Plants with Intersectional Power
It is worth asking yourself how you think Indigenous Australians survived on this landmass for over 60 000 years, the oldest continuous civilisation on Earth, by stumbling across the odd witchetty grub here and there.
They didn't.
Recently a stone found in Arnhem Land has been found to have 65 000 year-old grains embedded in its surface. The grains were embedded through a process over many years of continual seed grinding with the purpose of making flour. This places Indigenous Australians as the first bread makers, some 60 000 years before the Ancient Egyptian civilisation was even founded.
In a powerful presentation at TEDxSydney, academic Bruce Pascoe synthesises some of the most salient findings revealed in his book, 'Dark Emu, Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident' (2014). In re-reading and re-interpreting the diaries of early European explorers, Pascoe effectuates a new-historical revision of the contemporary understanding of Australian Indigenous agricultural practices. In accentuating the way Australian plants are perceived only through a Western teleology, Pascoe introduces "plants that teach us a truer history". Attempts to visualise and establish flat ontologies therefore not only question the basic categories of being, relations and hierarchies between the human and non-human, but remind us to be continually cautious of the narratives we are socialised to believe about each other, as human-kind, within our own socio-cultural contexts.
It shouldn't be through plants that non-Indigenous Australians collect 'proof' of the considered and sophisticated cultures that were thriving with this country prior to colonialisation, but it is a powerful reminder of the assumptions we make daily, and the categories that we uphold, within the contexts we believe to be the most familiar to us.
Always Was. Always Will Be.
Pascoe, Bruce. Dark Emu: Black Seeds : Agriculture Or Accident? Magabala Books, 2014.
- Bridget
