Out with the Bathwater: The psychospiritual perils of displacing a whole people along with their mythological heritage

In this reading of Peadar Ó Guilín’s The Call, I wonder
how Australian perceptions could shift to make room for truth in our history.

That said, disclaimer: I ended up writing more than expected about the parallels between The Call and the black history of Australia. It may need to be stated up front that I am as white as it comes, so I recognise the awkwardness of me speaking about the experience of First Nations people. Their experience is not my story to tell. That said, my experience of Australian culture without the inclusion of First Nations people is something I can speak about. I wish our history hadn’t gone down the way it did, and I live with a longing that our communities were informed by the wisdom of our indigenous elders.

You can download this post as a PDF if that’s how you roll.

Ó Guilín, P. (2017). The Call. David Fickling Books.*

Sometimes oppo finds end up being among the best books I’ve read. Mostly not. I was saying to a friend the other day that sourcing your books almost exclusively from op shops is a gamble. Oppo books are, come to think of it, the books that others have discarded. So Nikki and I are thinking of dropping this practice – life is just too short to spend hours over months wading through the dross in the hopes of finding a gem.

We often drop $30 or $40 at the oppo and come home with maybe fifteen books, which sit on the shelf for a long time because we know mostly they are long shots. I’m reading only fifteen or twenty books a year at the moment, so we’re accumulating a lot of books that we may never read if we do this even four or five times a year. And we have plans to live in a bus one day, so gathering books at this rate is just no longer practical.

Continue reading “a long-ish review-ish post about The Call by Peadar Ó Guilín” →