No it is not "stolen"

but try to explain the "stolen" idea to a ten year old. 

I had one of those disturbing conversations with a ten year old yesterday. He has been well, too well, taught about "stolen" land at school. He has been taught the land we now live in and on, that we were both in and on, was "stolen" from aboriginal people "back in 1832". 

That he could do absolutely nothing about this was completely beside the point. He was supposed to feel guilty about it. He had no control at all about what his ancestors did but it was "wrong" and he is the one who has to feel "sorry".

We actually have a "Sorry Day". It comes around every year and, unless you are aboriginal, you are expected to apologise for those past wrongs all over again. "It's a big thing at school," my young informant told me.

It should not be but I know it is. I listened as he went on to tell me about the "very special belonging they have to all the land and everything". He has been thoroughly indoctrinated about these things and many people will believe it is a very good thing. 

He has not been allowed to question. The idea that there might even be any questions about these "facts" had not even occurred to him.

The "connection to country" is something which is often talked about in relation to aboriginal cultures in this country. It is given special consideration when planning issues come up, when sentencing is being done, when hurt and harm are being considered. Activists like to mention it frequently.

There were more than two hundred and fifty languages once spoken by indigenous people and I wonder if there was a word for any of them that describes that connection between the land, particular places within it and their ancestry. I tried finding a word in the language of the plains people on which this city is built. The closest I could come up with was "yerta". That word seems to mean "country" but it does not seem to cover any sort of emotional attachment. That seems to be a much wider issue, one for which there is no specific word. 

I do not doubt the idea exists now but did it exist when the first white settlers arrived? Did the indigenous population of that time actually think in those terms? Of course they had a connection with the land. Their very survival depended on it. It was a practical connection, not a philosophical one. It was essential to the way they explained the world around them and the dangers they faced. And yes, they were capable of an emotional connection because of the physical connection.

The problem seems to be that the idea of belonging, if that is what it is, is now being described in words and ideas belonging to another culture entirely. It is useful to be able to describe it in these terms because it can be used as a grievance tool, a claim of theft. Doing it this way actually takes even more. It does not allow any connection to be felt free of all the negativity and claims of harm.

There is a similar idea about connection to country in Scots Gaelic. "Duthchas" can, I think, be translated as the connection between a place, the land around it and your ancestry. I cannot think of a similar equivalent in English but it is part of my Scots ancestry. It is an idea of "attachment". It could also be one of "grievance" for those who lost their land during the infamous clearances. Demands for "reparations" or "compensation" or apologies from present day inhabitants would get nowhere.

They do things differently here. I wonder what the ten year old would make of duthchas.