Dreamtime and the Seven Grandfathers

My mother’s people were aboriginal.

To be sure, they were the Welsh, the people who inhabited Britain long before the Romans, these were the ancient Britons who gave the islands their name. Surviving the colonisation by the Romans, the Saxons, and the Normans, they clung to their language, their culture, and their identity in the wild mountains of the west, nearly absorbed and beaten into anglicisation, but surviving at last. Yma o Hyd (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llkwpwdk2ro) – we’ll always be there.

Like the Anishinaabe people of Ontario, like the Aboriginal people of Australia, and like so many other marginalized ancient populations, the Welsh survived because of a deep communion with the land beneath their feet, the waters around them, the beasts (real and mythical) with whom they shared their world, and the very air they breathed.

But there’s another dimension, a dimension lost to our modern Western society in its hurry to make more money.

The Aboriginal people of Australia have a concept of Dreamtime, something so complex as to defy definition, but ultimately about the recognition that we are all part of everything and of all time, past, present and future. The Anishinaabe ancestors of my granddaughters taught about the Seven Grandfathers who point us to the gifts of our forebears, our connection to the entire world around us, and our sacred duty to care for the future.

It’s exactly in this spirit that the Government of Wales, the Sennedd, in 2015 passed the Future Generations Act, establishing a Commissioner with the specific duty of examining each new piece of legislation from the perspective of those yet unborn. The Commissioner is tasked with speaking fearlessly about the future impact – financial, environmental, and social – of any proposed new legislation. Those deeply rooted in their past know their responsibility for those who come after.

What a concept. Imagine! Thinking about the tax burden our children and grandchildren will face because we continue to kick the budgetary can down the road. About looking the other way when we pile up refuse in landfills that will leach into groundwater for generations, or for choosing coal or petroleum as a fuel source instead of hydro, wind, or solar power.

Come to think of it, we’re all the people of our land, and we only have one planet to last us for as long as we’re here. There’s no backup plan.

Maybe it’s time to start thinking like those who understand what it means to have always been part of the land beneath their feet, part of the air they breathe, and the environment that surrounds them, and to take some responsibility for those who come after.