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Use of psychedelics in Australian Aborignial cultures?

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looking for info relating to the use of (dmt/fungus...) in native australian aboriginal cultures? i know it exsisted but cant find much detail

(tried the SE with no luck).

would love any help, anyone know anything?

thanks humans. :lol:

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looking for info relating to the use of (dmt/fungus...) in native australian aboriginal cultures? i know it exsisted but cant find much detail

(tried the SE with no luck).

would love any help, anyone know anything?

thanks humans. :lol:

I've heard that some Aboriginal communities have used some DMT but wasn't a common thing and only in selected areas.

But pls correct me if i'm wrong, i've not got memory as to where I read it.

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the only substance use I know are, pituri, which is primarily a nicotine. basic alcohols seem to have been produced by some tribes. acacia gums were chewed, but no evidence has shown that the result was psychedelic effects. thats all I can think of.

Edited by shroomytoonos

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I've heard that some Aboriginal communities have used some DMT but wasn't a common thing and only in selected areas.

But pls correct me if i'm wrong, i've not got memory as to where I read it.

Any knowledge or use of such plants is hidden or has been lost completely.

I think it hard to believe that the dreamtime stories are based around the use of just tropanic plants, which is better documented.

anyone?

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Any knowledge or use of such plants is hidden or has been lost completely.

i've never read of any documented use of psychedelics, but a FUCKING LOT of knowledge was lost in the aussie aboriginal haulacaust. i think a great deal of the knowledge & culture which is left is pretty inaccessible to most white fella's.

i'm lucky enough to have an old aboriginal friend who i go out bush with now and then. it is an honer for me to be allowed into his circle of friends and to share eachothers culture. he and his old friends have taken me to some amazing places and i'm constantly learning so much from them. but there are many things which are off limits to me, as far as the sharing of knowledge and their deeper spiritual... stuff.

i feel i will have to spend ALOT more time with them, in order to be deemed worthy of deeper blackfella's knowledge.

i have touched on the topic of drugs with my friend, i didn't take it very far though, certainly didn't talk about psychedelics at all!

it seems he's fairly against drugs in general. but i think that's just his personal opinion and i have no idea what role drugs played in his traditional culture. like most modern aboriginies, his link to his traditional culture is somewhat fragmented, so i don't really know if he would have that knowledge, though i'll make a point one day to get his perspective (in terms of his spirituality and culture) on psychedelics.

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Hrmm, interesting topic and very interesting anecdote, paradox, you are very lucky. :)

RE the aboriginal chewing of acacia gum. I have only heard from an old mate (so not toooo reliable) but that in the early hippy days of this area, they learnt from some local aboriginals that chewing a gum or resin produced by what's been identified as acacia maidenni to be a way to 'get off'. to see visions and experience otherliness etc.

I thought this was interesting and hints at the possibility of aboriginal tryptamine use (could be more recent and not traditional, though), but nothing too evidential sorry.

I also agree with Conan, a lot of aboriginal artwork, stories, ideas surrounding the dreamtime seem to me to reek of tryptamine use. So much so I find it hard to believe that they never did (I mean c'mon, how could you not try eating one of those beautiful little golden-topped fungi (uhh, unless someone had died from poor ID'ing, heh :blush: ) :shroomer:

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yeh part of the motivation for this thread was to look at any connection between the dreamtime and tryptamine use.

thanks for all the help so far. keep et comin.

:lol:

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I also agree with Conan, a lot of aboriginal artwork, stories, ideas surrounding the dreamtime seem to me to reek of tryptamine use. So much so I find it hard to believe that they never did

I agree, lots of their paintings and artworks are very reminiscent of Ayahuasca paintings I have seen.

Here is an example. Though they are different I can see distinct similarities.

14830003_500.jpg

Graham Hancock

Pablo Amaringo

Does anyone agree?

Edited by tonic

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Im aware of the chewing of Pituri (Dubosia hopwoodii), the quids were made with acacia ash and resin.

ALSO i heard a story that comes from SA. Long ago before white settlement, in an area know for Psilocybe subaeruginosa, there were a few local tribes. but one in particular was feared by the other tribes for their ties with black magic and were eventually erradicated by the other tribes in the area. One particular area that ties with the ledgend is a rocky altar area which i believe YT had found at some stage. I think that i was told that area was used by the culled tribe for their rituals and such, in which they would eat the mushrooms. Makes one wonder if they were considered paitrons of the black arts due to the consumption of the mushroom. Others will know more about this than I, and least i hope so.

would like to know more about this as i cannot help but agree there are ties between dreamtime imagery and tryptamines. especially when location is considered too

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Have a vauge recollection of Blue lotus being used by young aboriginal men.

Not at all sure where I heard this

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There are many reports of Juliaflorae Acacias (including some known active spp.) being used ceremonially or medicinally by throwing a branch or some foliage on the fire. This was especially useful when the kids were crying too much.

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evenin all, hope the weeks off to a cruisy start...bloody warm here, for what some call autumn haha.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (whole other kettle o fish, islanders) plant use is a subject that could fill this and a dozen other websites... for everything we now head to bunnings for, woolies for, the servo for (ok, no bush equiv of coke zero or champion ruby, but YKWIM) , the doctor for, alllll of it...once was hunted up from the local area. Or failing that, the local area of neighbouring tribes. Or THEIR neighbouring tribes... every little nice in australia, valley to valley, had something else to offer and something else it lacked... "walkabout" has now been hijacked to mean bush bashing, which is a VERY noble pasttime for any culture, originally had more leanings of "going to bloody westfield....", the microseasons would shift and suddenly your kids are coughing guts up, and the wattle resin a few hills over is great for coughs mixed with water ...and when that happens, their kids are starting to get a bit skittish and whiny from eating the same seeds every night for tea for the last three weeks (a lot of things change, but children are always the same :D) so lets go for a wander.

People didn't just wander aimlessly, one of the biggest misconceptions going. Artifacts are found in VIC that started off in cape york and things in cape york get found that started off in kalgoorlie. Some aboriginal groups built in stone, small storehouses, hunting blinds, somewhere to sleep when its raining and you missus has knocked off the good possum rug... all this was found, documented, and then farmed over, used for other things til the first purpose was forgotten...in any case, the Brit museum etc have alll this on record, including what a lot of anthros were fairly sure was a written numerical system , portable calendars, trade maps... warriors would often have basically a UBD page etched into the shield to remind them of who home was, and to tell people where to get them back too if things went pear shaped .Not to mention the dozen or so KNOWN sets of aboriginal remains, shipped back to the motherland with the platypus and all these whacky plants. But im ranting here... a personal topic, all this, I'm a hybrid myself with fairly strong ties to the issues both modern and not so modern.I'm not always "they", and as the original ways become more fragmented, a lot gets lost but what remains is the real core of it all, the solid quartz knowingness. I believe strongly in ancestral memory, and remembering forward too.yet more pages, haha.

Bla...plants... mushies were and are eaten for food by some language groups, including some species (often garlic or chive smelling) that at certain times can be smelt in the air but actually live mainly underground, fruiting body-wise. So at good times you'd smell them at not so ideal times people would poke around in likely spots with a long thing strong stick, sniffing the end now n then...truffle hunting ala mallee scrub. people have shows me what could easily have been two dozen kinds of native scrub mushy or grass c ountry fungi that can be eaten (in termso f being showed a large double cupped handful of SO many kinds of weirdarse thing but then all of them going into a pot with lunch, noone died and noone had too much fun of the multicoloured kind). Cape York inland areas, atherton etc has a lot of those too.Never heard of anything all that mushy related in terms of the stories and songs from here n there, and ya have to remember that whilst some use DMT as what others can see as a "shortcut" to "communication and experience of the divine" (use whatever terms you like the sound of here), others can and do still use the more "family orientated" variety of ways to raise the spirit, trance, dance, songs and stories, its hard not to feel at one with all that is when you haven't even entertained the possibility that you're not. "we" as a new culture (westernised world I mean here) have learned a million ways to confuse ourselves and no really good ways to sort that bullshit out again...some disagree and thats good too.

Anyway, you don't need a home lab to enjoy "dmt space". But... a LOT of common medicines for sore throats, sore eyes, lung complants, gastro problems, worms etc, come down to various kinds of trees esp the more deserty wattles and the more wet country eucalypts taken as ash, resin, kino, smokewashing, whatever. Sometimes rubbed on the skin. Wattle seed flower was and sometiems is a staple food (no 2 buck a bag defiance brand back then, and not even now sometimes, transport costs and all), as well as a helluva lot of grassseeds, animals that live off grasseeds and new germed wattle etc...now take into account eating bits of those critters (brains, livers, blood) that most of us don't touch anymore. Now eat and live off that plus whatever semi toxic fruit you get hold of this week (so what if u have to crush and soak it a dozen times first , then regring it and roast it before you can eat it? it won't KILL ya nephew), walking all day, various bugbites, and the body and mind are in a very out there place maybe. esp the wattle food and medicine sources plus the grass seed combos , remember too some tribes did and do use various wood ashed as a food flavouring and short term preservative.. not a GREAT way to get trippin but I'm sure sometimes we all just had a VERY entertaining evening. Remember that witchitees and borer grubs tend to LOVE the wattles.

The thing is that a lot of whitebread westerners (not you guys or you wouldn't be here) have this highly idealised notion of "tribal" life. For a good read on this check out the golden bough by james frazer, the first few bits should do it. But in short, when there is a hundred people in your family, triple that in your "animal" family (whole other post...)1500 people in your whole "country", and EVERYONE has a job to do and a time to do it most of the time, and if you dont then tthe whole damn host of nasties from evil bush beings to spiders, your mum your dad your auntiesunclesdeaddepartedrellosandthegodsthemselves....comes down on your head...you can't deviate long enough to go and get blasted. Most minds aren't very well set up for going and getting blasted, which is why in trad tribes around the world and thru time there have been one or two "wise people" a few more "fairly wise people" and then a whole mob of "shutup and do what you're told people"... and only the chosen ones near the top get to get into anything alllll that great...the plebs are left with the petty painkillers and gotowork stims right?. They had chosen shamans is what I'm saying...you can't have everyone being the wise man or nothing gets bloody done. So anything that useful in terms of "mix this with that add that now let it soak for a week then add that, empty stomach bla bla" is either lost or not something that is going to be handed over to anyone. Every aspect of life in a trad tribal society is regulated almost beyond comprehension by codes of conduct, caste systems, superstition, fear of the supernatural, the very real fear of excommunication...thats what pointing the bone really means usually...cast thee out....you raelly need the support of others to live properly in australian wild areas.Without family there is no sense of self. Cultures that pay that much attn to ancestors spend a whole heap of attn on those living around them at present.Either way, if anything like that was going on, it'd be strictly upper crust and in the know, and if their wives didn't know you can bet it won't be turning up on here anytime soon.

In aboriginal plant use, there isnt just a plant. then the soil, then the things in the soil, then the bird that likes the fruit of the tree, then its poo that feeds the soil...oftentimes a "guild" was given one name (pituri budjeri thing , you might've read about it), so if some old dear said "for headaches you need the gnaril, like this one (points to plant)", it doesn't necess mean that plant is good for headaches...could be theres a similar plant in the "guild" of species that can help, or that the first plant will only do anything that much taken with the second... or that once you get to that "area" the experience of picking this nt hat with older people would let you know what you needed once you got there (which one of these things smells like it makes my head feel better?). Anything that lethal is always pointed out to kids. She might've meant that "the bleedingly obvious headache plant is only any good when picked at about the same size as this one.BUt then some visiting anthro turns up, writes down what she said , inserts pic and sample of plant, and heads back to the land of affordable groceries.

The smokwashing for kids can be for afew reasons, some plants are used much as white sage is used in other cultures, frankincense etc....the more trad blackfellas are often found to believe that certain winds , places or spirits can make a person sick and smoking can relieve this..being an outdoors kind of person esp in flat, grassy country you tend to get a lot of wheezy sniffly things , dust related eye problems etc.....others have a fairly strong antibacterial/antifungal ability, others a general expectorant quality or to keep bugs off...all a bit like rosemary thyme or lavendar oil for the flu...or wow, eucalytpus oil haha...so yeah, kids crying in aus often IS from being a bit crook or being arsechewed by mozzies, or just having spent the day with some depressing rellies or doing something that doesn't make em feel good....these days ppl use tixylix , vicks etc for much the same things and they have much the same actives in some cases, including the spicy camphor like things.People in eastern euro used to get whacked off camphor, poor pricks, apparently kept ya warm though you'd end up in a state described as similar to epilepsy.. lot of saffrole in the camphor laurels they get the camphor from commerically, I've been told, something like saffrole anyway, and a lot of your sneezeweeds, lemon scented this and ti tree whatever, apparently have the camphorated whatevers as well.Good plants can smell a lot like they do that's for sure....so maybe with a homemade tigerbalm kinda thing based on this n that plant and wallaby fat (transdermal aspect might offest the gut breaking things down before you get to have any fun with them) plus a bunch of wattle smoke and general inflammation or infection related "trippiness" I'm sure things did get a bit inspiring at times too."Hand me that ochre before I lose what's in my head cuz!" BTW, IME rain -washed kino running from cuts in maidenii when smoked NEAAAARLY starts to "do the job" but it's almost like a ....subliminal flash...local variants of melanoxylon seem similar too...no time or inclination for glassware related things here, so I lost interest pretty quick...might try it with some nice euca wood ash.

Native passionfruits tend to have the same cyanide reek when you handle em so maybe harmala related business there, but no documentation or word of mouth about it as far as I know...but then I suspect it'd be a womans preparation like MOST of this plant stuff, men hunted and fucked off so the women could get something DONE , that was it hunting or tribal admin (with a few variations in between).So it may be doubly lost as lets face it men seem to spend more of their day telling you what they know than women do...IME...women are too busy getting it done.Either way, getting plants and mushrooms and small critters, medicines etc was really for women and kids and nanas or older disabled men to sort out...and it's where the bulk of the nutes in the clan would be coming from, and more reliably too...hunting just doesn't work sometimes, or it would've but tabu rules etc would prevent a certain animal being taken by the given hunter , and so on.

Native bee honey is sometimes used the same way other cultures use honey medicinally, its known to help cuts and scrapes, coughs etc.Despite claims that there are no native yeasts in aus, plenty of mobs can tell you about how nana usedto collect nectar and water and then some crushed fruits esp berries and then let it sit dark n cool for a week or so... but who writes this shit down, too busy working out who to send where or how to decide you're a subhuman species on the basis of not having developed the stock exchange yet.

Some northern groups , and it would've travelled, dealt a lot with the maccassan or malay traders, less so the torres strait islanders (fairly disparate groups when you take a good look into it, and not necessarily big on each other even today)...picking up opium and I'd assume betel, different tobaccos etc..very old paintings have been found of what seem to be traditional malay trading boats associated with blatant opium pipes and weird looking bundles, haha... imagine what a ball of opium gum would get you ochre wise from down south if you could handle the walk? Some betel for some pituri?Hows them walkin feet feel now brother, :D Imagine the price jump as it went thru maybe a hundred hands ... a 50 bag doesn't seem so pricey haha... maybe someone picked up some decent fungus that way, but it didn't make the "papers" in terms of paintings found or ancestral image information.

Bush tropanes when you're short on water can be more educational than people give credit for too, but overall I think the dmt space thing is more about being yes, in the same place in terms of openness and inwardness and connectedness, due to the same processes occuring in the mind , in the spirit. In a much less distracted lifestyle, you don't NEED the "magic buttons" probably as often or at such high levels, as you have a pretty good idea of who you are what what you feel to start with,and the wise man has told you what to expect in the future and what hashappend in the past... not as much need to go poking and prodding the inner recesses of the mind, as it's often not as "inner" as more "modern" minds tend to be. Mind body spirit as one in a... intuitive sense, not printed on a tshirt or self help book.Or maybe it was all those wattle eatin grubs with a side serving of wattle smoke, a big bowl of wattle seed bikkies and a garnish of fresh green grass seeds... :D the whole corkwood duboisia berryjuice brew thing seems to have been done more by colonials than the locals as its sure as hell not done now by anyone I know with any sense..inmatesin tassie would eat the trumpets for a chukcle, or suicide, or insanity so they wouldnt care anymore either way, mightve passed it onto the locals in tassie before systematically eradicating all but a few...starting the breed back up tho as blackfellas are all over, despite the conditions being what they are in a lot of areas.. Chewing the various nicotianas, excelsior etc with or without ash was a big thing, its still around but seen more as a nostalgic thing than anything practical in most dry areas...winnies are easier to get.... kava was getting pretty big up north til the coppers got unhappy vibes from local pub owners, starting to crack down on it...usual whining about food preparation conditions etc...

A good book on all this without the necessarily fungicentric food o the gods POV (distincy lack of ruminants or large grazers in australias more recent native history so itd wood or macropod based things youd have to be looking at really) is spiritual experiences thru psychoactives by nicholas saunders. I've got a fair bit layin around in terms of aboriginal reading material, should maybe do some excerpts sometime, but for now I'm off to bed.

happy hunting and gathering

GD

Edited by greendreams
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Good post greendreams

Despite claims that there are no native yeasts in aus, plenty of mobs can tell you about how nana usedto collect nectar and water and then some crushed fruits esp berries and then let it sit dark n cool for a week or so...

I have never heard claims that there are any native yeasts - of course there is. Yeasts are everywhere.

"Bush brewing" by indigenous people has been discussed here many times with one of our members specialising in it. However in WA there are written records of Aboriginal people seeing a drunk whitefella for the first time and being very concerned and confused because they assumed they must be very sick if they're staggering around and slurring their words like that. So it's unlikely that indigenous people were able to produce anything over 3% alcohol or so. There was a strong tradition in the Perth area of coming together at the Banksia grandis flowering time when all the local groups would meet and drink Banksia nectar in water, but it's not beleived that this was very strongly alcoholic.

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alot of very enlightening points, Greendreams!

In a much less distracted lifestyle, you don't NEED the "magic buttons" probably as often or at such high levels, as you have a pretty good idea of who you are what what you feel to start with,and the wise man has told you what to expect in the future and what hashappend in the past... not as much need to go poking and prodding the inner recesses of the mind, as it's often not as "inner" as more "modern" minds tend to be. Mind body spirit as one in a... intuitive sense, not printed on a tshirt or self help book.

this is also a bloody good point!

the psychedelic state, i think, seems to be a state of more direct perception of the phenomenon of existance, free from ideology and pre- concieved notions of reality etc

if a culture has a much deeper "connection with nature" (i cringe at the cliche of that term) and a more wholistic view of themselves within the universe, with a deep spirituality which is unquestionably a part of everything in daily life and is free from sectarian ideology, then it doesn't seem strange to me that the artwork which comes from this culture seems to resonate with the same feeling as psychedelicly inspired art, as they both come from a connection with a deeper truth!

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I read somewhere they used to bore holes in corkwoord trees, fill them with water and stopper them - returning some time later to drink the liquid.

Don't think they effects were psychedelic though.

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I read somewhere they used to bore holes in corkwoord trees, fill them with water and stopper them - returning some time later to drink the liquid.

Don't think they effects were psychedelic though.

Heard of this with some trees in tasmania which exude a sweet sap.

The wait was to allow the sap to ferment.

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evenin all, gettin to the sacred feast of friday... TFFT...Daily reality is a magical place for me, but now n then I have to talk to the locals haha...

Re dmt space... I think a lot of the dotty aspect has to do with capturing the mystery that everything is made up of teeny tiny lil bits, and everything made up of those bits is just a teeny tiny lil bit of a bigger article, and so on, which could make us flyspit on a giant lizards back for all we know :D reminds us to keep perspective, see just how in/significant we are and can be. Also the whole hypnagogic (we need a dictionary, stat!), and a holdover I guess from when ochre was sometimes some pricey , pricey stuff... it wasn't just laying around and any ol mud wont do (cue the john laws sample)...so the dots in a purely practical sense acted like shading, hatching, dot matrix...fill space, make the statement but save on materials and time. Maybe. Might be thats just how nan did it for a lot of artists... I can do xray fine, the insides of animals all being much the same n all... could make a packet on ebay but its wrong ... I don't "need" the income like some much more credible artists do...recenty the whole idea of intellectual property as it applies to indigenous art has popped up/....interesting line of thought ...

The corkwood story I tend to hear is making a hole in it, adding water and crushed fruit, stopping it up and coming back later and getting whacked... lot of scop etc floating around corkwoods, guess some might end up in the acidic, feintly alcoholic brew. Seems like it'd be very hard to know how strong the result was until it was probably too late, but might've been a way of making poison , and whilst taking the local squatters for a walk a kindly young lad happened to explain that "hey yknow whats really tasty.....?" ... hard to say, but it's not something the gubigubi or the FNQ mobs are doing in any big way, and when petro,speed, dodgy buds and whatever is cheap(er) at the canteen this week are all the rage im sure if it was any fun it'd still be going on.Some people still get whacked off the fish poisons etc , coral trees etc... doesn't sound much fun either... but heard tell it knock some parasits on the head worms etc...dunno personally. The gijigiji beans for sale at the shaman shop have me curious... they're mainly used as a nasty form of abortificant as far as I've heard, or purely for decoration, set into wattle or spinifex resin on heads of woomeras and the like. I have found a large, very thorny (I mean all over, nasty big ripping things, got onei n the shoulder two years ago and it's still lumpy and sore) legume of some kind, long wavy pods with opposite-set red n black seeds, like gijigiji's but bigger and more...bean looking. It's a big scary tree, but no luck IDing yet..has a certain vibe about it though...

Another thing is that getting high when you plan on it is great and when you're not, its terrifying... a lot of "toxic" shrooms have now been found merely to get you tripping balls....but the yuppies that thought it'd be romantic to gather some fieldmushrooms hadn't counted on it... if something WAS found by accident that just shattered your universe, there's a reasonable chance itd be made verboten and fast... then theres the cultural context issue... the reason (among MANY) that some sections of indig aussie society has a seemingly massive drug n alcohol problem is that the social boundaries of use differ or don

t exist at all. So whereas "we" have no traditional place in modern society for DMT (allegedly that is), "they" have no traditional role for ..well...seemingly just about anything, but especially stronger alcohols... it's like kids getting into the rum not realising that a big heaping glass is not a great idea, let alone when youre 10, at 11am... DRASTIC simplification... also things are done a lot more publically, and when you can't fit all your family in your house, the local pub won't have you and theres a nice shady tree down the road...where ya gonna drink? Perception based... see some white guy staggering home and its "geeze old mates had a big one eh?" some blackfella and its "farkin boongs, always pissed, rarara" not having met the large amount of indig folks that are holding decent jobs, raising a family , paying a mortgage just like anyone else... thankfully now we have islamic people so the heat is off to a very limited extent :P The actual states of addiction , hospital admissions and anecdotal evidence shows that there are a lot more white alkies than black ones here in aus, just the white ones do it at home and beat the kids quietly... 3 percent of the population making up to 70 percent of the prison pop in some areas...bullshit. All because of perception. Change peoples minds, thats the ticket.Getting upset because they aren't sure what is or isnt the right words is too often the focus of all this.

Petrol huffing BTW was introduced by lutheran missionaries and priests to the top end... a noted lutheran professor in germany was big on keeping a rag soaked in it in his coat pocket and huffing during classes...classssy look eh?

So yeah, given all that, if there was some commonly or not so commonly used recreational or ritual compound or plant , other than tobaccos and the odd pot of fizzing flower juice...then the social context would've persisted. Just an idea.Or it might be that something like what we use now was used back, in the ancient ancient history...50 to a 100 thou years is a long time... social orders and ecosystems come and go, one adapting to the other to change the other and so on. Used to hunt GIANT WOMBATS THE SIZE OF A TARAGO :D gods only know what was around back then... giant mutant triffid like ganj thatd grab you, shove you under itself and eat you alive, a walking sack of blood n bone? :D Or maybe what was being used, ended up kind of sending everything very sour, so it was decided tribe by tribe that yknow, this stuff isnt GOOD for us... lets go dry on it ... history does tend to repeat, over a long enough time span...and we're talkin a longarsed time span.

Something else I remember was the lotus thing...aquatic roots are still a staple food group in some areas (places you can still drink the water that is) hunting em up provides a good time to look for snakes, freshwater shellfish, fish, whatever. larger kinds of bug. So it could be someone actually was getting off on them, or might be someone wrote a note about seeing blackfellas eating lotus or lillies, without specifying parts used, and then being really happy and content...well... a good feed for more or less free makes me happy every time :D Given the highly instinctive use of plants though, it's not unlikely I guess. Maybe roots are active ? I don't know much about aquatic plants.

Bugs...reminds me... I've seen grasshoppers eating phalaris to go purple in places...very pretty, lucky little bastards too...like life as a hopper wouldn't be weird enough... long history of toasted hoppers as food... probably wouldn't do a thing high wise but i don't know that it wouldn't either...one for the real chem people to ponder about.

Yeast thing...I've read in a few places and heard that until recently at least it was taught in aussie anthro classes that blackfellas had no documented cases of brewing going on, as the yeasts needed are either lacking entirely, or just unsuitable (spoilage yeasts). I've seen plenty of bigger rainforest fruits go nicely smelly though, never tried drinkin em but they smell like you could...one helluva hangover I imagine. But the grevillea nectar was/is also drunk purely as a tasty drink, same as bush honey and water, sugary deposits on leaves etc... so in a lot of cases fermentation wouldn't have been the goal anyway, but sometimes lady luck would've gotten someones uncles shattered .

Gotta remember with the whole DMT thing that it'd have to be something achievable without anything barring heating, cracking, soaking or pounding, chewing or drinking... heating leaves is a popular way to get goodies out for healing ... so the key would have to be a species that is potent enough to just do the trick without a spare lab laying around... bearing in mind that some acacia species are prized for the upper roots, just right for making boomerangs... spare bark layin around after the scraping and shaping, who knows what might happen . I know I'm fairly big on nibbling weird plants I don't knnow much about...good way to work out where you stand with them quickly...not just hoeing in or anything, ah ya get what I mean.Botaniphagia lol.

I'll have a hunt for some interesting excerpts. One thing I remember that isn't strictly related (as if i am ever more than barely relevant at the best of times right) is Mentha aquatica, yknow the sappy smelly blue headed goat week water mint stuff... seems the locals in the US used it to treat burns and stings, the juice of it... leaves to keep mozzies off. Within not long at all of it turning up here via cattle imports, the locals here took to using it for all of those things... great minds think alike... or maybe plants are more talkative than a lot of people give credit for :D

keep dreamin,

GD

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evenin all, gettin to the sacred feast of friday... TFFT...Daily reality is a magical place for me, but now n then I have to talk to the locals haha...

Re dmt space... I think a lot of the dotty aspect has to do with capturing the mystery that everything is made up of teeny tiny lil bits, and everything made up of those bits is just a teeny tiny lil bit of a bigger article, and so on, which could make us flyspit on a giant lizards back for all we know :D reminds us to keep perspective, see just how in/significant we are and can be. Also the whole hypnagogic (we need a dictionary, stat!), and a holdover I guess from when ochre was sometimes some pricey , pricey stuff... it wasn't just laying around and any ol mud wont do (cue the john laws sample)...so the dots in a purely practical sense acted like shading, hatching, dot matrix...fill space, make the statement but save on materials and time. Maybe. Might be thats just how nan did it for a lot of artists... I can do xray fine, the insides of animals all being much the same n all... could make a packet on ebay but its wrong ... I don't "need" the income like some much more credible artists do...recenty the whole idea of intellectual property as it applies to indigenous art has popped up....interesting line of thought ...

The corkwood story I tend to hear is making a hole in it, adding water and crushed fruit, stopping it up and coming back later and getting whacked... lot of scop etc floating around corkwoods, guess some might end up in the acidic, feintly alcoholic brew. Seems like it'd be very hard to know how strong the result was until it was probably too late, but might've been a way of making poison , and whilst taking the local squatters for a walk a kindly young lad happened to explain that "hey yknow whats really tasty.....?" ... hard to say, but it's not something the gubigubi or the FNQ mobs are doing in any big way, and when petro,speed, dodgy buds and whatever is cheap(er) at the canteen this week are all the rage im sure if it was any fun it'd still be going on.Some people still get whacked off the fish poisons etc , coral trees etc... doesn't sound much fun either... but heard tell it knock some parasits on the head worms etc...dunno personally. The gijigiji beans for sale at the shaman shop have me curious... they're mainly used as a nasty form of abortificant as far as I've heard, or purely for decoration, set into wattle or spinifex resin on heads of woomeras and the like.Are that many people making nullanullas in the shed, or are there that many backyard angelmakers? Maybe they're fun but apparently the abraxin or whatever it is gets lumped together along with Ricin a lot, for treatment and regulation purposes n all that. I have found a large, very thorny (I mean all over, nasty big ripping things, got onei n the shoulder two years ago and it's still lumpy and sore) legume of some kind, long wavy pods with opposite-set red n black seeds, like gijigiji's but bigger and more...bean looking. Very visible seeds, striking, but birds don't touch em, nothing eats them on the ground, most never sprout as the v hard coatings would need nicking or maybe a good toasting.It's a big scary tree, but no luck IDing yet..has a certain vibe about it though...anything that hostile looking has a secret to hide haha.

Another thing is that getting high when you plan on it is great and when you're not, its terrifying... a lot of "toxic" shrooms have now been found merely to get you tripping balls....but the yuppies that thought it'd be romantic to gather some fieldmushrooms hadn't counted on it... if something WAS found by accident that just shattered your universe, there's a reasonable chance itd be made verboten and fast... then theres the cultural context issue... the reason (among MANY) that some sections of indig aussie society has a seemingly massive drug n alcohol problem is that the social boundaries of use differ or don

t exist at all. So whereas "we" have no traditional place in modern society for DMT (allegedly that is), "they" have no traditional role for ..well...seemingly just about anything, but especially stronger alcohols... it's like kids getting into the rum not realising that a big heaping glass is not a great idea, let alone when youre 10, at 11am... DRASTIC simplification... also things are done a lot more publically, and when you can't fit all your family in your house, the local pub won't have you and theres a nice shady tree down the road...where ya gonna drink? Perception based... see some white guy staggering home and its "geeze old mates had a big one eh?" some blackfella and its "farkin boongs, always pissed, rarara" not having met the large amount of indig folks that are holding decent jobs, raising a family , paying a mortgage just like anyone else... thankfully now we have islamic people so the heat is off to a very limited extent :P The actual stats of addiction , hospital admissions and anecdotal evidence shows that there are a lot more white alkies than black ones here in aus, just the white ones do it at home and beat the kids quietly... 3 percent of the population making up to 70 percent of the prison pop in some areas...bullshit. All because of perception. Change peoples minds, thats the ticket.Getting upset because they aren't sure what is or isnt the right words is too often the focus of all this.And being too focused on one thing means you're getting distortion in other parts of your "vision".

Petrol huffing BTW was introduced by lutheran missionaries and priests to the top end... a noted lutheran professor in germany was big on keeping a rag soaked in it in his coat pocket and huffing during classes...classssy look eh?

So yeah, given all that, if there was some commonly or not so commonly used recreational or ritual compound or plant , other than tobaccos and the odd pot of fizzing flower juice...then the social context would've persisted. Just an idea.Or it might be that something like what we use now was used back, in the ancient ancient history...50 to a 100 thou years is a long time... social orders and ecosystems come and go, one adapting to the other to change the other and so on. Used to hunt GIANT WOMBATS THE SIZE OF A TARAGO :D gods only know what was around back then... giant mutant triffid like ganj thatd grab you, shove you under itself and eat you alive, a walking sack of blood n bone? :D Or maybe what was being used, ended up kind of sending everything very sour, so it was decided tribe by tribe that yknow, this stuff isnt GOOD for us... lets go dry on it ... history does tend to repeat, over a long enough time span...and we're talkin a longarsed time span.

Something else I remember was the lotus thing...aquatic roots are still a staple food group in some areas (places you can still drink the water that is) hunting em up provides a good time to look for snakes, freshwater shellfish, fish, whatever. larger kinds of bug. So it could be someone actually was getting off on them, or might be someone wrote a note about seeing blackfellas eating lotus or lillies, without specifying parts used, and then being really happy and content...well... a good feed for more or less free makes me happy every time :D Given the highly instinctive use of plants though, it's not unlikely I guess. Maybe roots are active ? I don't know much about aquatic plants.

Bugs...reminds me... I've seen grasshoppers eating phalaris to go purple in places...very pretty, lucky little bastards too...like life as a hopper wouldn't be weird enough... long history of toasted hoppers as food... probably wouldn't do a thing high wise but i don't know that it wouldn't either...one for the real chem people to ponder about.

Yeast thing...I've read in a few places and heard that until recently at least it was taught in aussie anthro classes that blackfellas had no documented cases of brewing going on, as the yeasts needed are either lacking entirely, or just unsuitable (spoilage yeasts). I've seen plenty of bigger rainforest fruits go nicely smelly though, never tried drinkin em but they smell like you could...one helluva hangover I imagine. But the grevillea nectar was/is also drunk purely as a tasty drink, same as bush honey and water, sugary deposits on leaves etc... so in a lot of cases fermentation wouldn't have been the goal anyway, but sometimes lady luck would've gotten someones uncles shattered .

Gotta remember with the whole DMT thing that it'd have to be something achievable without anything barring heating, cracking, soaking or pounding, chewing or drinking... heating leaves is a popular way to get goodies out for healing ... so the key would have to be a species that is potent enough to just do the trick without a spare lab laying around... bearing in mind that some acacia species are prized for the upper roots, just right for making boomerangs... spare bark layin around after the scraping and shaping, who knows what might happen . I know I'm fairly big on nibbling weird plants I don't knnow much about...good way to work out where you stand with them quickly...not just hoeing in or anything, ah ya get what I mean.Botaniphagia lol.

I'll have a hunt for some interesting excerpts. One thing I remember that isn't strictly related (as if i am ever more than barely relevant at the best of times right) is Mentha aquatica, yknow the sappy smelly blue headed goat weed water mint stuff... seems the locals in the US used it to treat burns and stings, the juice of it... leaves to keep mozzies off. Within not long at all of it turning up here via cattle imports, the locals here took to using it for all of those things... great minds think alike... or maybe plants are more talkative than a lot of people give credit for :D

keep dreamin,

GD

Edited by greendreams

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greendreams, i like the way you seem to see things!

it's real fuckin refreshing :)

i definately will keep dreamin

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greendreams, thankyou for putting the time in to those posts im glad you chose to respond i learnt alot, not just factual but i have now questioned my intention for the intial inquiry. enjoyed your cultural comparison, makes total sense.

big up ya! (whatever that means?)

endo

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LOL, I'd run as a local member but we have enough complete *members* in politicks as it is eh? Seriously though, there's bags of stuff I know next to nothing about, we're all just here sharing what we can in the spirit of community.This is just a set of issues that resonate very, very strongly with me for a lot of reasons, from genetics and inherited ways of thinking to current hopes and aspirations ... I have seen all these issues from either a personal , cultural or (briefly for me but a long, long time for my parents) from the other side of the govt line in the sand...yes, I am a reformed public servant but I wasn't in there for long , I left with most of my soul and half the time I was in state ATSI affairs so don't go ranting at me about centrelink :D ...the other half was just worrying, but thats another story in a very different thread.

As for questioning intent... don't be put off from your life's questions by the words of some other mostly hairless biped. If its not in your own words , it's not true to you.This is as much your country as anyone elses, a citizen is a citizen,no-ones getting back on any boats eh? Unless you're some soulless biopirate roaming the globe pinching plants for profit , but I don't reckon you're that kind of person :P If you want to do something with your environment , go for it...your mind as well, so long as its not impeding on someone else's way to interact with it overly much, it's probably a fair enough idea.

off to bed, take care out there,

GD

Edited by greendreams

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i find this topic real damn interesting too!

real worth discussing!

i'm glad you started it endo!

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Had a thought (yes it happens occasionally, its gettin em to join up that I have more problems with :P)

Chewing was used a fair bit as a craft technique, softening brushes from young sticks, breaking up small lengths of grass species etc to pull into fibre strips for improv cordage (found myself doing that, sometimes a plant just has to stay on its stake haha), and I'd have to ask around for more detail, but I remember something about softening some acacia gums in small amounts so kids could stick flies etc to the end of a length of dry grass and use it as a toy, as heating the gum would bake the fly when you attached it...similar thing used to slow down native bees to make them easier to track back to the hive. Chewing the nearest plant might be a method of discovery for somethingorother. Just a thought.

Ever wonder if you were a caterpillar in a past life?

Keep munchin

GD

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There's plenty of aboriginal people living in remote central australian communities, on their own land, living within a hybridised culture, though very much aboriginal, in distinct tribe/language groups, still speaking their own language, and often 2 other aboriginal languages before speaking english, which they do for the benefit of whites.. still get initiated to various degrees, have ceremony, strong connection to land, dreaming spirituality, smoking babies and mothers, scarification, horrific payback fights, see their own doctors, etc etc Though the communities are 3rd world; lots of dusty rubbish strewn about, shitty functional houses scrawled with graffiti and mangy camp dogs trawling around in packs.

Pituri is still chewed regularly, by old and young, though most of the time they don't collect pituri, unless they take it from the road side (lots of Sand pituri at certain times of year in the disturbed soil on the verges of tracks). Rock pituri (gossei?) grows in many places but not in great abundance, so hard to harvest large amounts at one time. though it is considered stronger/better and sort after in traditional trade. Having said that, most central oz aboriginals just buy 'Log Cabin" tinned tobacco, cut it with the white acacia ash (they take care in choosing the right tree at particular state of greeness/dryness) and chew in wads. they tuck behind the ears or back in the tin for reuse too.

datura liechardtii (sp?) grows in abundance in the river beds. (for close to Alice, try Red bank gorge a little further west of Glen Helen) It has been here since before white settlement. perhaps 500 years. It was intially considered native, but studies show its the same one as in central/sth america. Explain that, eh. It is used, but i do not know to what degree, and in what context. THere are always insurmountable cultural divides, and not all local people were aware of it. I asked an old warlpiri guy about its use, and he thought for a bit, picked up the prickly seed pod and said "rubbish pituri, no good this one. take him and this will grow in your heart.' (meening the prickly seed pod) he acknowledged its use, but said to stay clear basically. I wonder why.

'yarla' or bush potato varieties are interesting too, ipomea varieties, they are sprawling vines that look like morning glory in form and flower. the underground growths are dug for and eaten. in Peter Latz's book there is one reference to use of the seed, but not in other tribes. Its activity is unknown. I asked Nic Petersen, a visiting anthropologist from ANU who has been working with locals since the 70's, and he did not know of its use. He and his wife, a botanist, did some comprehensive studies on plant use up there a few decades back that maybe somewhere on the net.

Nicolas Rothwell the journalist and writer has recently released a book called "Another Country" that talks about the centre and the north and aboriginal people. one article in particular may interest members, about A gibson desert shaman/doctor still working today, mr giles. Check it out at:

www.kayili.com.au/uploads/17_may_2003.doc

As for recreational use, lots of booze and bud, both cause horrendous damage. THe newpaper says the petrol sniffing scourge is all but over, but i'm sceptical.

Edited by amanogawa

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smoking babies

Ama

yeah, I tried that once, but it didnt do anything... maybe I didnt inhale enough... maybe wrong sort...are all babies psychoactive? the one i smoked was Scottish, would this make any difference?

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