Reconciliation

This week in Australia, it's Reconciliation Week  but for most of the wider community this doesn't seem to mean anything. This particular week isn't bounded by a Monday to Sunday, or a Sunday to Saturday, it's bounded by two specific dates of importance to the Indigenous communities of Australia. The first of these is the date of the 1967 referendum when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities were given the right to vote and citizenship (in a vote that was 90% for, and 10% against). The second is the date of a High Court decision granting land rights to Indigenous communities (in 1992).

These were powerful moments in the colonial narrative, but there is so much more to do. How these dates might play into Walkabout, or even if they need to, is going through my head now.

Generally, the idea behind Walkabout is that traditional communities hadcrespect for each other and for the land. While the invaders wanted dominance, spirits of vengeful conquest imbued lineages of Western power, competing with one another through mutually-destructive strategies and self-destructive tactics that caused massive collateral damage in exchange for a bit of personal gain, or for damaging one another. I'm not sure if I'm making myself too clear here, but I'm looking at these invading colonial spiritual forces like a cancer. Unless directly confronted, their symptoms can be addressed but they'll only go into remission. Walkabout is intended to be about addressing the root causes, and healing the world through thought, word, and deed. Simply saying the right things and paying lip service to the concepts isn't enough.