The Swan People of Australia

A tale of subconscious bias that keeps anger and hate flying around the world

One day a few hundred years ago on the lakes and land of the Black Swan, a large group of White Swans from far away came looking for a new place to live. They needed a new place to live because they had stuffed up their old one. It was overrun with too many swans to feed and had high crime and disease. The white swans still loved it very much and thought it was the most beautiful and progressive place on earth.

 The Black Swans were really surprised to see White Swans flying and swimming around on their lakes. They had never seen White Swans before and at first cautiously welcomed them.

 The white swans saw that the black swans lived very differently to them and they labelled them backward and immoral, because the white swans knew you should only live and think one way, the white swan way.

 The White Swans believed that anyone that wasn’t a White Swan was not clever, beautiful or even a real swan.

 So you can imagine when more and more White Swans kept flying in, they pushed, killed, and bullied the Black Swans off their lakes, that had been their only home for a very long time. The White Swans believed that the Black Swans did not deserve such places or know how to look after them properly, as they didn’t build bigger and better nests or use the best materials or try to change the world to be better and bigger.

 The white swans would joke that the black swans had no idea how to succeed in life. The truth is that they were partly right. The black swans did not know how to succeed the white swan way, they only knew how the achieve success the black swan way.

 The black swans lived just as their ancestors had, because they believed their ancestors were wise and right, so you must not try to change anything in case you dishonor them.

 The White Swans were appalled by how the Black Swans looked, the way they sounded, how they cared for their cygnets, and even what they ate. The White Swans were convinced that to help the Black Swans they would teach them to become exactly like them. After all a true test of intelligence is to live as the white swans live. But how can you make black feathers become white?

 The white swans were amazed at how backward the black swan was because he did not learn, love, or communicate like the white swan. Afterall, surely there is only one way to think. One value system to live by, everyone that is intelligent, white, and good knows that.

 The black swans were soon starving and could not provide food for their family because they no longer had access to their hunting grounds. The only way the black swans could survive was to work for food from the white swans or beg for anything they could get. This once proud and healthy swans were defeated and displaced from their culture and lifestyle. A way of living they believed was the only right way they knew for them to survive.

The white swans brought new foods to the lakes and this food made many of the black swans sick as their stomachs were not used to them. When the black swans did not want their new food, the white swans told them they were ungrateful and selfish.

 This made the Black Swans very sad and confused about how they were supposed to live now. The way they had always lived was not allowed anymore, and the White Swans ways were very different and made them feel unwell. Some Black Swans gave up, many tried to live in both worlds and others keep fighting still today for the right to live like they once did on their beautiful lakes they looked after and loved for so long.

 So why is it that the black swans still live in despair, even the though the white swans try to support and help them to think and live like they do?

 If you look closely inside the mind of each of these swans you will find a very different way of thinking, based on how each flocks primitive brains were wired to achieve the ideal.

 The white swan has a set of systems with rules and standards that has evolved over thousands of years based on the individual achieving a certain model of success for the greater good of the flock.

 The black swan has a set of systems with rules and standards that has evolved over tens of thousands of years based on the flock achieving a certain model of success for the greater good of each single bird.

 The tragedy in this tale is that each flock of swans is predominantly made up of good, kind birds who want to do the right thing.  Unfortunately, the strategies they use to do the right things, looks completely different to the other and gets misinterpreted and judged incorrectly.

 The Black Swans who have stopped trying to meet the standards and rules of the White Swans, are definitely the happiest Swans.

 So the moral here is that if it honks like a Swan, walks like a Swan and looks like a Swan – it may not have the same Swan way of thinking as you - that, despite our common humanity, the black and white swans of the world really do the same things differently

Why are black swans still not thriving in Australia?

“We understand it was horrible when the white swans came, but that was a couple of hundred years ago. We all have to get on with things and figure out how to make this country you love great for everyone’s future”.

How can black swans as a whole get well? What a great question I rarely get asked. I instead get asked quite a bit by kind white swans “What can I do to help?” or “How can I help?”, or specific areas are segmented like “How can I help young people’s mental health?’ or “How can I help mothers?”

At the moment most good white swans are advocating based on their Individual First thinking, which is absolutely right for them, how can they do anything else. However, this means they are advocating unknowingly through the wrong lens which does not connect with black swan collective first thinking. 

The first step to true understanding and respectful relationships in my experience is each swan knowing the unconscious bias thinking of the other. Each swan group knowing the standards and rules of the systems that align with their thinking and make them feel well.

We can build empathy through this knowing for each other because neither flock can help how their brains are wired or what they absolutely believe is the right way to do everything.

This knowing is the only way the dominant white swans can see how the systems, rules, and standards they have set in Australia, cannot be met by the black swans because their brains have a different way of accomplishing and judging success of the ideal.

So how do two polar opposite societal systems cohabit or indeed build a better Australia?

Step one - understand and value each other’s societal systems and associated standards and rules and accept there is more than one way a society has evolved to think.

Step two – Show genuine restoration to the black swan people by installing their systems and place within Australia’s federal governance and systems. Stand up and take ownership that your families and Ancestors 100% caused this shit fight by purposely (albeit unconsciously) ensuring the systems, rules and standards of this countries ancient societal systems became invisible and something to be ashamed of.

Step three – implement the black swan’s systems by allocating the control of service and lands to restore black swans societies who are traditional owners in each area with the agreed framework of increasing the success of the entire nation (based on a shared ideal of success). This would lead to an Indigenous economy that would contribute greatly to the nation and world and ensure that the uniqueness of Australia would be protected forever.

My research

Epigenetics (Your Outside Identity)

Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression (active versus inactive genes) that do not involve changes to the underlying DNA sequence — a change in phenotype without a change in genotype — which in turn affects how cells read the genes. Epigenetic change is a regular and natural occurrence but can also be influenced by several factors including age, the environment/lifestyle, and disease state. Epigenetic modifications can manifest as commonly as the manner in which cells terminally differentiate to end up as skin cells, liver cells, brain cells, etc. Or, epigenetic change can have more damaging effects that can result in depression or being vulnerable to anxiety or stress.

Aboriginal people lived a ritualistic certain way in specific environments for longer than any other society and this certainly adds up to a set of Epigenetic modifications that in theory should be purer than any other society or race of people.

In my research I believe Aboriginal people developed a repetitive societal system that solely focused on achieving harmony for its members. They did this by strategically framing their systems, standards and rules to try to achieve harmony by living in mutualism at all times. When Colonial people arrived they saw dark skinned people sitting around, singing, storytelling using powerful spiritual beings, laughing and moving about with very little personal material gain. The new settlers considered this to be an unstructured society of lazy, uneconomical, unintelligent natives that needed to be disregarded and enlightened.

 After six years of studying the Ancient society of Aboriginal people from a systemic viewpoint. I think those settlers had just witnessed nirvana and completely failed to see it. Blinded by their own Brittish lens of how to live only one way – individually outside of nature, controlling any resource to increase their ideal of success.

 Intragenetics (Blood Memory-Your inside Identity)

 Aboriginal people believe they come from their "Ancestors Creation Time" which must by necessity be " now" because it lives in them and their environments, the present time.

The concepts of "Inside"- the invisible, beyond physical world and "Outside", the physically created and visible world are integrated to form one existence.

 Everything and all people exist always, somewhere in some form - spiritually, geographically, and physically.

 Life is a series of transformations, from child to adolescent to adult, from one state to another. At some Aboriginal Initiation or manhood ceremonies the boy is shaved of all hair to represent a baby because he is being reborn, he is covered in red ochre to represent blood.

 Anything named has its own identity expressed in its name and is given purpose and connection in this name. This identity is fixed and unchanging and stems from the mother or the father.

 Life is a constant process of layer upon layer of discoveries of this identity and the associated relationships to people and Country.

 In many NSW Aboriginal Language groups a person has several names for different reasons. At birth they are immediately placed in a Skin family and Marriage Totem grouping which is their day name when they cohabit with others and tells them who their family are. They are also given a night time name that stems from a Dreaming Guardian Totem to protect them from the bad spirits when they sleep. The third name is revealed at Initiation and is used at gender rituals only.

 The purpose of your name is for family support, marriage allocation, protection and to follow law.

 Who you are as an individual is not important – who you are in relationship to everything above and below ground in your local living landscape is.

Cultural practices, songs and ceremonies all help reveal what is your relationships to birds, animals, to place and to members of the group.

This leads to an understanding of who one is within your own story, one's "Inside" identity. For instance, a totem identifies features and strengths of the "Inside" to its holder.

Multiple totems associated with a person, by implication reveal much about his or her own ”Inside” non-physical place and purpose in the world.

 In Aboriginal Culture and society they are taught their place within the laws, principles, and activities by which the natural world was created.

Thus laws and principles of the natural world are Dreaming (Creation) Laws which generate human culture and society. This leads to respect and adoration for the Earth and allows for the discovering of internal(Inside) and external (Outside) knowledge of oneself.

Language richly integrates physical, mental, and spiritual levels of experience. Thus "Language Dreaming" stories, which give value by their effect on the people, their self-image and by providing direction, (Law), and connection to country and place.

 Nola Turner-Jensen is an Aboriginal Epigenetic lead researcher of the CultuRecode Project. Contact us on [email protected] to learn more