how hot the fire will burn, based on the microbial conditions. Traditional culture says that the land itself is full of life, and it’s right, science has found the life that the Elders have known is there for thousands of years.
Before they start a burn, they make a little bit of smoke to warn the insects and other animals. The animals smell the smoke, and climb up the trees. They know a fire is coming, and they know it won’t burn hot enough to climb the trees. The animals have literally evolved, over 65,000 years, to listen to the people.
I don’t know how it is in other countries, but where I live, listening to the animals is also very important. Aboriginal seasons don’t change based on particular dates, or the weather, or the position of the stars. They change when the plants and animals decide it does. All of the living creatures on Country have seasonal behaviours, and the seasons officially change when those behaviours start. There’s a kind of consensus democracy that decides the flow of times. Sometimes a season runs longer or shorter than usual, because of variations in the climate and in the natural cycles. That’s fine, the people adapt. And listening to the animals and the plants gives you so much knowledge. For example, you can tell whether it’s going to rain or not, based on what colour sand the ants are bringing to their nests. The ants choose to bring light sand or dark sand based on how much heat they want their nest to absorb or reflect from the sun.
Where I live, there are six seasons. The seasons are different in different countries. It depends on the local climate. Traditionally, each family around here has six different homes, one for each season. When the season changes, they pack up and move to the next home. There are certain animals to hunt and certain plants to gather depending on the season. Again, the totem system is used. The totem-holders check on the animals to make sure they’re adults who have had kids and can safely be hunted without damaging the ecosystem. Seasonal responsibilities to the land, like traditional burning, are fulfilled. The people take only what they need, and only what the environment can sustain. They give back to the environment, looking after it and making sure it’ll still be thriving in another 65,000 years.
This is awesome! Thank you so much!
Hi, my name is M’aiq and I’m a bronze age colapse-aholic. I’m no where near capable of modding but I thought I’d
beshare. I look forward to learning!I commented mostly to encourage qualified others to do the same. Now that there is at least one spectacular contribution, it is time to downvote me!
