Being an elder

We don’t have leaders in Erleichda. George had a lot to do with that. Being an Aboriginal, he understands the difference between being an elder and being a leader, and he doesn’t want anything to do with being a leader. I remember our conversation:

I ask him when a person becomes an elder. "Is it just a matter of age?"

"No," he replies, "People become elders when they are too old to chase kangaroos, but it's not automatic. You can be old and stupid."

"So is it because they know all the stories, and the law?"

"No. In my culture, everybody knows some of the stories, it is their duty; and everyone needs to know the law. This is a matter of survival, the stories are passed down from our mother or our father, and they are passed down to more than one person. Nobody has all the stories, or exclusive knowledge of any of them. Everybody knows the law, because if they didn't know it, how could they respect it? Everybody is important in preserving the culture, which is dependent on all the people, not on any individual, even an elder."

"So it's not a matter of knowing the stories, or being expert in the law?"

"Definitely not, although you couldn't be an elder if you didn't know your stories, and your people's law."

George is playing games with me - he won't tell me the answer, but he keeps encouraging me to look for my own answers. George is a teacher, but not in the normal sense of that word. I can't remember him ever actually telling me anything. What does he do, to make me think that he deserves my respect, to make me see him as a beloved teacher who empowers me to learn willingly, eagerly, without resentment?

I know that I feel safe with him, safe to be myself, safe to share who I am. He creates this safe space for me, I feel empowered to be who I am, to recognise my own wisdom, to speak out without fear.

George agrees with me that this is a quality of elders. "When my people meet, it is the elders who keep order, who ensure that everybody is heard, and treated with respect."

"You have to realise," he says, "that we have different ideas of the roles people play. There are children, there are adults, and there are old people, which includes the elders. In our society, it is the responsibility of the adults to look after the children, because they are our future; and the old people, whom we respect, and carry wisdom about who we are, and the way we should be. The adults are the least important people in our society, not like yours. You put your children in front of the TV, and your old people in nursing homes, so that you can get on with life; so you don't really have elders, and you don't understand their function."

Respect for other people, he tells me, is an important part of Aboriginal tradition. In Aboriginal society, the transition from child to adult is marked by a ceremony of initiation.

The ceremony is not initiation, it is a formal part of initiation. Initiation is an ongoing process of learning, punctuated by formal ceremonies.

George tells me that the first stage of his initiation started when he was fourteen, and lasted until he was twenty eight. "We are expected to go out and visit other tribes, to live with them, so that we understand their culture. This is the way we gain respect for other people. You cannot become an elder without giving this respect, and you cannot give this respect unless you understand other people. When you understand other people, and their law, only then can you understand and fully respect your own law."

This respect, I realise, empowers me. This, I see, is another quality of an elder.

"That's right," says George. "My people are taught to respect themselves. Everybody has a part to play, a responsibility for part of the whole, and we know that our welfare is dependent on the welfare of the whole. The elders encourage us to accept this responsibility, to speak up for our knowledge of our part of the whole."

"The whole what?" I ask.

"The whole tribe, for a start. The welfare of the people will be no greater than the welfare of any individual member. For the whole country, our land, because if the land isn't healthy, how can we be healthy? Each of us has a responsibility, and if any one of us is prevented from exercising this responsibility to the fullest, everybody suffers."

"So the elders gain respect by ensuring that everybody is treated with respect?"

"Right," says George.

George has experienced parts of life that I haven't, but he never belittles my experiences. Rather, he will share with me his experience of something similar or relevant. He shares, rather than arguing, and always his experience allows me to see things in another light, I learn from his experience. Learning comes from stories rather than lectures.

"So an elder creates a safe place, empowers people to speak their own mind, and teaches by sharing his experience. Is that what makes a man an elder?"

"No. Elders understand the law, which tells us where we are going, and what to do. They understand their responsibilities in relation to the law, and they help us to understand our responsibilities. They create a safe place for us to learn and discuss these responsibilities, where everybody can speak and participate. They encourage our participation by asking us questions that allow us to grasp this reality by speaking it. They act as guides and mentors by sharing their experiences and knowledge. All these things are true.

"Those are things that an elder does, but doing them does not make him an elder," says George. "Being an elder makes him do those things."

I recall an Aboriginal conference in Sydney, where I met an Aboriginal elder I’ll call Aunty Ella. "Aunty" is a term of respect with her people, an open acknowledgement that she is an elder.

As we walk towards the conference room where she is to present a paper, I ask her if she is nervous. She's not. I ask her if she has her notes ready. She doesn't have notes. I express surprise, and she tells me to look at the title of her paper. "The Knowledge is Within Us", I read.

I get the message - what makes Aunty Ella an elder is so deeply ingrained within her that she only has to speak and you recognise it. It's a part of her that has grown out of a lifetime of service to her people. Her audience is spellbound, not by anything she does, or the eloquence of her speech, but by something she is.

You become an elder when you develop this quality that is recognised, and when you have it, the acknowledgement of the people makes you an elder.

Part of this quality is vision. David Mowaljarlai was an elder of the Ngarinyin people of the Kimberley region. He said: "The elders must have a dream, for without this dream, how can the young people have a vision?"

"So the elders are keepers of the vision?"

"They are people who have spent their lives in service of the vision, of the law, and whose service has been recognised ceremonially and by the acknowledgement of their people. They have accepted their responsibility to the law, and demonstrated their respect."

"But you say they are not leaders?"

"Nope. We don't have leaders like you have leaders, and we don't want them. We know where we're headed, and we decide what to do by consensus, not because some leader tells us what to do. Elders certainly speak with authority, but their authority comes from the law. They guide us to understand what is right, your leaders argue about who is right. Elders create consensus and participation, leadership creates division and exclusion."

I'm beginning to understand what an elder is, what an elder does. An elder has vision, and having spent a lifetime in refining this vision, and in service to it, passes the vision on by empowering others to share and participate in it. Rather than acting as judge or jury, they hold up a mirror that allows others to judge for themselves.

Being an elder is not a matter of age, nor is it dependent on exclusive or even comprehensive knowledge of history or the means of physical survival. Being an elder is a quality of spirit that transcends the physical, that can be earned only through service to the universal good.

Initiation is an important part of Aboriginal culture, and initiation ceremonies mark important milestones on a journey which is essentially spiritual. Each ceremony marks the death of something old to allow the birth of something new. For an Aboriginal man to be an elder, traditional society demanded that he be fully initiated. Women could become elders when they passed the age of menopause.

In many Aboriginal societies, when a person was regarded as an elder, men could learn women's business, and women could learn men's business. Thus they achieved balance in their view of life.

To be fully initiated, a person was required to spend a lifetime learning and being of service to the people. Perhaps the final stage of initiation, which is necessary to become an elder, is the death of ego, and the recognition that your own welfare is intimately connected with the welfare of all people. Such a person has come to terms with themself, acknowledges both their masculinity and femininity, values consensus rather than the gratification of winning battles.

This is a man, or a woman, who is truly in touch and at one with the Universe, and surely such a person is entitled to be called an elder.