410-Article Text-707-2-10-20230405.pdf

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• Although not necessarily in linear sequence, coherence, proportionality and predictability helped to elucidate and refine the self’s or selves’ motive(s) for action and choice, and thereby helped to structure cohesive social practice. The organising principle that underpins the social structure also organises the means to achieve a particular desired end.

• For Aboriginal people, Land is the source of morality and meaning

• Our relationship with Land defines the core interest and conscience of Aboriginal society

• Traditional Aboriginal Law/Lore9 is an imposing multi-dimensional world where ethics, although very important, forms only one dimension

• metaphysics; how the world came into being, the patterning of people

• into the Land and, above all, the maintenance of balance in the world, because this is what keeps the whole of creation going.

• in order to become fully and completely human we must also recognise our spiritual identity

• Aboriginal people see Land as a moral entity with both physical and spiritual attributes that manifest in a myriad of life forms

• Custodial Ethic

• and/Human relationship

• This involves an obligation to look after the Land that nurtures us, the ancient reciprocal relationship with nature, an ethic of looking after, stewardship, caring for, rather than a survivalist ethos with its rivalry and competition over resources and structural conflicts enveloped in hierarchies of power.

• This relationship with Land has led Aboriginal people to the formulation of proper behaviour and, subsequently, into ethical principles and values for engaging with one another.

• Ethics, therefore, becomes habituated

• From an Aboriginal perspective, spirit or the sacred has been reified by Westerners as ‘money’

• money is sacred

• Western behaviour,

• unreflective motive

• ownership

• modern Western economic activity possible and money valuable

• Therefore, ethics, in the context of Western cultural praxis, remains simply an ideal to strive towards,