First Australians | I am an Interculturalist

I chose to write on this because I recently watched the inspiring Youtube about Narayanan Krishnan, chef turned social worker who gave up feeding the wealthy in his home city to feed the poor and the homeless, he stated that it wasn’t just about the food it had to also come with love for it to have any effect.

They say the heart is home to our soul and the mind is its advisor, more often than not when we follow our heart it turns out for the better versus the supposedly logical or illogical ideas the minds seems to offer up. The heart is the core of our joy, creativity and loving, It is when the heart is touched by a mighty passion that we perform at our best because nothing can stop us from achieving that which we intend to have happen as did the Incans when they built Macchu Picchu so many years ago.

Love is not discussed in the business world as it is deemed to be about making a profit over emotions such as love. Yet What is Love was the most searched question on Google in 2012. The ancient Greeks decided it was too complex to have one type of love and therefore they had six different words for six different types of love. The two most common are agape, love for everyone and pragma, the deep love that develops between couples over time. People do not tend to remember how much they earned over a lifetime but whose hearts they touched and who touched theirs.

A great exercise to strengthen your heart is to for the next 24 hours notice negative emotions when they happen. Behind each negative emotion there tends to be a negative thought. Notice what you are thinking and turn it around, flip it into something more positive. If you hold that negative thought for more than thirty seconds, start your twenty four hours again. This trains you in focusing on your positives, what you do brilliantly and what you wish to do better not what you did wrong.

What is Love to you? To me it often the simple things, the lick of a family pet, the laugh of my elderly mum, the passion I have for Interculturalism https://www.facebook.com/groups/Interulturalism/, my favourite music, the music of the indigenous people of my country, but is also the complex things such as the work of Medecins Sans Frontieres, doctors who work in the most dangerous places in the world to provide medical aid to the victims of war, plague and other disasters providing love to these people which would otherwise be unavailable.

If you are living the life you love you may have worked through these six questions:

What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?

We all had dreams as children as to what we would do and be when we grew up, they were often crushed out of us as impractical and not a way to make a real living. So if you have been given the chance again to relive those dreams what have you chosen.

Is this an action that you would defend and be happy to explain to your parents?

Our major relationships are often with our parents and siblings, they know us the best as they have spent the most time with us. Can you tell your parents with passion what you are up to and have them get it.

Is it making the world a better place?

Self love is important but is what you are spending your time on improving the situation for others, giving them a heart felt service, lifting them up from the place they have fallen down to. This is an important question to have answered to be in love with your life.

When you think about it calmly. Does it feel like the right thing to do?

A lot of people meditate, when you meditate on what you are doing to fulfil your life, does it feel AOK, I should be doing this over anything else, simply the right thing to do.

Does it make you a better person?

If you are operating from your heart space, are you being a better person because of this or are you still the same self centred individual, one would hope not as you have spent the time and effort to investigate what it is that inspires you on a day to day basis.

Will someone else’s life be enriched as a result?

As I mentioned previously you do not remember how much money you have earned when you reflect on your life but who you have touched and who has touched you. As you fulfil your passion remember it is in the giving of your openheartedness that touches and enriches others lives. The focus in fulfilling your passion should be out there, the love of self is the internal quest.

If you give with all your heart I believe you will never work another day in your life, as you will love what you do and you will be living a life of passion.

Namaste until next time, my friends.

I live in a land that has been populated for close to 60,000 years. Recently the Prime Minister of our country denied this https://newmatilda.com/2014/11/14/tony-abbott-says-nothing-bush-australia-white-settlement, an act he continues to do even though he is the self appointed representative of the people who have inhabited the land for this time. Our Country, Australia is the only western country that does not recognise the indigenous native in their Constitution, in fact the words “other than the aboriginal race” were contained in up to 1967 when 94% of the population voted to have it removed in a referendum. I am ashamed that prior to this under the White Australia Policy of the government our Indigenous brothers and sisters, The First Australians had been considered less than human.

Terra nullius is a Latin expression deriving from Roman law meaning “land belonging to no one”, which is used in international law to describe territory which has never been subject to the sovereignty of any state, or over which any prior sovereign has expressly or implicitly relinquished sovereignty.

We are showing the inspirational SBS series The First Australians at the place that I work at Darebin Intercultural Centrehttps://www.facebook.com/DarebinInterculturalCentre?ref=hl ,a series created by First Australians to belie some of the myths that have been put across as the history of our land http://www.sbs.com.au/firstaustralians/. Facts I have learnt from this series are that there were over 250 Tribal groups populating the country when whites first arrived and that genocidal actions were taken against them to steal their land such as the 5 pound bounty put on an aboriginal in Tasmania and the hiring of professional hunters to complete the task by the government of the day.

This made me think that families who first settled the land in the early days probably saw or took part in some horrendous actions to claim their lands if they were all populated by an aboriginal tribe. I grew up in the bush so somewhere in our distant past who knows what occurred.

On the night of the 12 February 1965, 30 university students from Sydney boarded a bus and set off to campaign in the country towns of New South Wales. Officially called Student Action for Aborigines, they were led by Charles Perkins, a young man who would become one of the most important Australian Aboriginal activists, as well as a leader in the Aboriginal community through his work as a politician and bureaucrat, as well as through his sporting achievements as a soccer player, coach and administrator.http://www.skwirk.com/p-c_s-56_u-490_t-1335_c-5130/tas/sose-history/australia-after-1945/an-era-of-protest/charles-perkins-freedom-rides

Charles Perkins and his ilk were willing to fight for the rights of Indigenous people and their actions led to the referendum of 1967 and allowed people like Vincent Lingiari to lead his fellow stockman and families off the Wave Hill cattle station where their civil rights had been being abused by the Vestey family, a wealthy British family who had run the station since the 1880’s. In 1975 the land was handed back to the Gurindji people by then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam , the first such case and the beginning of the land rights movement in Australia.

Finally, to give back to you formally in Aboriginal and Australian law ownership of this land of your fathers. Vincent Lingiari, I solemnly hand to you these deeds as proof, in Australian law, that these lands belong to the Gurindji people and I put into your hands this piece of the earth itself as a sign that we restore them to you and your children forever.—Gough Whitlam, August 16th 1975 [4]

This opened up actions to be taken by several governments to either crush or support land rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_title_in_Australia , the most famous case being Mabo vs. Queensland over the period of 1988 to 1992. Eddie Mabo took the government to task about the right his Murri people had re owner ship of Mer, his home island. Unfortunately Eddie became ill and died several months before the victorious decision was handed down http://www.abc.net.au/tv/mabo/biography/eddie-mabo.htm.

So why will the government of a supposedly civilised land not recognise the first 40,000 years of their lands history in their constitution? If you look at these statistics it could be assumed that the will of the people is not there and the government are listening to the unspoken racism that exists in our country http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/people/racism-in-aboriginal-australia#toc6

Terra Nullius is an abomination and belittles the people of our great country and we should be taking all steps we can to have it reversed and call out to our elected head of government to stop making statements that suggest he supports its existence. The fight for land rights has also risen again as the premier of Western Australia intends to close 150 settlements http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-12/indigenous-communities-closures-will-have-severe-consequences/5886840. I believe we are better as a nation in recognising our indigenous brothers and sisters, the First Australians than some of the actions occurring seemingly in the name of the money barons who wish to mine without having to ask anyone. Say no to Terra Nullius and the fold back of land rights.

Namaste until we meet again my friends.