What are our region's main issues?

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Permalink Reply by Ben-Zion Weiss on November 13, 2008 at 11:10pm

For me, the region's main issues are related to the lack of recognition of the indigenous peoples and cultures of Australia and the Pacific Region.

In recent years there's been some recognition of our Asian connections, as evidenced recently with the Bali bombings issue and the Australians in Indonesian gaols due to drug trafficking charges, however the more positive connections through travel, the arts and culture to both the Asia and the Pacific region are barely acknowledged in the mainstream media.

How interesting, given Australia's history that a recent exception to that was to set up a gaol on a Pacific Island for refugees seeking asylum in Australia? Not to mention the gaol on the Indian Ocean island, Christmas Island. How far have we come form the British colonial times of finding a beautiful island in South Pacific and making it into a gaol?

The British colonists claimed they brought culture and civilisation to this magnificent island continent, and yet as Robert states (5/11/08) the destruction resulting form this invasion has been devastating both culturally and ecologically. Northern Australia has recently been named as one of the global 'hot' spots for language extinction by the National Geographic’s Enduring Voices Project which is identifying language ‘hot spots’ - places where languages are in danger of becoming extinct, with the goal of documenting and preserving them.

Language is at the heart of culture and indigenous cultures have deep connections to their ecology enfolded in their culture, which is an 'ecology of culture'. We have this awesome potential to reverse the alienation from the ecology that western colonialism has brought to this region by initiating real dialogue with the indigenous people of Australia and the Pacific, as well as further developing the links to our Asian neighbours.

Geographically and ecologically, Australia is not just a western nation, and yet we continue to perpetuate the illusion that we
are because of our cultural colonial heritage and our portrayal in mainstream media.

For me the healing needs to come as a process of peace making between the colonial western culture and the indigenous ecology.

The key to this healing could be the Asian cultures both as communities within Australia and as neighbours in south east Asia.

This making peace between eastern, western and indigenous cultures in Australia could then be a model for a global reconciliation that could create a dialogue among civilisations that could initiate a real global peace process.