On Blackfella Time
An Indigenous person in my country who is late for an appointment is often said to be "on Murri time", or "on blackfella time". This term was coined by the colonists to build the myth of Aborigines being inherently incapable of understanding basic European skills like telling the time. Another mythology created for us is that of the "Dreamtime", which places our creation and spirituality in the distant past, and thus relegates our peoples to the past as well - fossilised stone-age cultures to be examined and studied. (Read about the real Dreaming, as opposed to the western construct.)
The Quantum Reality
It is true, western constructs of time can differ from Indigenous concepts of time, but this is more a difference in cosmology than native intellectual deficit. I find it is easier to explain this difference to non-Indigenous people by using western quantum physics theories.
Time is a human construct. Or at the quantum level it might also be seen as being tied up with attraction to objects according to relativity principles introduced by that paragon of western science - Albert Einstein. Time actually runs slower as you move away from earth into space; this has to be factored in mathematically for satellites to be accurate.
The second law of thermodynamics indicates that in a closed system, (eg. earth) that system will tend towards disorder (entropy). That is why time runs forwards on earth, but in other places in the universe time is mathematically impossible even as a human construct, eg at the event horizon of a black hole.
And in quantum physics, many kinds of sub-atomic particles can move forwards and backwards in time, or like photons, not exist in time at all. Read more about the intersection between Aboriginal knowledge and western scientific research here
Dreamtime Is Now
The creator spirits are not earth-bound or materially based, and as such are not time limited. Therefore the creation of souls is/was/will be simultaneously. My soul comes from a storyplace of my ancestors. It will go back there. It has always been there and always will be. Dreaming stories and songs are the way we continue creation, which is still happening now - not in some "dreamtime", as it was mistranslated fifty or so years ago. It was, and it is. The rainbow snake is still pushing up the mountains. This is a circular thing, and has no time. In this way, entropy through western linear concepts of time is thwarted, and my people and land endure.
Language and Culture.
A lot of Aboriginal ways of thinking and speaking are circular. Kinship systems often spiral, so that in many groups grandfather and grandson is the same word, as is past and future tense. The word for soon and recent is often the same. Stories and sentences are often circular, with repetition used to arrive back at the same point where you started. Cycles of birth and rebirth go on through sacred places, which are referred to simultaneously as times and places (as in time-space in western physics).
When you consider this mismatch of logic systems, it is easy to see why there are so many problems with communication between native and non-native peoples. Maybe if Einstein had been able to sit down with some tribal clevermen to discuss relativity - well who knows? If you read back through this article, you might see a lot of common ground between western science and Indigenous knowledge systems.
And with western science now exploring the new fields of chaos theory and complexity theory, non-natives are now starting to see patterns within the complex adaptive systems that make up our universe, patterns Indigenous people have always understood. With this holistic approach to western science, the return to Indigenous non-linear thinking is on its way.
Perhaps soon western "civilisation" will come full circle, and rediscover the knowledge it has lost. Find out more about Indigenous cosmology.
