Some context for the destruction of that Aboriginal site:
When indigenous ppl complain that their sacred sites are being destroyed and they say stuff like "we have a cultural connection to this place" "if we can't come here it's like ripping off our roots" "we need this place to communicate with our ancestor spirits" etc., white australians are conditioned to handwave statements like that away with shit like "oh well they're just saying that, it's just a random tree, they'll get over it, obviously ancestor spirits aren't real, sacredness of trees isn't real", and that is total bullshit.
Aboriginal sacred sites are integral parts of highly sophisticated mnemonic techniques that have been proven to preserve information for (i know this sounds hard to believe but) at least ten thousand years (they accurately describe coastlines that are now underwater, or dry areas that have since been rainforests for 7000 years, or extinct megafauna etc.)
Physical features (either in one place, or along a track known as a songline) work as subheadings in an encyclopaedia. Ritualised teachings tell people what rituals or song cycles (like subheadings in an encyclopaedia) to associate with specific visual cues, and then those songs all contain stories that have (for example) systematised knowledge of every local animal and plant, contained in songs for easy memorisation. White anthropologists mostly handwave these techniques away as "animist beliefs" and "ancestor worship" but in reality it's this extremely sophisticated system of knowledge that's something like a cultural encyclopaedia, and that's why it's such a big deal when this fucking anglo settler state and its profiteers destroy these locations like it means nothing bc "oh it's just a tree" or "what it's a rock they'll just go to another rock"
theartofmadeline
ellievsbear
tangentwithtanner
dededos
titsay
origamiaround
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