4OE

     When white men came to North America and began to blaze trails deep into the homelands of tribes such as the Cherokee, the Pawnee, the Cheyenne, the Comanche, the Navajo and the Lakota, they interrupted a way of life that had thrived in a relatively expedient and serene way for centuries. Many of the white man’s traits disgusted and confused people of the Sioux, or Lakota, tribes of the central American-North, but none so much as their greed. It was overwhelmingly surprising to them why they persisted on attempting to gain ownership to areas like the gold-rich Black Hills of South Dakota when the Lakota constantly refused each offer presented to them. The settlers persevered, paying little attention to the sentiments of the local tribes and the threat they posed, which saw them paying for those hills in blood. The Lakota of the time wondered whether or not if the offer of blood for payment would have been accepted upon their initial request, and I wonder the same thing now. How could so many people be willing to die over the possibility of finding some gold? I think we all know the answer to this.

     We need to start thinking collectively as a race that holds the health and endurance of ourselves and our planet at its best interest, as opposed to power-hungry individuals with themselves and their own prosperity as an all-consuming priority. Instead of pillaging the shit out of these new found territories and continents we could have acquired the knowledge to manage the land sympathetically and sustainably. Does anyone really want to live forever, especially when there is imminent disaster looming over our children’s heads? And who really needs more money than any single person can spend in a lifetime? This is what most of us desire more than anything, and is the innate and in-built problem existing within human essence. If things keep going the way they are, and they most probably will, the whole planet runs the risk of ending up like Easter Island, or Rapa Nui. If you’re unaware of what happened on Rapa Nui, look it up, or watch ‘180° South’, an extremely inspiring and enlightening film directed by surfer and conservation ambassador Chris Malloy.

     Humans are ultimately responsible for bringing Lions to the verge of extinction, as we are with certain sharks, tigers, pandas, elephants, rhinos, dolphins, turtles, leopards and gorillas, amongst many more. Some of the most beautiful creatures that we coexist with are failing to survive, not from being naturally weak, but from of our indecisions as the dominant species. The Orang-utan, the Chimpanzee and the Bonobo are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, and all three species are now endangered. The same with the Blue Whale, the largest animal to ever have existed on our planet as far as we know, due to the desolation and destruction of our oceanic ecosystems. It’s directly due to the misdirected actions and inactions of us humans that has seen countless species dwindle out and die before our very eyes. Who knows how many rare and unique animals we’ve brought to extinction in the past? Not to mention the fellow humans we’ve wiped out, or tried to.

     There are no records of any successful genocide in human history, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t given it a red-hot crack - one of the closest attempts being right on our doorstep (or doormat), tucked away into our violent and disreputable history. The Tasmanian Aborigines, or Parlevar, were almost completely wiped out in the early nineteenth century. It took the English settlers nearly 30 years to bring the population down from 15,000 people to a dismal 154. Their languages have long since disappeared from existence and their blood-lines have been well and truly watered down by a stolen generation and European inter-breeding that no true “full-blooded” Parlevar lives today. They concentrated the remaining handful in a camp on Green Island, near Flinders Island in Bass Strait, where they would sit, huddled together in small groups, and watch the sunset slowly conceal their stolen homeland.