Chapter 1

“The revolution goes on; a man does not make the revolution, not a thousand men, not an army and not a party; the revolution comes from the people as they reach toward God, and a little of God is in each person and each will not forget it. This it is the revolution when slaves shake their chains and the revolution when a strong man bends toward a weaker and says, ‘Here, comrade, is my arm.’ The revolution goes on and nothing stops it; but because the people are seeking what is good, not what is wicked or powerful or cruel or rich or venal, but simply what is good--because of that the people flounder and feel along one dark road after another. The people no more all-seeing than their rulers once were; it is in intention that they differ.” Howard Fast, Citizen Tom Paine, 1943.

Jos wasn’t sure what he believed. In 1924, Winston Churchill declared—with good reason—that “the story of the human race is war.”

Some writers see violence as an instrument of politics. Thomas Hobbes regarded violence as a rational means to achieve such political goals as territory, safety, and glory. Carl von Clausewitz famously referred to war as the continuation of politics by other means. A second group of writers view violence as a result of political failure and miscalculation. The title of an influential paper on the origins of the American Civil War by the historian James Randall, “The Blundering Generation,” expresses that idea. A third group, most recently exemplified by the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, regards violence as a pathological behavior that is diminishing in frequency with the onward march of civilization. E. O. Wilson noted that hunter-gatherers, like those in Australia, are bands of close relatives, suspicious of outsiders.

Jos was a Wirrimanu from Balgo, in the Tamami Desert of Western Australia. He’d attended the Luurnpa Catholic School, where one of the Fathers had named him Josiah – everybody got a name from the Bible, they weren’t allowed their native names. From there he went to a TAFE, where he learned about surface mining with explosives. He had a buddy named Zeke who was a Miriwoong Gajerrong from the East Kimberley. They took jobs with Dadaru, near Wyndham. (Dadaru was established in 2011 in response to a desire to maximize Aboriginal involvement and employment in the Kimberley Metals Group.)

Jos had been a reader while at School. He learned that Josiah was the grandson of Manasseh, king of Judah, and ascended the throne at age eight after the assassination of his father, Amon, in 641BC. For a century, ever since Ahaz, Judah had been a vassal of the Assyrian empire. About 621 Josiah launched a program of national renewal, centred on the Temple in Jerusalem. Jos continued to read further as he trained. Reading filled many hours at the mine, where amusements were otherwise limited to drinking, gambling or the (well-used) whores.

Jos read history and politics. Since soon after 1788 the Australian government had been in denial about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s political existence. Prior to colonization Jos’s people had been organized into over 500 nations, each with distinct languages and systems of law that prevailed for over 4,000 generations and 60,000 years. Terra nullius had been a fiction. The Australian colonialist mentality had been about the exploitation of nature and the dominance over indigenous people. This dominance has made the land and its people sick. The invaders had always done this.

The Normans invaded Ireland; but it was Henry VIII who decided to conquer Ireland and bring it under crown control. Dreadful things were done to the Irish in the name of a United Kingdom. Citizens were tortured, starved and deported, their land stolen from beneath them and if England has chosen to forget, the Irish certainly haven’t. Bluntly, they do not trust British politicians of any stripe especially those who blithely ally themselves with bigots while treating the citizens of NI with casual contempt. And the same should be true of the Australians, Jos thought.

Sixty years of prime ministers had made pledges and promises to the Aborigines. Little had come of them. “Perhaps the time for evolution had passed; perhaps revolution was due,” he thought. [Indigenous Australians from low-lying islands in the Torres Strait argue that the government, by failing to act on climate change, has violated their fundamental right to maintain their culture. (NY Times, 2019-05-12)]

The traditional owners of the east Kimberley are the Miriwoong Gajerrong and they have an intimate relationship with the beautiful country around Kununurra. That’s why Zeke had brought Jos there.