The History of Oil
by Jason GodeskyFrom Google video, “Robert Newman’s History of Oil,” a 45-minute history of oil and the wars fought to secure it by British comedian Robert Newman, who manages to achieve that secret alchemical balance of being simultaneously poignant and hilarious while discussing a very serious topic. Discovered via MetaFilter on Monday, but I wanted to give the “Relaunch Recap” a bit more limelight. We don’t normally do one-link, “ain’t this cool” posts at Anthropik, but every once in a great while there’s one link so great it deserves it.
But, while we’re on the subject of “cool links,” this interactive map of Aboriginal Australian groups from AIATSIS (and discovered via Savage Minds) should not be neglected. For what those all refer to, see AusAnthrop’s Tribal and language database.
Finally, if you haven’t seen it on TV, this commercial for Vault is a pure expression of “Mother Culture” which we found terribly refreshing in its … candor.
That was a great video. The last joke he made really struck home: “I stopped making suggestions, because then people would expect me to do something!” That kind of attitude is a manifestation of the slave mind. We’re fine as long as someone else is directing us. We’ll work really hard as long as it’s someone else having a final say in all the decisions, organizing everything, etc. I don’t know if you guys have read “Moses, Man of the Mountain” by Zora Neale Hurston, but this is an issue she addresses. The hardest thing about being free is learning to think like a free person and not a slave.
Comment by Vicky — 1 June 2006 @ 10:30 PM
Thanks for the video link. “There is no way out” is the message
for the civilized.
Comment by Rick Larson — 1 June 2006 @ 10:52 PM
From Savage Minds - Cool interactive aboriginal map - 31 May 2006:
G’day from Oz,
Right on about how, in my more pointed words, European ethnocentric, cartesian, socially-decayed & spatially-simplistic-thinking these ‘whitefellah’ maps are compared to the ways here in Oz my Indigenous friends spatially (& in time) represent themselves. Ever heard recently in western science the hot ‘new discovery’ of network systems (see for example the journals Nature & Science)? Sure you have! ‘Discovery’ - baloney! Just like Captain Cook supposedly discovered Oz baloney! More like he discovered a new expression for European ethnic collective solipsism or ethnocentrism.
That’s coming from me, a European Oz’n white guy from a more or less establishment family - because I’ve had the great priviledge of growing up with Koori friends & family, in so called ‘upper/middle-class’ suburban Melbourne. Koori is an Oz Indig’ language word for Indig’ peoples from NSW area - in Victoria it is Koorie - in some Nth NSW & SE QLD areas it may be Goorie or else one of the language names such as Bundjalung people or clan name, … Then, Gabbi-Gabbi & Gangalu (QLD) woman Dr. Eve Mumewa D. Fesl (who also has her PhD in Linguistics and is author of the must read book Conned! (1993) on language, culture, education, politics,… ) as course creator, director & lecturer, gave me the continuing great priviledge to be taught somewhat more, in a 2nd year undergraduate course, which also included many more Indij’ lecturers at Uni. Then I’ve been priviledged to have been taught by more Indij friends, contacts, neighbours, some elders, and some younger indij’ people who are leading public figures. From this I have learnt, for just one of many points, that your point above is critically important.
A very fine starting point (intro’) in reading initiated by and written in english by Oz Indigenous people is:
Anne Pattel-Gray (editor) (1996) Aboriginal Spirituality: Past, Present, Future ISBN: 1863715959
- a proceedings of a conference on contemporary spirituality.
Quoting:
”
INTRODUCTION
Anne Pattel-Gray
(- PhD (Cand.), is the Executive Secretary of the Aboriginal and Islander Commision of the Australian Council of Churches (now the National Council of Churches in Australia))
Aboriginal Spirituality is a central element of Aboriginal being and identity. These writings have grown out of the many requests from non- Aboriginal people who seek a deeper insight into Aboriginal Spirituality. Also, Aboriginal People felt a need to dialogue with one another about the sources and strengths of their Spirituality since it encompasses many different apsects, such as the Aboriginal
perspectives on land, humanity and creation. The Aboriginal view of the world is so very different to the Western [materialist W.E.] view. We see land as an extension of our physical, spiritual and emotional form, and as the essence of our life-force, to the point that all life and creation are revered and valued.
In 1990, the University of Sydney’s Department of Religious Studies (now the School of Studies in Religion) sponsored an opportunity for Aboriginal leaders from across Australia to discuss their insights and perspectives on the topic of ‘Aboriginal Spirituality and Perceptions of Christianity’ At the gathering, many important questions were raised …
”
Another starting point is this book which is at once, a short, plain-english & in-depth introductory writing for non-indigenous people by non-indigenous people who have lived with indigenous people in indigenous ways and learned indig’ Oz languages. This is especially good on conveying some concept of indigenous peoples’ spatial representations of peoples or identities:
Ancestor Spirits: Aspects of Australian Aboriginal Life and Spirtuality (1990) Max Charlesworth, R. Kimber & Noel Wallace. Deakin University Press.
It is explicitly designed to attempt to relate Oz Indigneous life & spirituality(s) to people who have no experience of them and who have W. European/English conditioning, philosophy and worldviews.
see my quote from it at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fukuoka_farming/message/2979
For an update of the Victorian part of the map, though still a problematic European ethnocentric simplistic ‘bounded’ map see: http://www.vaclang.org.au/languagemap.pdf
For an improvment on spatial representation, but not reaching all the way to the advancement of Indij’ Oz people’s own representation, see these milestones in Sue Wesson’s ongoing work:
Sue Wesson (2000) An Historical Atlas of the Aborgines of Eastern Victoria and far South-Eastern NSW
Sue C. Wesson (1994) An Overview of the Sources for a Language and Clan Atlas of Eastern Victoria and Southern New South Wales
Last but not least, Mark McKenna’s, NSW Premier’s literary award winning, very fine 2002 narrative history, inclusive of Sue Wesson’s updated research:
Looking for Blackfellas’ Point: an Australian History of Place
Also at Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?q=0868406449
Also on it, is the 2005 Radio Feature program providing a conversational update:
Looking for Blackfellas’ Point
A personal journey into the past, with historian Mark McKenna.
Based on his award-winning book, Looking for Blackfellas’ Point, this feature explores the history of settler Australia’s relations with the Indigenous peoples, based on the stories buried within the country around McKenna’s own home - a coastal property in the Eden Monaro district of NSW. It also asks why some stories from the past are forgotten, and even erased, while others perpetuate across generations, and become regarded as history.
The writer Rodney Hall, who lives in the region explored in this program, is also a contributor to this feature. Hall has twice won the Miles Franklin Award - first in 1982, for his novel Just Relations, and again in 1994, for The Grisly Wife. His thirty books include eleven collections of poems, eleven novels, two biographies and several books of social commentary.
———————————————————–
These last three publications above include improved maps for their areas of Oz. By the way people like me involved with Indig’ friends and people have been using this map in one form or another since it came out about 1993, only some years after it came out did I learn more that this map commonly called the Horton map after it’s author, is also ‘white’ thing - European ethnocentric… as described above and as you rightly suspected!
Hoping there’s some new and updating reading for you here,
Beauty,
Jase
Comment by Jase from Oz — 4 June 2006 @ 5:40 AM
I think somewhere between those two extremes, you’ll find the truth. A map’s sharp boundaries can be very deceptive if you invest some kind of cosmic truth in them. But by the same token, it’d be a very rare thing to find a Wangkathaa among the Kala Lagaw Ya. I think the truth lies more in the fact that cultures are grounded in a specific place, as an adaptation to a specific ecology, and that maps of cultures should be seen as very much like maps of ecologies. They bleed into one another with fluid, fuzzy borders, but it’s useful to know where things tend to be all the same. Where you go wrong isn’t n drawing the map, but in taking it too seriously.
One of Giuli’s favorite bumper stickers says, “In 1492, Native Americans discovered Columbus lost at sea.”
But then, surely there’s value in being able to say, “X was the first person from culture Y to find out about this thing Z.” The problem is we use the word “discover” as if it’s the first time any human being ever saw this thing, and it becomes ridiculous. Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas–except for all the millions of people already living here. Well, how far back does this go? Does the first human across the Bering Strait get the honor, or must he cede it to all his animal forebears who crossed the land bridge before him? Shamans knew about the Big Bang long before Hubble, but isn’t there value in being able to talk about Hubble’s observation, and how that changed our culture’s ideas, and how he observed it in a way that it hadn’t been observed before? There were all kinds of aborigines already in Australia before Cook, but surely you’re not suggesting that Cook’s arrival had no more importance than anyone else before or since coming to the island? So, just like the map, I think you’re throwing out a whole lot of useful distinctions, just because they’ve been abused in the past.
As far as aboriginal spirituality, when people talk about the advanced philosophical and theological heritage of civilization, I typically challenge them to honestly compare Aquinas, and concepts about the Dreamtime, and see if they can maintain their conceptions in the face of such philosophical depth.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 5 June 2006 @ 3:33 PM
Loved it, thanks for the link!! put it in the vault, if you can. I noticed things run smoother here than the google vid site.
Comment by Rory — 14 June 2006 @ 3:32 PM
The Vault’s just for stuff we host here, and we only host stuff we’ve had a hand in making, or at least preserving, as with Nina Paley.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 14 June 2006 @ 6:53 PM
ahhhh
Comment by Rory — 14 June 2006 @ 9:06 PM