The Western Worldview

There is quite a gulf between what we sometimes think all people take for granted, and what Aboriginals have traditionally taken for granted.

Most of us have suffered through – or enjoyed – lessons in basic history at school. The potted (possibly potty) history in this chapter is not really about the details of Anglo-Celtic Australian history so much as it’s about the source of many of the ideas most westerners take for granted.

Our Daily Bread

Since the beginning of time, humans have developed complex, interdependent social and spiritual systems which helped to solve ‘the economic problem’, which has three parts:

• What to produce

• How to produce it

• How to distribute what is produced

Aboriginals have lived on the Australian continent for 40,000 years or more. For most of those years, they lived in relative isolation from the rest of the world. Most indigenous Australians lived in environments far different from those of the people who would later invade and take control of their country.

Because Aboriginals and the rest of the world developed separately and with different resources, they developed completely different [but equally valid] ways of solving the economic problem. 

The complex, interdependent, social and spiritual systems of Aboriginals were matched to the resources they had available for survival.

When the First Fleet arrived in 1788, the British and their guests brought with them a way of living and thinking that was appropriate for Europe’s geography and history, but which took quite a while to adapt to local conditions. 

The conflict between our two ways of seeing the world led to a physical conflict that was ugly. Today, we must not only deal with the results of that ugliness, we still have to acknowledge the differences in our world views if we are to close the gap.