As one early campaigner for Aboriginal equality put it, it would be pretty darned hard to plant anything with only kangaroos to pull a plough – not that there were any ‘farmable’ plants available in a sense westerners identify with agriculture. Many of our native animals produce milk, but koala cheese is not yet widely available from supermarkets. Water in Australia flows unpredictably, and many native plant seeds are only germinated by fire.
In a good year, before colonisation, Aboriginals had no need for a surplus. Even in a bad year, the best way to preserve the food or water available was mostly to leave it where it might be found if needed.
To peoples who have no choice but to take food when and where it can be found, the ideas of deferred gratification, savings or the accumulation of wealth could make no sense at all. It was taken for granted that no one took any more water or food than they needed. Resources were respected rather than ‘saved’ – there was no image in anyone’s head of a store of supplies in the way that we might remember how much cash we have in the rice canister at home.
Before colonisation, the collection of food in Australia was a co-operative effort, and food collected was distributed as part of a reciprocal obligation. Food was not necessarily distributed according to the effort an individual had contributed to its production in the way the western market system rewards individuals for, and encourages, measurable effort.
If an older Aboriginal was given the choicest cuts of kangaroo out of respect, it also meant these cuts were probably the easiest to digest.
In hunter-gatherer societies, most meals come from the women’s and children’s share of food gathering, supplemented at intervals by the super-duper tucker hunted by men. Everyone’s contribution was valued. The distribution of what was produced was based on relationships and protocol.
This system of reciprocity, or mutual obligation, is deeply ingrained in traditional Aboriginal thinking. If there is no greater cohesive force than a mutual threat, the threat of starvation must have created social bonds many westerners don’t experience today. Today, as westerners, we can only guess at how important mutual obligations continue to be for even the most urbanised Aboriginals.
Today, westerners of various religious beliefs congregate together regularly and share food or troubles, but this communion or community is not a constant as it was in traditional Aboriginal society; for us it usually represents at most a partial break from ‘real life’ hours spent earning a wage, travelling to school or shopping. In ‘real life’ food preparation is not always a group effort.
In the absence of any link between an individual's effort today and his/her relative status tomorrow, the western focus on individual achievement could not be relevant to traditional Aboriginals. There was no need for power over the land or even ownership; people were part of the landscape itself, and land had the power to sustain life.
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