Guboo Ted Thomas,
Australian Aboriginal Tribal Elder, 1909-2002
The
last initiated tribal elder of the South Coast, Guboo Ted Thomas. Guboo, which
means "Good Friend," is an eighty-year-old Chief Elder of the Yuin
Tribe in Australia. He speaks about the beliefs of his people and his
ancestors, stressing the need for balance and harmony between humans and with
their surroundings. "We must learn to appreciate the things Mother Earth
has to offer in abundance," he says. By using the Aboriginal medium of
"Dreamtime," the mystical state in which Aborigines experience
themselves at one with nature, Guboo hopes to spread his message to a world that
needs to hear it.A gentle activist and a spiritual innovator, Guboo believed
that everyone, black and white, could share the Dreaming once they truly
respected the land and began to open their hearts to her mysterious teachings.
His mission was to make Aboriginal spirituality relevant to the 21st century. It
was a message that many in black Australia were not ready to hear. 1
1. Taken from the Koori History Website Guboo Ted
Thomas at http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/heroes3.html and New Dimensions http://www.newdimensions.org/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=2152&Category_Code=iw
§
“About a
couple of months before that I seen this great wave going. And I tell them over
there about this wave. It wasn't a tidal wave, this was a spiritual wave. So, to
me, I believe that the Dreamtime is going to be that. I believe the revival is
going to start in Australia when we're dreaming. It's the humming bee that I'm
talking about. And love. We've got to learn to love one another. "So, you
see, that's really what's going to happen to the Earth. We're going to have
tidal waves. We're going to have earthquakes. That's coming because we don't
consider this land as our Mother. We've taken away the balance and we're not
putting it back. I look at the bush and those trees are alive. They're not
dead, they're alive. And they want you to cuddle them.”
§
And on
Dreamtime (the Aboriginal mystical trance state)- "The mountain teaches
the dreaming. Time as you know it is all backwards,What you call the past is
sincerely future and what you call future is sincerely past.You already became
your destiny. You travel back, forth. Dreamtime, daytime. Same thing. They
overlap always…When you sleep at night, you wake up inside your dreams,
right?.You have good dreamtime walkabout. Go on adventures. Meet other
dreamers. When dreamer get tired, go to sleep. Now this dreamer wake up. You
wake up and think you stop dreaming. Nobody stop dreaming."
§
In his own
words: “The Earth is our Mother. When I die I'm going down there. When you die
you're coming too! And what are you doing for the Earth ?”
2. Taken from Futureverse
website. No longer online. (hard copy available upon request)