Old Country, New Country

Ever since the first week of studying this course, I became curious of how Aboriginal people live in the today's society and whether they have maintained their culture in a society and environment which has modernized and urbanized and in one which is clearly diverse to their traditional ways of living. So when I came across the video "Old Country, New Country" in the library, I knew it was the perfect answer to my questions.

DVD excerpt: 

A parable about the clash between the oldest living culture in the world and the industrialised world. The Aboriginal people of the Kimberley region in Western Australia's far north believe "country" is not just a piece of land that is to be bought and sold - but the very fabric of their being. However a brave new world is fast approaching, and with it, cast riches are on offer, promises of a better life. This documentary asks, "Do these people stay with the old ways and continue life as usual, or do they take the new and give up the very thing that they themselves by?"

If you are interested into hearing a very personal account of Aboriginal people's views on how they have had to try to live and adapt to a culture not their own, I think this is a video worth watching as it captures the lives of an Aboriginal family living between two worlds and how they do so:

Now I live in two different worlds. In the modern type of living where my law forbids me to live in certain areas but I have to because of white man's way. But I still manage to get around and do my own cultural things and it pays off. It's what my people have taught and given me. They told me to look after this and that's why I can't let go - Roy Wiggan

While the world around them is so profoundly different to their traditional culture, this Aboriginal family remains persistent in maintaining it. Their strength and belief in their land has not faded, instead it has been strengthened. The movie shows how the family builds a raft, which is the main part of their culture, to preserve their identity. If they ever stopped building the raft, the elder believes that they would be "dead people." Indeed, Aboriginal people today have not lost hope in their beliefs, they are strong as they were before, their deep connection to the land has not wavered.

Although you see that they have accepted the new modern type of living in their lives, you can truly sense their struggle and pain. It's as if you can see a continuous dispossession experienced even by Aboriginal people today. Their very belief based on the land, the country underlies this.

Everything has been taken over and owned by someone else...You're destroying our country...We are the owner of this land. Give us a go and let us make our decisions ourselves - Albert Wiggan (1)

Overall, it was just amazing watching this video and also very touching - you could really hear their emotions and their passion towards their land, their unimaginable persistence and strength to have maintained their beliefs and being the oldest living culture which has not come without challenges. I think their commitment is unlike any other.

To end this post, this is just another quote I found in The Oxford Companion of Aboriginal Art and Culture of another Aboriginal's man view about living in today's society while maintaining an Aboriginal identity. Hope you enjoyed.

Our objective is to bring about balance and understanding - a true sense of equality. And that's basically what I think our next step is to do that because we know we're strong in the elements of our foundation. Our foundation is our ranga (sacred objects), our foundation is our madayin (religious knowledge) our likan (clan connections), larrakitj, (hollow-log-mortuary ceremonies), and the philosophy that they carry. The challange now is to enable the next generation to live a good quality of life that recognises difference more than what we've been experiencing in the past, because now it's time to think what difference contributes to a society. Because that's how society lives and that's why we don't want to lose our culture, its the difference that we want to maintain not the sameness. The sameness can be classified as assimilation. That's what we don't want - we don't want to be assimilated - to think like a white man. (2)

References:
(1) Old Country, New Country. DVD. Directed by Mark Jones. 2009; Hindmarsh, SA: Tape Services, 2009. 
(2)  Sylvia Kleinert and Margo Neale, The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2000), 494.