These impressive structures predate the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge. But Australian Senator Pauline Hanson calls the people who built them the most primitive race on earth.
This reminds me of how Canada justified Indian residential schools. Both countries rely on a myth that Indigenous peoples were savages or primitive peoples who needed civilization through Western education. Here’s the truth.
While other civilizations rose and collapsed, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures represent the oldest continuous living civilization on Earth going back 65,000 years. Anthropologists understand that there is no such thing as a primitive race. Societies evolve by adapting to their environments.
One of the finest examples of ancient aquaculture and hydraulic engineering are found in Australia. The eel traps at Budj Bim comprise a vast network of weirs, dams and stone canals to manipulate water levels in various lake basins. These structures force eels and other aquatic life into traps as water levels rise and fall. The canals also appear to have been used to create holding ponds to keep eels fresh until they were needed for food. Not only did this provide the region’s Gunditjmara people with a food supply throughout the year, it was also important for trade.
The site also features the remnants of almost 300 stone houses. Located in southwest Victoria, Budj Bim has been carbon dated to 6600 years old, meaning it predates the Egyptian pyramids or Stonehenge.
They also created a kinship system that is widely regarded by anthropologists as some of the most complex, mathematically sophisticated social structures in human history. This prevented incest and maintained genetic diversity. This is more than we can say about the incestuous Royal families of Europe.
Just as residential schools in Canada were designed to erase prior sovereignty and justify land dispossession, Hanson is fighting against a school curriculum that includes Indigenous history because it challenges the myth that colonial settlement was somehow a benevolent gift. Hanson is using an old assimilationist playbook weaponized to protect a fragile colonial narrative. The same playbook is used in Canada, Gaza and the Amazon. It’s propaganda meant to frame colonizers as superior and more civilized than the Indigenous population they subjugate.
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