Boonoo Boonoo National Park:

Among the tree roots, where the river runs.

“One finds oneself in responding to others” (Rose, 2004, pg 12). Camping, even with the
comfort of compostable toilets, is not for everyone. For me, I find comfort and respond joyfully
to being amongst the trees with a river running nearby. My friends, from warmer benign
climates, not so much. Complaints of temperature, rain, and lack of comfort echoed through our
campsite after the first night. I found the only comfort I had for my friends were words of “it's
only three days, time flies and we’ll be back in Byron soon,” but in reality I was soothing over
the pain of the present with the promise of a better future.
The peaceful and comfortable night before LIU Global’s camping trip to Boonoo Boonoo
National Park, I spent bundled up under the covers of my house at Byron Bay reading a book
chapter by Deborah Rose titled “Recuperation” and a part of a book called “The Long Transitive
Movement,” by Paul Ricoeur. Both of these readings were dedicated to understanding the
Western perspective of time. Rose (2004) describes how time and monologue are powerful
means of closure. Voices are silenced through the use of monologue or a single story, omitting
key details, feelings, and perspectives of those who do not tell the story. As time passes, and
nobody tells the story, it gets washed away like the water in the river by our campsite that never
stopped flowing. It is an interesting and important recognition by Rose that Western colonizers
justified terrible atrocities committed against native Aboriginals under the notion that they were
bringing about a better future. Ricoeur (1985) agrees with this notion by stating that the “time
regime of progress reduces “now” to insignificance” (p. 57) The moment of “now” is already
being transcended and overcome by the next moment in time. My promise to my suffering
camping friends, “don’t worry, after being out here you’ll be even more thankful when we get
back home.” A futile statement to ease the pain in the moment, again with the connotation that
what’s next is better.
Amplify this mindset of a better future and apply it to how colonizers and the Western
world understand time. From my understanding, Christinaity and the so-called Christisan pattern
as described by Ricoer (1985) have their roots deeply dug into this idea of a better future.
Ricoeur (1985) explains the christian pattern as birth, life, death, and resurrection (p. 60). Rose

 (2004) continues explaining how Christianity has separated time based on biblical events and
promises by stating:
“With the concept of disjunction it was possible to break up the history of the world into epochs,
each of which was differentiated not just by duration, but also inner value from the
promises made, to the promise fulfilled, to the final re-creation of heaven on earth.”
Essentially, Western colonizers justified causing great destruction and suffering to the Aboriginal
people by the belief that time is separated and the moment that is to transcend suffering will be
better. In contrast, Ricoeur (1985) describes Aboriginals peoples knowledge of time as a quality
of life rather than an entity that influences life (p. 54).
Time feels astonishingly different when camping. The sun, color of the sky, and stars
ruled my world while I was at the campsite. Waking up nearly at the crack of dawn, my
classmates and I spent the first day hiking in Girrraween national park. We had a joyous time
spotting kangaroo’s from the bus and critical thinking about signs posted along hiking trails.
When focused upon and thought about critically, my classmates and I realized how discreetly
racist even a historical hiking sign can be. From the inaccurate portrayal of clothing for an
Aboriginal man, to the hidden message of a white savior complex mindset, signs convey heavy
hidden messages. Fast forward, and some of my classmates and I decided to scale the top of a
hiking path which felt like straight rock climbing. Maybe my teachers Soenke and Nigel realized
that our brains needed a break and what’s a better way to force a brain to take a break from
thinking than giving it a life threatening mission to accomplish?

 Day 3 of our camping trip was spent grounded in the reality that Aboriginal voices are
consciously being etched out of history. The preservation of one european monologue was
clearly seen at the Tenterfield School of Arts, a historical museum in the small country town of
Tenterfield, Australia.
A small acknowledgement to Aboriginal country tucked behind the grand door and a
small cabinet in the back of the museum for poorly labeled Aboriginal artifacts. Five distinct and
beautifully crafted boomerangs hung in the cabinet. Nowhere did it say how Aboriginal people
created these weapons or the purposes they were used for beyond the word “hunting.” More
small artifacts on the end wall with a sign that said who “collected” or possibly in other terms
“stole” the artifacts that were on display. Racist anti-Chinese caricatures hung on the wall
portraying Chinese men as zombies and disturbing Australia’s peaceful white society. The
information about the important contributions Chinese migrants have made to Australia was
nowhere to be found. I also couldn’t find the historical context of a racist flag on the wall but the

clear message it conveyed was a primitive Aboriginal being offered help by a colonizer.

The Tenterfield School of Arts truly was eye opening in a painful way. Studying at LIU Global, I
am surrounded by like minded people. People who incorporate indigenous’ voices in their
classroom lectures, emphasize equality in all its forms, and students who eagerly listen and
agree. Standing there in a small country town was a stark reminder that much of academia does
not focus or include indigenous voices and it is leading to the erasure of their history.
After the museum, our bus pulled over on the side of the road for a lunch break and I
didn’t realize until I walked over to a knee high granite rock with a plaque on it that I was

standing at an Aboriginal massacre site. The site was called Bluff Rocks where supposedly an
Aborginal man killed a colonizers sheep and in retaliation the colonizers drove the entire tribe to
the edge of the rocks and murdered them. A dilapidated billboard with smashed glass and a two
page inaccurate story taped to the billboard was all the extra thought given to the atrocity that
happened where I was standing.
“The justification of the neighbor's pain is certainly the source of all immorality”
(Rose, 2004, pg 14). Western colonizers clearly portrayed all their immorality while conquering
lands that were new to them. Brutally relocating and murdering indigenous populations in the
name of progress. Reflected in the Tenterfield School of Arts and the Bluff Rocks indigenous
massacre site is the extreme lack of effort to promote Aboriginal voices and the slow erasure of
their history by generations of western colonizers.