The author of more than ninety reports and twenty-five published papers about Aboriginal cultural heritage, community life and relations to land has shared what he believes is the most significant legacy of Australia’s First Nations Peoples .
Scott Cane an anthropologist/archaeologist grew up in Tasmania and went on to live with Ngarti and Kukatja people living in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia- recording their lives and capacity for survival on many different levels.
I found myself in the Great Sandy Desert with people that made contact twenty years before I arrived there in 1980 – fresh out of the desert in a sense. I was smart enough to work out that when I was in Tasmania and reading journals of the white people who had spent time living with the Tasmanian’s in 1830, the time frame between contact and those people was exactly the same time frame as I was experiencing in 1980 from people that came out in the late 50’s and 60’s. Because of my own passionate experience in Tasmania, I kind of went, there is so much here to learn and so much to find out!
So for me Aboriginal people’s contribution isn’t as a great big pyramid…. there is a massive and monumental and social and artistic consciousness that seems to be unique to indigenous people in Australia – more so than anywhere else on earth!
Dr. Scott Cane speaks about his journey with Paul Wiles and speaks of what he believes is the greatest contribution that Aboriginal people continue to deliver.