It is with the greatest pleasure that I provide an article on Aboriginal Art for Australian Mallee Art’s website.

I grew up in Egypt where I completed my university degrees in cultural anthropology. Naturally, the study of Aboriginal Australia is intricately linked to the study of the history of anthropology. While in Egypt, Australia seemed so far away, and I thought that I had ‘studied’ Aboriginal Australians just by reading books. Aboriginal Australians were then confined to the textbooks, along with their beliefs and the way they perceive the world. That is, I looked at them from a cold intellectual perspective that thinks it knows and understands!

It never occurred to me, that one day I would be living in Australia. In our eighth year in Melbourne, we visited Uluru and Kings Canyon in Central Australia, as well as other parts of Australia, a journey of 16,000 miles, which our friends invited us to undertake with them in five weeks.

This was the beginning of a new chapter in my life. It was at Uluru (Ayers Rock), near a sacred waterhole, that I found myself quite literally connected to the Land. It spoke to me in no uncertain terms. I realised then that it was the Land that invited you to live on it, and that this invitation was a very special privilege.

There were many other wonderful magical experiences around Uluru and while there, I felt I did not want to leave it – ever. All of a sudden, what the Aborigines were saying about their connection and love for the land made sense – not from an intellectual point of view – but from an experiential one. There is a very big difference between understanding something through the mind and understanding something through the heart, and dare I say, through one’s entire body.

Ever since, I have converted to Aboriginal Affairs and have a great passion for the Aboriginal spiritual tradition and the people. Having read steadily about the history of the white man’s encounters with the First Nations (the indigenous populations of the Americas and Australia), I find it rather sad that the horrors committed against them are still lingering or echoing and that they have not been fully acknowledged nor addressed by the dominant white society. At the moment, except at grass-root level in Australia, there seems to be no political will to reconcile and heal the gaping wounds of the nation. It is by understanding where the Aborigines are coming from -their world-view – that one can contribute to the healing process. Aboriginal art is one such avenue one can embrace and explore to achieve this aim.

Aboriginal Australians and we Egyptians have much in common. We represent cultures that have spanned millennia and we share many beliefs about life, death and spirituality, which are not quite apparent without a deeper analysis of both cultures. However, while Egypt has suffered many invasions, which ultimately cut her off from her ancient language and religion, she managed nevertheless to ‘Egyptianize’ her invaders – who absorbed her culture and religion and made them their own.