This post is in response to Gary Lienert's latest entry at
http://www.greeningpilbara.blogspot.com.
My experience with working in remote, rural and other regional areas of Australia has been both challenging and rewarding - often at the same time. I have also worked for the Ministry of Justice and the Deaprtment for Community Corrections as well as the Department of Community Services. Nothing prepared mr for working with Aboriginals who had been removed from their traditional, cultural place of being into concrete boxes where both spirit and culture were pulverised into dispossesed mash.
I have been affected, changed and forever vigilant of the behaviour that leads to incarceration and fought those demons myself in my own life. I disagree that I am a ethnocentric, cultural suck-arse celtic bastard although that was the first and last points of contact that some cultural groups would only afford me.
The most overwhelming issue I encountered was the chronic and perpetual violence that permeates differing Australian social communities - often fueled by alcohol, physical seperation and downright apartheid ignorance. In my opinion Australia is currently immersed in one of the biggest genocide acts in history and thats putting it lightly. Children are still removed from families and people are still sperated and jailed for little reason.
Anything, and I mean anything that brings communication between individuals, communities and cultures grows knowledge and understanding. Respecting cultural traditions is as simple as listening , observing, respecting, refraining. With respect to technology, nothing replaces face-to-face contact or personal presence.
When barriers of distance present themselves technology can bridge the gap yet not kept in check may indeed force further seperation. I totally agree with Gary that there is a huge question as to whether Indigenous Australians are in fact being fleeced of the very last element of their cultural heritage when the spirit of education, training, community transition or other important tradional heritage is replaced by other cultural pedagogical and androgogical norms.
In addition it could be said ; since when do communities in the desert need broadband ADSL or handheld wireless TV sets or 4WD troop carriers or bottle shops filled with all the latest poison?
Google Earth generated by hundreds of spinning satellites has mapped every square inch of this earth and what for ? Do we really need it ? Is it making our lives any easier?
I also question the ethical, moral and social implications of ICT's and the pervasive onslaught of mobile technologies as they continue their path to bury themselves inside our bodies. I also fear the rise of the machines and the permanence of consortiums as they suck our cultural knowledge, tagging it and burying it into electronic meta-data. One thing I am certain of is that it will NOT STOP.
Protecting our cultures, traditions and ways of life is better understanding, as it occurs , by way of appropriate means the very essence of the techynologies as they emerge in discrete settings and used to promote awareness and positive accord between individuals, group, cultures and nations.
It begins with the Elders in every culture. it ends with the Elders in every culture as we all eventually become an Elder. We all have a role in disseminating information, in trianing, educating and growing knowledge. No one owns knoweldge. That was the biggest mistake of humanity - in assuming that any one individual owns what could be shared and given to better the lives of others.
Laws, rules = control, irrespective of the culture. Order is a mass enterprise.
We are one nation , divided geographically and ethnocentrically into nations, states, shires, towns, villages and compounds. The sooner we realise we are nothing more than one element in that greater ecosphere the more easily we accept love, life and living.
All respect is earned. This too will come to pass.
