alex is here

He’s asleep still. We went to bed late. We are having fun.

I wrote this in response to a tumblr post which I found evasive and self-serving, regarding climate change.

Gimuy Walubara Yidinji people have a dance. It’s at least 10000 years old. In the dance, the men are the water, coming up and coming up inexorably and washing over the shore. (The eastern shoreline of what is now called Australia was eroded by hundreds of metres every year for years as the water from the last glacial melt came up – they would have been losing territory and hunting and fishing lands and watching with horror). The ancestors of the dancers knew this was important cultural knowledge. I hope the light goes on with this; humans have always had ways of transmitting and absorbing info about climate change. Settlers as a rule don’t value it because it’s not a book, attested, or a podcast, or an internet post. It’s not peer reviewed science, as if keen observation were not the basis for all science ever.

Indigenous people should be better respected. They’re carrying culture for every human on earth, not just on the lands they defend.

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Allegra

Born when atmospheric carbon was 316 PPM. Settled on MST country since 1997. Parent, grandparent.

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