My Blood is Old

I sit in a room full of learned people, feeling like I am too young, too inexperienced to have anything to offer. After all, who am I? What have I ever done that allows me to measure those who’ve paved the way before me?  I hear stories of resistance, fighting the status quo, standing up for those who cannot stand up for themselves and I am reminded that my Blood is Old.

As I walk on land these feet have never been on before, I feel a sense of connection and knowing to a place, a sense of home and belonging to such a visually unfamiliar place. The wind on my face and the smells in the air have such a sense of familiarity but this body has never walked in this place, and I am reminded that my Blood is Old.

I hear songs in language I cannot speak, words unknown to me, yet in my being I feel the meaning and heart behind them. Stories of places I have never been, from a time long before I was here, and yet have such a familiarity, and I am reminded that my Blood is Old.

As I sit and listen to the stories, I am reminded that my Blood is Old. It isn’t just mine, it might flow through my veins, but it is my lineage. It flowed through my parents’ veins, and their parents before them, and their parents, parents, right back to before time begin, before there was anything, and if I’m lucky it will continue to flow, through my children’s veins, and my grandchildren’s veins, ever onwards until once again everything fades into nothing.

Blood as lineage and knowledge 

Throughout my life I have been taught western understandings of Blood, how to measure sugar levels, cholesterol, magnesium, how important the health of my Blood is to the rest of my body. I’ve gotten to know the medical impact of my inherited DNA, but never the knowing that it carries the stories of my lineage, the joys, the strengths and victories as well as wounds and  trauma.

The trauma that comes from dispossessed family members, one taken from family as a child,  the other through this intergenerational trauma, never taught to face their own  demons rather than to let them out through abuse, violence, and eventually absence.

Yet at the same time, my Blood carries the strength of a grandfather and grandmother who gave up their own comforts to make sure their family never went without. It carries the strengths of a mother who sacrificed her own comforts to make sure three kids were shielded as much as she could from the difficulties of growing up in a single parent home with a missing father. 

The concept that my Blood carries the knowledge and stories of my lineage sits so well within me and as I reflect on it I can’t help but reflect on how many things my “western education” has taught me which have never landed or sat true for me. But I’ve taken on and absorbed them because it’s what I’ve been taught, so it must be true and my instincts must be wrong. 

Throughout my working life I’ve watched and felt the pain as more young men and women are pressed and moulded through the same cookie cutter system, forced to flex and bend, cutting off parts of who they are in order to fit so they don’t get left out and left behind as the machine that society continuously picks up speed, becoming an almost uncontrollable, unsteerable wreck except for the very few who have been born privileged enough to rise to the perceived “top”. Those lucky enough to have the job, the car, the house, with all the trimmings that society seems to think will give us sovereignty over our own lives, but really just leave us wanting and chasing more, trapped in the rollercoaster of wealth.

The more I see, the more I must question. What gives one man the right to decide their way is the way and all others are wrong and must be bent, suppressed, and forced into conceding to their way. Who gave him the authority to impose his will on his fellow man with such belief and conviction that he above all others is right, the only one to hold the keys and the answers to this journey we call life.

But then as I sit here by the beach, I notice kids playing , able to be completely themselves as they enjoy the company and frivolities of those around them, not yet tainted by the concept they have to fit the mold or not fit in. Through this I’m transported back to a time when I hadn’t cast myself in the mould that I’ve been taught and shown, a time when for me all things were possible, no dream was too big, a desire to measure my worth was not yet ingrained in me. As I spend time in this place and take an imaginary walk there once again, I can’t help but recognise the sacredness of this place, a place which connects my hands and heart to those who have been and those yet to come through the ancestral twinings of my Blood, my Blood which is Old and carries a sacredness that words will never truly do justice.

 I’m reminded that if I do nothing to intercede and advocate for our young people, to sit back and watch and do nothing to stop what has happened from happening again. That if I’m content to let another generation be forced into succumbing and conforming to the mold that society wants them to adhere to in order to fit in. Then I am no better than the man who has placed himself on top and I continue to give him the permission to choose what counts as success and failure. I could make no choice and let what has happened to me keep on happening rather than standing against the void that is created as this vacuum of power tries to strip away what is left of our ancestral identity; the knowledge and learnings that it holds; and the sacredness it carries. I see continuously in the media as more and more cultures are watered down, the stories of their elders lost, their traditions, their songs, their dances slowly fade away as one version of history is taught, painting over countless generations of other cultures’ histories.

I choose to say no, something must change. I will not enable the oppression to continue that forces us to confine ourselves to a mold or risk getting left behind or left out completely as we struggle to balance heritage and culture against education and modern society,  for another generation to deal with. How can I not try to break this cycle, how can I not try to preserve this sacred place for those who still have the joy and privilege of still living in it fully, and those who have yet to experience its delights.

Sitting here I am reminded that I’ve only ever known this one way. How can I even be sure this way isn’t correct and I don’t just fit the mold? That I’m not wrong? But as I look at Elders and I hear their stories, and the stories their Elders passed to them I know it wasn’t always like this and I have a choice to make if I want it to not always be like this.

I can buy into this modern perception of what society defines as being successful, allowing myself to give up my sovereignty and fit into its mold, or I can listen to my Blood, I can feel its story and its knowing, it has lived in many ways in many places. Even if it has not always got it right it is still here, still flowing, so it must be proof that other ways do not at least end in disaster and there is a choice to be made and options to be had.

I will stand against the void, as my Aunties and my Uncles, My Grandfathers and Grandmothers stood against the void and took their blows now is the time, the time for my Brothers and Sisters and me to stand against the void, so that those who one day look to us as Aunt and Uncles, Grandfathers and Grandmothers still have a void to stand against, hopefully bigger in its understanding but smaller in its gap rather than it being completely absorbed and forgotten, painted over with another’s view of our history and another’s plan for our future.

And for myself I must stand against this void. I must stand for the things I believe in and are sacred to me. If I do not, what will I have to pass on? In closing I must borrow the learnings of another man, Uncle Graham Brady. That Blood is old, and Blood is sacred, and what is sacred always was and always will be.