Here are some pictures from the Cutta Cutta Caves close to Katherine, which I couldn’t upload yesterday and had visited the day before.

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As the Nitmiluk park, they are on the land of the Jawoyn people. One of the c.a.300 groups of Aboriginals in Australia. How that works with the indigenous people: I haven’t quite figured it out yet. Sometimes I feel the Austaliens haven’t either. Everybody seems to make a big point aknowledging that the indigenous people were here first and have suffered great wrong since the colonial powers invaded their land. (Like in Germany, there was a program in place before the 2nd World war, to prevent “mix-breed” children and to take those ones that were born, away from their families) There are even signs infront of supermarkets and companies saying that the ancient beliefs of those groups and their spiritual sites are respected.

But further than that, the non-indigenous people (not all of them are white) seem not quite sure how to fit them in. And they themselves don’t seem to know either. As a visitor in northern territory, you meet them everywhere and they don’t appear agressiv nor are they treated like that (from what I could see). But one can tell that they are living according to another code. They speak their own 300 different languages and that very loudly over big distances, prefer walking barefoot, apparently have another understanding of time and seem to rather stay amongst themselves. Despite numerous support programs and action plans the majority seems to live off federal welfare and on the margin of society. Of WESTERN society anyway.
I read a novel by some American* who claims to have lived with one tribe in the Outback. If half of what she says is true, those people have an incredible ability to live with and in nature and as a peaceful, respecting, spiritual society with almost no hierarchies and no sense for competition. Which is why after the first page already the sad thought crept over me that these people will never find a place in the present majority-society. And why should they want to at all?
But what else? Apparently there are only a few tribes left that (can) indeed live in the inhospitable Outback. Often the land conceded to them is not the best in quality and only a fraction of what was originaly theirs. (A lot of them don’t understand how a human being can actually think that a piece of earth can be owned by anybody, by the way)
Maybe they have the best chances to survive the comming natural disasters or a big war, as they are nondependend on any technology. Or maybe they are the first ones to perish because of that. And what if all this doesn’t arrive fast enough?
And what about the ones that are living in the cities already? Whose traditional and spiritual knowledge and understanding gets lost without being replaced by something else?
Indigenous people have a big range of special rights in Australia. For example are they allowed to harvest turtle eggs in aknowledgment of the fact that this had always been a part of their nutrition and that they would only take as much as they need for themselves and never in amounts that are potentially harmful. But what if they do now? Or if the rest of the idiotic world has impacted turtles that much, that EVERY amount is harmful?

*Mutant message Down Under by Marlo Morgan,
I found out later that the book is much criticised by the Aboriginals themselves as well as by ethnologists. That doesn’t change the questions that arise while reading it, though.