Learning to understand: my life story to pakana philosophy

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that this thesis may contain references of deceased persons and content which may cause distress. 

I chose the title for this dissertation, ‘Learning to understand: My life story to pakana philosophy’, to reflect my story of learning what it means to be Aboriginal, my role in helping my community to gain rights as First Nations people, and my seeking another step in the Struggle: how to keep and maintain our connections with Country strong, now and into the future.
This dissertation, first and foremost, tells my life story. Born in 1942 on Flinders Island, I grew up with my extended family who experienced racism and lack of opportunities. In 1947, my immediate family moved to Gippsland, country Victoria, and then to St Kilda, Melbourne, in 1953. My work on fishing boats took me back to Flinders Island when I was 16. I found my relatives again and saw fully for the first time that we were an Aboriginal community. My life from that time has been extraordinary. I have travelled across Australia and overseas as a soldier, fisherman, sailor, construction and demolition rigger, activist, public servant, community leader, writer, and student.
In retelling my life story, I draw upon and explain my body of writing from the 1980s to the present: my poetry, short stories, essays, plays, films, and speeches. (A list of these works is included in my bibliography.) Chapters Three and Four link my life story and my writing to my encounters with contemporary Australian Aboriginal philosophy. I explain how I have been influenced by Aboriginal philosophers I have met: David Mowaljarlai, Uncle Max Dulumunmun Harrison, Bill Neidjie, Tyson Yunkaporta, Norm Sheehan, Victoria Grieves-Williams, and Laura Gower.
While I use the word, ‘philosophy’ here, its meaning in English and the cultural West is conceptually different from my understanding of Aboriginal philosophy or Aboriginal Knowledge. Aboriginal philosophy exists outside of colonial structures: it is a ‘Oneness’ that encompasses our identity and place and our responsibilities in maintaining the balance of life with the ‘All-life’ ¹ and the inanimate infrastructure that carries the basic elements for life.
In this dissertation, I call developing this pakana philosophy my ‘learning to understand’, a phrase that comes from a conversation I had some years ago with David Mowaljarlai.² I see ‘learning to understand’ as a way of knowing and being. The idea of always learning has informed my understanding of a pakana philosophy and has been the main passion of my life.
My ‘learning to understand’ includes my time as a commercial fisherman, when I learned from the sea how life was a relational cycle, and the years I spent in the bush with my father. It includes my time spent on pakana Country studying the relational ecosystems, the rock art, stratified exposures of cultural history, seeing and understanding how it all fits together to form the All-life.
I hope that telling you my ‘learning to understand’ journey, and the learning journey of my pakana community—our collective advances in cultural education— will contribute to pakana history, biography, culture, and knowledge in a space that has been dominated by non-Aboriginal writers, creators, and academics. In this way, this dissertation aims to make an important contribution to Australian and international knowledge about pakana people’s history, culture, and ways of seeing. Most importantly, I hope that this dissertation will help ‘refresh’ pakana knowledge and be useful to future pakana generations.

¹ This term was first used in Puralia Meenamatta and Jonathan Kimberley, Meenamatta Water Country Discussion, exhibition catalogue (Hobart: Bett Gallery, October–November 2006).
² David Mowaljarlai, Yorro Yorro: Original Creation and the Renewal of Nature: Rock Paintings and Stories from the Australian Kimberley (Broome: Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation, 1993).