The Native Iowan

I’m going to sing the praises of the weather where I live, here in Aus, on what is known as “The Sunshine Coast”. North of Brisbane, subtropical, and probably as good of a climate as I have ever experienced. Between the droughts and the floods and the hail and the fires… between it all, the blistering hot days to the mild n chilly morns, we have the best climate I know…

Ruminating as the World Spins…

I am perplexed by much. Confused by what I hear. Frightened by what I see. I need help to figger things out. Is it all as fucked up as I perceive? I sure as shit hope not!

In the world of politics, I fear that rhetoric is replacing policy. Or maybe, maybe, rhetoric HAS replaced policy. I dont see debates on policy anymore. Both sides say the same thing, from a different perspective. I see very little honest debate, and way too much BS name calling. Mud slinging.

World wide I see words and ideas and back-room deals getting weaker, stupider, less meaningful. From infrastructure to education to public safety to national security to… you get the idea. I do feel that rhetoric is replacing policy. Solid, long term, well thought out policy and planning may well be gone. But words, hallow, meaningless words fill the air…

Memes, bumper stickers, slogans… become policy… and it kinda frightens me…

A mindless mob frightens me…

“Defund The Police” is not policy. Lowering requirements in The Military or in Schools, is not policy. Opening the borders, flooding the US with homeless folks is not policy. Paying for the care and upkeep of said homeless folks is not policy. It is all rhetoric. Political ideas. Political rhetoric.

Has the entire population, world wide, been dumbed-down so severely that we have lost our knowledge of right and wrong. Our sense of history. Why we are, where we are, and who brought us to where we are? Or is history being rewritten? Instead of a “melting pot” we get division by skin colour, ethnicity, claimed gender, and more… Drugs are illegal, so we build injection rooms, hand out free needles. Damn!

I say DAMN!

Words n promises replace well planned outcomes.

History is filled with war, strife, starvation, confusion, pain, agony; and recovery from all, again and again. It was never “a good life”. An easy life.

“Life Ain’t Fair”, is what I have been taught.

I come from a long line of emigrants. A long line of peasants. A long line of down-trodden. They did not leave “where they were from” and move to “somewhere else” because they had a choice. It was because of war, strive, starvation, pestilence…. “Home” was not liveable any more, so they had to move, for what ever reason. My ancestors that emigrated to the US were refugees too. Not colonials.

Consider the Irish… they colonised the world as refugees.

And in the places all these folks, over all the ages, emigrated to, they found people already there. Everywhere always had someone who claimed the place as their own. All folks “came from somewhere”, looking for “something better”, displacing those who had come before them.

And became the indigenous peoples of that place.

So, the new folks arrive and there is conflict. There is always and all ways conflict.

He with the best weapons wins. Writes the history.

One of my sorta favourite “dumb-shit” ideas is this: “The Noble Savage”. So the myth goes…

Before the perfectly harmonious lifestyles of the numerous “indigenous” peoples of the world were disrupted and polluted by “white-men”, “colonials” – before the noble savage was converted, perverted by “white-men”, “colonials”… everything was great. Idyllic. Peaceful.

What a CROCK-O-SHIT! Aboriginal societies were and are harsh, ruthless, violent and hungry. If you were not part of the tribe you got killed and probably eaten. I do speak from a little bit of history or experience… my wife’s people are an old language group from a very isolated part of an isolated island group. Her maternal grandfather, Kapakesa, was a feared warrior, a taker of heads, an eater of flesh. He had many wives. My mother in law, Flory, was his daughter.

I spent a-bunch-a years sitting with the old men, smoking greasy black tobacco and drinking sweet, sweet tea. Listening through the haze and smoke and darkness. They’d recited their oral histories. The oral tradition was alive, still, then.

We’d sit around a kerosene lamp, roll long, thick, greasy smokes, and listen to Boaz, or one of the other elders, recite his oral history. Boaz, my father in law, would tell his tales, spin his magic, almost every night. I listened night after night, for a number of years. Always enthralled by his precision and faithfulness to “The Story”. And amazed by the viciousness and brutality of his history. It was all very very violent and brutal.

Boaz was born around 1900. “First Contact” between aboriginal peoples on the north coast of Choiseul and the “Men From Ships” – bose vaka , in local language – was 1910. Boaz was born into a Stone Age culture with over 20,000 years of history. His oral tradition covered 13 generations. Before the oral tradition, we find myth and legends.

When we buried Boaz, we buried his oral tradition with him. His tales of wars and rape and murder and betrayal. His knowledge of the past, his deep, deep knowledge of his history. His sons and daughters do not possess the oral tradition.

Their links to, handles on the past are lost. They have some of the history, but their knowledge is incomplete, faulty, flawed. Its nothing new…

I like the story of Fiji being “Colonised”… The Paramount Chief of the time, the Tui Viti, was getting his arse kicked by all sides… The Tongans and the iKiribati bikers-on-boats were raping and pillaging the north and west coast lines. Internal tribal wars raged. it was hard to be Tui Viti, it was costly… Times were changing, weapons were changing, travel was changing, people were coming from afar. They had guns. Fijians normally used clubs. Club v Gun was not cool. Guns cost money…

So the Tui Viti, Ratu Seru Epenisa Cakobau, petitioned the UK to colonise Fiji, to protect Fijians from outsiders, and insiders too. Basically he wanted his position of advantage to be protected. In 1852 this request was declined. Nope, no colonising at that time. The UK refused to be evil, nasty, colonisers. Go figure.

Then in 1871, a deal was stuck. Fiji voluntarily became a Colony of Great Britain. And the Tui Viti kept his job. (and his head)

Synopsis: The Colonisation of Fiji was and inside-job.

Dont teach that is school, do they?

Still ruminating as the World Spins…

I remain perplexed by much. Confused by what I hear. Frightened by what I see. I still need help to figger things out. It do look fucked up!

more later