I was once an Australian aborigine.
I was lying on a couch with my arm outstretched to my side, being asked yes and no questions by a past-life regression therapist.
I was found by white missionaries, clinging to the breast of my dead mother, a victim of one of the worst droughts Australia had ever known, caused, no doubt, by the white man’s incessant clearing to make room for farms and roads and cities.
I was trying to keep my arm steady, but I could only do so when the answer was yes.
I was the last of my small tribe, the only one who didn’t die in the drought, the only one who could start the tribe again, even though I had been too young to learn any of our stories.
I was asked “Europe?” and my arm plummeted to my side, but when asked “Australia?” it held steady and firm — even though I didn’t want it to be Australia, I was pulling for France or China, don’t ask me why.
I was raised by the white missionaries to be a good native servant, but in the darkness of the nights other “native servants” whispered my true destiny in my ears.
I was asked if I was a female and my arm went down, nope I’m a boy.
I was told by other aborigines that I must marry as soon as I became a man and sow my seed into as many young women as possible, so my tribe could live again. But I was dead of “fever” in 1912, at the age of 15, too young to marry, too young even to fornicate, and anyway the missionaries had warned me about fornication and how it would rot my body and my soul.
I was stunned, and yes somewhat frightened, when I researched Aborigine history on the internet and found that there was indeed a huge drought in Australia in the late 1890s, and many aborigine tribes were wiped out, a fact I had not known before, since I knew nothing about Australian history.
I was the last of my tribe, and when I died, we were gone.
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