The seed was planted in me by Robert Hassig, the best teacher I have ever had. It is because of him that I really became a teacher*.
(*I was pushed towards the profession by my Uncle Terry Pat who told me there was no future in acting for me, not necessarily because I was not talented but because you have to be really good to make acting your career…but Mr. Hassig really made me see the potential in being a teacher and I accepted my fate.)
I digress – it was in Hassig’s class that the elementary indoctrination of “America the Beautiful” became “America the Decrepit”. When I was a kid I paid attention to the news so I knew the world/nation/state/metropolitan area/city was violent. But America was not as violent as other places…America was not wore torn…Americans did not try to exterminate whole people groups…or so I thought.
Let’s be honest, the history you learn about in elementary and middle school is shielded at best.
- Christopher Columbus discovers America…actually the Viking explorer Erik the Red landed in North America centuries before the lost Columbus touched land in the supposed West Indies.
- The Pilgrims and Indians shared corn and turkey and had the first thanksgiving…actually they fought a lot and did not trust each other for a long time and then the Indians were eventually screwed out of their land.
- Americans spread west and settled this entire glorious nation like brilliant, brave, intuitive pioneers…they did this by killing and deceiving lots of Indians and Mexicans, and making an opportunistic deal with Napoleon to fund his war efforts in Europe.
I just quickly became disillusioned and embittered during my high school education. I felt deceived by my elementary and middle school teachers. I wondered why we were not told both sides of the story. Why was it the high school teacher’s responsibility to break my heart about my country? No longer was America any better than any other country. I was probably just naïve to believe everything I was told in elementary school was the full picture, but my high school history classes forever changed my way of looking at my country and Western civilization.
Throughout my education more layers got pulled back from the American facade.
It was in my World Literature class that I had to read several books from other countries, actually written by authors from other countries. They all had a theme of these indigenous cultures being tainted by the touch of Western civilization. The supposed “civilizing” process when white man introduces Jesus and capitalism to the savages in order to save their dirty souls. Our glorious savior who grew up in empirical regime would surely be supportive of coercion towards faith and the free market policies of laissez-faire economics. I am sure of that as most Westerners clearly were if you examine World History even at a glance.
So several weeks ago I was watching the movie Australia, which was surprisingly good. It is a classic tale of the struggle between indigenous culture and modern culture, war and peace, business ethics, romance, and pure racism. There is the story of Nicole Kidman’s and Hugh Jackman’s characters, but the more engrossing story was of Nullah and his desire to learn the Aboriginal ways of his grandfather King George and go on a “walkabout”.
Well there is this EPIC scene towards the end of the movie when the “Japs” are bombing the town of Darwin during WWII, and the King George is walking in the midst of the destruction and the bombs trying to find Nullah and get him to safety. There is a subplot where the Australians take all the half-white children away from their Aboriginal mothers and put them in orphanages to raise them up in the Australian way. These children are called “halfcasts” and “creamies”, which I thought was funny, and I told Lynette that is what we could call our kids. (She did not find me funny…but I did…hehehehe.) Nullah is trying to avoid this fate for most of the movie. His King George is following him to try to convince him to go on a “walkabout” with him, which is an Aboriginal rite of passage. If Nullah does not complete one he will never have any part of his mother’s culture. He will not learn his own “song” and he will not learn his own “magic”. He will be unaccepted by both parts of his heritage. Nullah’s white father wants him dead and his new adoptive caretaker (Kidman’s character). The King George will not allow this, hence his mysterious ability to always be around when Nullah needs him.
SO, in the town of Darwin, named after the father of evolutionary theory in a white man’s country caught in the midst of two supposedly highly civilized people who are at WAR with each other, is this Aboriginal witch doctor walking down a town street amidst bombs dropping, explosions erupting, fires burning, people screaming. Then the music comes, the motion slows down, and the camera focuses in on him. He is looking around at everything, and you just get this sense of bewilderment and questioning. This is what you called civilized? You people want me to entrust my grandson to this?
It was just so poetic. I mean the civilized man has traded spears for bombs and guns. All the religion and higher education had not eradicated the capacity to kill another HUMAN BEING over land, wealth, pride, power, or just simple anger. King George walks the audience through this realization.
I just loved it. That scene really made the movie for me.
I just wanted to type it again, because I love how it sounded in the movie: “Walkabout”.
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