Racism in the Outback

I am finally home in El Paso to enjoy Thanksgiving with my family.  After almost a year away from home, I spent the last month in the tropical savannah of northern Australia.  Upon coming home, I had many stories to tell my family from this amazing place on the other side of the world.  But for this blog, I will share a story that I have not yet shared with anybody.

I was picking up supplies in Darwin before heading back into the outback for field work.  This meant a trip to LiquorLand for a crate of delicious and expensive Carlton Draught.  The liquor store was crowded, and I was standing in line with a case of beer and a credit card.  Suddenly I heard a ruckus behind me.  I spun around and saw a young white LiquorLand cashier scold a young black Aboriginal Australian.

“Why are you doing that?!?  Why are you waving your arms around?!?”  The cashier thrust his face inches from the black man and stared him dead in the eye. “Answer me!!”

The Aborigine mumbled something I could not hear.

“That is not an answer!!  Why are you waving your arms around?!!?  Are you trying to cause trouble?!!?”

Without saying another word, the Aborigine immediately walked out of the liquor store.  I only noticed the customers in line paying any attention.  All others continued scanning the shelves for their favorite brew.  After chasing the black man out of the store, the cashier went back to his register and faced the young woman waiting at the front of the line.  She was another black Aboriginal.

The cashier’s eyes glared at the woman with razor concentration.  “Are you with him?!!?  What did he do?!!?  Why was he waving his arms?!!? “

 The Aborigine mumbled something I could not hear.

“ ‘nah’ is not an answer!!  Answer me!!  Why was he waving his arms like that?!!?  What trouble is he causing!!”

 The Aboriginal woman mumbled.  “He is not with me.”

“Now that is an answer.  That is better.  When you see him, tell him to stay out of this store!!” 

 I have seen small hints of racism in my travels this year.  I felt uncomfortable when my Slovene friends made degrading racial jokes against Serbians.  But this encounter left me dumbfounded.  Worse yet was the reaction, or rather inaction, of all the other customers in the store.  Judging by their casual attitude to unwarranted interrogation of two Aborigines, I figure this scene is still common between the two races of Australia.  I did not know what to do as I stood in line.  When my turn came up to purchase the beer, the cashier was perfectly pleasant and professional.  It is such a dichotomy in my mind when an otherwise likable young man was a blatant, unapologetic racist at the flick of a switch.  How can these two personalities exist under the same skin?  I can just imagine such a scene occurring here in a local El Paso liquor store between a White cashier and a black customer.  All customers would protest and scream bloody hell!  The cashier would be lucky to get away with just a firing but would more likely get a couple of good fists to the face behind the store alley.  The complacency of the Australian customers was what unnerved me the most about the whole episode.

I got the impression that the relation between Whites and Aboriginals in Australia was one of mere toleration and not complete acceptance.  They got along because they had to get along.  While I was escorted by my Australian hosts deep in the Outback, we passed a group of Aboriginal people, including men, women and children, trying to flag us down by their parked car by the road.  The engine hood was up; a sure sign of car trouble.  Although we had a toolbox and an emergency satellite phone, we passed them by.  I have lived in rural regions of New Mexico most of my life, and a rule of hospitality is to stop and help if you are able when you see a person in distress by the road.  There are too many sparsely populated areas up there and car trouble could be more danger for the driver than the car.  

As he drove past them, my host turned to me and said, “Some advice – when you see them trying to flag you down, don’t stop.  Just keep driving.”

I understood the rationale.  It could be a trap.  They could be armed.  They may rob us of our cash!  But  as the days passed, I traveled that same stretch of road numerous times, and while the Aboriginal family had long since left the scene, their abandoned car never left that spot on the side of the road.  Each day we passed, the car lost a little more value due to human scavengers and vandals.  If this were a trap, the thieves were certainly dedicated to keeping up the front, even at the expense of their own vehicle. 

I only stayed in northern Australia for a month, and never spoke to a single Aborigine, so I have a very biased, ignorant and myopic view of the race relations that I witnessed there.   But I do know that the British first colonized southern Australia around 1800, and the northern Darwin region of Australia around 1830 or so.  The invasion of White colonists is extremely recent in the history of the ancient Aboriginal culture.  It is only 200 years or so, give or take, that they have had to share the same land.  At only 200 years of relations, I suspect that the current relation between Australian Whites and Australian Aborigines is about the same relation that existed in the United States say about the year 1830 between American Whites and American Aborigines.  Just a hunch …

With all the traveling I did this year, Rosemary suggested I get a gig on TV like Anthony Bourdain.  Nah, that would not work for me.  My travel show would be too much like my blog articles: instead of writing about the amazing tropical wildlife that I saw, I instead write about what made me nervous and uncomfortable.  Who wants to watch that?  Besides, I can’t eat all the food that he does in his show. 

I am glad to be back home.  Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

We grieve to our gods

During my recent European travels, I visited the Narodni muzej Slovenije in Ljubljana.  The ancient Roman artifacts there just whetted my strange fascination with old tombstones and graveyards.

About the time that Jesus was said to have been born in Bethlehem, the region now known as Slovenia was annexed by Roman Empire.  Recently, I was fortunate enough to visit the beautiful country of Slovenia, and I made a point to visit several of the national museums in the short time I was there.

Although all remnants of the Roman Empire are now buried, underwater, or scattered in ruins, traces of it can still be found in various places.  The original castle foundation in the town of Škofja Loka dates back to Roman times.  I wanted to see more Roman artifacts from the region of Emona, as the capitol city of Ljubljana was known at the time.  So I was amazed when I saw the Roman tombstones housed in the Narodni muzej Slovenije (National Museum of Slovenia).  Dozens of tombstones from the Roman era were dredged out from the bottom of the Ljubljanica River and placed on display in the museum.  I was fascinated by these tombstones, because these were the records of ancient common people as they grieved to the pagan gods who carted the dead into the afterlife.  Not a single tombstone appealed to the Christian Deity, which for some reason only increased my fascination.  All the tombstones were inscribed in Latin, but placards gave translations into several European languages including English.  Photographs were not allowed, but I did have a pencil and an old Wal Mart receipt in my wallet.  It was enough for me to scribble the beautiful, sad, and poetic lines written by Atimetus, an otherwise unknown common individual who lived in ancient Emona.  He died two millennia ago, and the only trace he left of himself, was his inconsolable appeal before his gods.  Here is all I had room for on the back of that old Wal Mart receipt:

Urbana, the slave of Iulius Salvine, lies here.  Atimetus, her companion in servitude, had this monument erected.

You have stolen me from my husband, from my children, cruel gods, why have you taken me so soon?  I had only lived for three decades and already a mound of earth conceals my bones and ashes.

Now carry quickly on, traveler, forward where the road leads you!  All will subsequently meet their fate after me.

There were dozens of tombstones in the museum with equally tragic but beautiful inscriptions.  I only bothered to copy one.  I have said many times on this blog that our gods are always there for us to express our profoundest and deepest emotions.  It is true now, and it was true 2000 years ago.  Perhaps my fascination with tombstones is due to this constant reminder that people are drawn to their deities when they have no other way to express their overwhelming grief. 

Is there a point to this article?  Nope.  Just writing this down and putting my thoughts online before I clean out my wallet and lose that Wal Mart receipt forever.

The Bone Church

I have been fortunate to travel to several different European countries this year.  I use my Facebook account to keep my family in New Mexico updated on my European adventures.  I am currently in western Czech Republic, otherwise known as Bohemia, enjoying the local historical sites, and indulging in the famed Bohemian food, spas, mineral baths and beer.  I wrote the following short article for my Facebook account.

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I have read a lot about the 16^th century Reformation in Europe, and while I find the subject fascinating, I quickly forget a lot of it because I have no visceral attachment to the subject.  A lot of that has changed now that I have actually visited Europe, and seen for myself some very small effects of Europe’s dark history.

We visited the nearby town of Kutná Hora, just a few miles outside of Prague.  I quickly got the impression that they were once sister cities, and maybe even rivaled each other in this Bohemian province of the Holy Roman Empire.  A name that I only vaguely remembered from my history lessons, Jan Hus, is all over this town.  He was a Czech priest who lived in this area back in the early 15^th century.  It turns out that Hus read a little too much John Wycliffe, and decided that the Catholic Church was corrupt in its practice of Indulgences.  He began to openly preach this and against other Church doctrines.  At the time, Bohemia was part of the Holy Roman Empire, and to defy the Catholic Church on fine points of dogma was to not only commit heresy, but also treason.  There was a long series of Church Councils, trials and papal schisms during this time, but the short story is that Jan Hus quickly found himself excommunicated.  He was tried for heresy and burned at the stake in 1415.

After the execution, nearly the entire population of Bohemia remained loyal to Jan Hus, and revolted against the Catholic Church.  During the next 15 years, the Pope instituted five separate Crusades against the followers of Jan Hus, now known collectively as the Hussite Wars.  And this brings me back to my visit in Kutná Hora. 

I felt like an ignorant hick, looking at all the monuments to the Hussite Wars, and trying to recollect the dim memory of what they were.  We visited the historical museum, and even though there were no guides or signs in the English language, we saw pikes, spears, maces and other weapons, along with contemporary paintings of their use.  Using these weapons to personally crush or impale another human over dogma disputes is savage to me, but history is not a Disney movie.  We visited the silver museum and learned how Kutná Hora gained its fortune and importance from the region’s famed silver mines.  We also learned as an almost trivial fact, that there were so many dead bodies left in the wake of the Hussite Wars, that corpses were simply tossed into the mines.  We visited the beautiful Baroque Gothic church, Chrám Nanebevzetí Pany Marie.  Like most of these old churches in Czech Republic, it still conducts mass, but is today mostly used as a museum and cultural marker.  Inside were hung paintings depicting the Hussite Wars.  Again, no signs or guides were printed in English, but I could make still make out the graphic depictions of slaughter as righteous acts of God.  Just across the street from the Chrám Nanebevzetí Pany Marie was the grim Sedlec Ossuary.

The Sedlec Ossuary - popularly known to tourists as The Bone Church.  I tried to gain an introspective feeling at the Sedlec Ossuary, but for some reason I could not.  I still do not know quite what to feel about the place.  There were signs printed outside the church (including one in English) that warned visitors to remember that the church was now home to between 40 and 70 thousand people who were killed in the Hussite Wars, and to please remember to be respectful on the church grounds.  The small church, now known as an ossuary, or bone box, was one of the strangest sights I have ever seen.  Apparently, so many people were killed in this region during the Hussite Wars, that there was no room to bury them all.  So they were placed where room could be found.  Renovations to the Chrám Nanebevzetí Pany Marie still turn up bodies buried in the church’s foundation, and a couple of them were even on display.  But the small Sedlec chapel in Kutná Hora had won fame because it was the site where a pilgrim had once sprinkled dirt that he had collected from Golgotha, the sight of the Crucifixion.  What better place to bury the countless numbers of dead?  It already had a famous cemetery because of the legendary dirt from Golgotha, so bodies had to be exhumed to make room for the sudden influx of new casualties from the war and placed inside the chapel.  Upwards of 70,000 of corpses were stuffed into the Sedlec chapel.  Beginning in the early 16^th century, various efforts were made to clean the Sedlec Ossuary out, but final work was done in 1870 when a woodsmith named František Rint was commissioned to display the bones in an orderly fashion. 

Rint took the commission and created one of the most visited tourist attractions in the Czech Republic, but also one of the most beautiful and disturbing pieces of art I have ever seen.  The chapel is still surrounded by the old graveyard with the legendary dirt sprinkled from Golgotha, and walking past the tour buses and concession booths I walked inside.  The signature of the artist František Rint was plastered to the wall, created entirely out of human bones.  To the left was the Coat of Arms of the artist’s benefactors, again created entirely out of human bones.  The chapel itself was morbid, fascinating, beautiful, disturbing and reverent all at the same time.  Bones from some 70,000 people were artistically arranged, piled, stacked and organized in a way that left me speechless.  Alternating patterns of skulls and crossbones were interwoven along the wall tiles.  Two enormous altars of bone stood in the main sanctuary.  The bones were used with stunning ingenuity.  Hip bones and shoulder blades were fanned in a circular pattern around a group of skulls as a kind of macabre halo. Bone arrangements hung from the ceiling in a way that reminded me of marionettes.  Candle holders were made of arrangements from spinal vertebra.  Everything, the choir loft, the pulpit, even the ceiling tiles, was overlaid with a mosaic of human bones.  The enormous chandelier that was in the center of the chapel was also ingeniously created entirely out of human bones.  Finally, the four alcoves where I would normally see an altar or confession booth in any other traditional Catholic Church were piled to the ceiling with human bones.  Each pile was arranged in a pyramid shape, and included two skulls that guarded a candle holder arranged into the stack of bones.  

Visiting this chapel and wandering around the graveyard left me a little drained.  So we left for the nearest food court and indulged in more of that famous Czech sausage and beer!