The myth of Aboriginal stories being myths | Jacinta Koolmatrie | TEDxAdelaide

Before 1836, the Donna people, the Aboriginal people and continuing owners of the land we know today, used their sacred sites, ceremonial grounds and cemeteries for their purpose. When the concept of Adelaide emerged, many of these places were destroyed along with many of the people who lived in them. It is important that you recognize that we are on dry land because I am going to tell you some

stories

of my people. All that matters is whether people argue that Martin is a yacht or that there was no land for the last six hours north of here in what is commonly known as Flinders.

Ranges alone voseo archaeological evidence demonstrated that we had been here more than forty-five thousand years. The first story I am going to tell you is that of young G, but in order to tell you about this story I need you to close your eyes. your eyes and imagine that you are a child without order so five is not time it is getting darker you are with your cousin outside playing your aunts and your Nanas are talking but then one of your RT says okay children you have to come and sit down because Yama T is coming to get you and all your cousins ​​are scared, but you're a little confused because you've never heard of Yama T before, so you go to your aunt, can you tell her aunt what's wrong? the youngest T and she looks at you and says that young G is a big scary monster, he's bigger than you and he's even bigger than me.

If you see Yama T, you should run fast because he steals the best spot for you from the kids. to go is to run quickly and climb a tree because the thing about the Yama T is that he can't look up, he can only look down or from side to side, he will be able to smell you, but he just won't be able to. to see you until you stay in that tree until one of us comes and catches you, you can open your eyes. The story about geometry came about last year when I started researching rock art studies in South Australia as an archeology postgraduate. student I was looking at a study and there were two anthropologists during the 1960s who looked at extinct animals.

They were interested in where megafauna had coexisted with Aboriginal people in particular. They were interested in an animal known as Diprotodon. This animal was a large black wombat. creature that became extinct about forty-seven thousand years ago, they found a footprint that they believed was the footprint of the Diprotodon and they did so by looking at the skeleton of a footprint and comparing it with the image of the diaper, a huge footprint and because From this they came to the conclusion and the idea that Aboriginal people and megafauna had coexisted became more interesting. What I found most interesting about this story was that Aboriginal people were barely included, the only way we were included was as informants at the time.

At that time, Aboriginal people were mainly used as people that they got information from and then they went and told the world who these strange people were. They never really assimilated any information. This didn't surprise me because at the time Aboriginal people weren't even included. In the national headcount seen before the 1967 referendum to change the constitution, Aboriginal people were specifically excluded and this was for two reasons: the first reason was that they believed we were closer to animals than humans; The second reason was that they believed that we were becoming extinct which clearly is not true because today I am here what surprised me the most is that I had grown up knowing about this animal and if they had not realized why now that animal is the yama to the story that my Nana told my mother, my mother told me and my sister told my niece is the same story, the same animal that they were looking for on this rock and this is a photo that Manny is true of the Yama T.

Are all our

stories

really about megafauna? I don't think there are too many stories that talk about a small animal. All of them, or at least most of them, are big things, just the story of the big snake that this snake ate too much. SAP from an acacia tree and vomited all over the earth the places where this snake vomited and they know it as uranium, so for us uranium is poison and most of these places at this time I used as uranium mines at that moment, an argument with which people did not agree. Mining, however, Australian law never allowed us to say no, rather we had the right to negotiate what we received and what we received was a payment, a payment, but I can tell you that it is less than enough for a week of food for a family, so "You've probably heard of these stories as

myth

s or legends in your classroom books, but can you really say that these stories are as simple as

myth

s? 50,000 years of occupation tend to be dismissed as if it were nothing. nothing, but here there are 50 squares each, square that represents 1,000 years, so if you look at the square on the right side, that's how long Europeans have been on this continent and I'm not even talking about James Cook, I'm talking about the first one.

European ship that passed and I said: I see land, so if we have been here during that, why are we not considered experts on the land? How come 239 years of knowledge equals 50,000 years of knowledge? I have counted today they are coming. of my elders, elders of people in our community who have the knowledge equivalent in white Australian society to a PhD, so they are fundamental to my research. Whatever they say, I can find it. I hear you've probably met an older person. but they are welcome to the country, but how many of you say you have spoken to an elder outside of welcome to the country?

If the only time we talk to the elderly is when we ask them to welcome them to the country, then we are not. seeing them as the people they are, we are not seeing them as teachers, guides, instructors, it is time to stop seeing elders only as people who welcome, it is time to see them in positions where they can make decisions and see them for what they They really are like leaders of this nation.