KANYINI
Could you handle being taken from your family, to a place you have never been, full of people, children who don't look like you, don't speak your language and don't believe and live the way you do? Taken to learn different ways of life, a religion you not only don't believe in but don't understand. Everything you once knew and did meaning nothing, not being able to practice in these ways as you have since you were born. Everything changing, nothing no longer the same.
This is exactly how the aborigines felt, the stolen generation, taken away from their Kanyini. Their connectedness with their land, family, their belief system and spirituality. To aborigines the land and Earth is their mother, using what she has given them to survive, celebrating their ways with her. Having this connection as Bob Randall had said is being alive. Kanyini to them is life, their everything. Being segregated from their Kanyini is like us being taken from home, our family, friends and no longer having a belief system. Their Kanyini is apart of them. It completes their soul and spirit.
For the Aboriginal children who were taken to institutions which the church ran, it was confusing for them to understand the new religious way they were being taught to follow as they thought what was taught from the Bible was already the way they were living. Love one another, one of the many things they were already doing like the Bible read. However, the part in which confused them greatly was, do not kill, yet the Europeans had come and killed several of their family members and friends.
Having different belief systems is no negative, there is no correct religion or incorrect. It was wrong for the Aborigines to be taken from their connectedness and the Europeans understood that, but it was their duty and they were commanded to do so.
Kanyini is an important part to the Aborigines in many ways. With the land, their mother, using her supplies as food, shelter and to dance on. The land is a major part of their Kanyini as their land is their family. Their spirituality, what is sacred to them, their Kanyini. Kanyini, the connectedness of aborigines with their land, belief system, spirituality and family is a large part and involvement of their lives making it apart of them and the way they live.
Could you handle being taken from your family, to a place you have never been, full of people, children who don't look like you, don't speak your language and don't believe and live the way you do? Taken to learn different ways of life, a religion you not only don't believe in but don't understand. Everything you once knew and did meaning nothing, not being able to practice in these ways as you have since you were born. Everything changing, nothing no longer the same.
This is exactly how the aborigines felt, the stolen generation, taken away from their Kanyini. Their connectedness with their land, family, their belief system and spirituality. To aborigines the land and Earth is their mother, using what she has given them to survive, celebrating their ways with her. Having this connection as Bob Randall had said is being alive. Kanyini to them is life, their everything. Being segregated from their Kanyini is like us being taken from home, our family, friends and no longer having a belief system. Their Kanyini is apart of them. It completes their soul and spirit.
For the Aboriginal children who were taken to institutions which the church ran, it was confusing for them to understand the new religious way they were being taught to follow as they thought what was taught from the Bible was already the way they were living. Love one another, one of the many things they were already doing like the Bible read. However, the part in which confused them greatly was, do not kill, yet the Europeans had come and killed several of their family members and friends.
Having different belief systems is no negative, there is no correct religion or incorrect. It was wrong for the Aborigines to be taken from their connectedness and the Europeans understood that, but it was their duty and they were commanded to do so.
Kanyini is an important part to the Aborigines in many ways. With the land, their mother, using her supplies as food, shelter and to dance on. The land is a major part of their Kanyini as their land is their family. Their spirituality, what is sacred to them, their Kanyini. Kanyini, the connectedness of aborigines with their land, belief system, spirituality and family is a large part and involvement of their lives making it apart of them and the way they live.