ABORIGINAL APPROACHES TO TALKING. Questions

Some years ago, a hard-hitting serious TV journalist was left speechless when his interviewee said something like ‘Just because you have asked a question does not mean I have to answer it’.

We whitefellas take it for granted that every question demands an answer, unless we are asking a question that is so personal or prying we know we are crossing a line.

The western world is a world of questions in need of an answer. Our lives are ruled by the ‘6 Ws’;When, Where, Why, Who, What and hoW?

We might be after a government support payment, health insurance, a job, a passport, a driver’s licence, or we might be opening a bank account, registering a pet, or having a baby – or maybe none of these – but just about everything in life seems to involve forms or telephone calls with questions.

Our eyes might glaze over every time we see a form, but we expect forms and we expect questions: Direct questions demand direct answers. We ask young children how old they are, if they can count to ten and what they want to be when they grow up. We want to know who was on the phone… and so on.

Aboriginals are not big on questions. It might be my own lack of imagination, but I suspect that for the last 40,000 years questions have not been an integral part of traditional life, and that volunteering useful information was more common.

As a youngster, the thing I hated most about having to go fishing with the adults in my life was being told that talking would scare the fish away. (I think it was just a ruse to shut me up, but my point is that hunting or walking would be great conversation killers.)

Before Aboriginals exchange information, they need to know where your country is, who your people are and what your relationship is to them so they know how to talk to you appropriately – and even this is not information that is always sought directly. Nobody wants to put anyone on the spot.

Questions involve a rather genteel sort of barter. The exchange begins when one person offers a little information about themselves, burying a hint in that offering of what they want to know. The other person never has to say ‘just because you have asked a question does not mean I have to answer it’. If the other person provides an answer at all it will be at their own pace, and will contain only as much information as they feel comfortable sharing. There is some information that is simply not shared at all if your relationship makes it inappropriate.

While I concede whitefellas have taken a long time to develop an interest in the Aboriginal way of thinking, there is some information that is traditionally never revealed, or rarely revealed, and plenty that will not be volunteered. This Catch 22 may be at least some part of the reason it has taken us a long time to learn important things about the way Aboriginals communicate, and the best way we can communicate with them.