Monolithic narratives of ‘progress’
Our family stories will outlast the stories of this civilisation, but at the moment they are almost invisible in the shadow of monolithic grand narratives like 'progress’. The narrative of progress is grounded in the myth of primetivism—the widely held assumption that life before the industrial era was brief, brutish, savage and simple.
This is contrasted with the myth of development, of advanced societies and people from Europe representing progress and enlightenment. There must be an upward trend to show, to keep the illusion alive. When the masses come down with Avatar depression or begin to chafe at the bleakness of their lives, they are reminded nightly on their screens of how terrible things used to be, how much better and longer and healthier our existences are today.
Unpacking these narratives and retelling them from our Indigenous perspectives highlights a few inconsistencies in the story and a few parts that have been left out.
Our standpoint strips away the dogma that constrains our minds and potential, allowing some room for higher order thinking that gives rise to intriguing questions.
For example, if Palaeolithic lifestyles were so basic and primitive, how did humans evolve with trillions of potential neural connections in the brain, of which we now only use a small fraction? What kinds of sophisticated lifestyles would be needed to evolve such a massive brain over hundreds of thousands of years? What kind of nutritional abundance would be needed to develop such an organ, made mostly out of fat? How does the narrative of harsh survival in a hostile landscape align with this fact?
If our prehistoric lives were so violent, hard and savage, how could we have evolved to have such soft skin, limited strength and delicate parts?