Nature, Time and Space

From the days of October 5^th to 8^th, the IENK class went on a camping trip to the Great Dividing Range. Although it was a very cold and wet few days, I feel as if I took as much out of it as I could and made the most of this experiential learning opportunity. This week’s topic was on nature, time/space and the connections they have to the past and how they are represented in the present. One of the biggest takeaways for me was the link between time and violence. A quote from the first reading made me reflect on different parts of history that I learned about in the past though high school and through my global experience thus far. That quote was, “the past is not what has already happened, but a label to be applied to what we wish to forget and finish” (Rose, 2004). This almost allows humans to reject taking responsibility for actions and events as well as giving it an okay to silence history or knowledge. This lack of acknowledgment or education on the past, because we wish to forget and move on, creates the damaged/wounded spaces that are talked about in the second reading. These locations would be smeared with deaths and violence that are forgotten. And even though that history might not live on after a few generations, it doesn’t change the fact that the scars are still and will always be present if not given the space to heal.

This reminds me of the importance of dialogue and conversations in communities or cities that have a very distinct and traumatic violent past and the importance of it being remembered and not shoved under the carpet. This topic brought up memories of visits the Global class had while in Bosnia last semester. There was a lot of discussion around how to memorialize the people that had lost their lives and been killed during the Bosnian War in 1992. Because this was so recent and fresh in many minds, people were hesitant to talk about it, wanting to move on and forget the past. Then on the other side, there were people fighting to keep it present, wanting to give this history and those affected by it the recognition and time it deserves. I feel the denial of a past or the wanting to forget leaves a space injured and the scar can never fully recover without the acceptance and action to prevent future violence. This ties into our lunch stop on the last day at Bluff Rock, the location of a Massacre that one might not even realize if they visited. The lack of information on the event feels silencing and belittling. The lack of knowledge is taking away the history of the event, the ‘first’ conflict between the colonizers and the local aboriginal people, and almost allows it to be forgotten and unacknowledged. The deaths of the aboriginal people on the rock, that was either due to jumping off refusing to be captured or thrown off by the colonizers, depending on which story one looks at, belongs to so many people beyond oneself. Those deaths aren’t just their own, they the communities and their families as well. The remembrance and mourning is the death that belongs to those who surround them and generations moving forward, and it becomes difficult to let those lives live on through acknowledgment and speech when the event is taken over by something else or squashed completely.

Rose, D. B. (2004). Recuperation. In Reports from a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation (pp. 11-33). Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.

Rose, D. B. (2004). Wounded Space. In Reports from a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation (pp. 34-52). Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.