The Cultural Exception
A conference goes in deep about the figure of Rosendo Salvado, a defender of the Indigenous Australians' rights.
They were not believe to be the owners of the land, but proud guardians of some places bequeathed by the spirits of creation. The Indigenous Australians have been an easy prey to colonialism, that entered in order to “educate them” and “civilise them” by raising the flag of Christianisation. Rosendo Salvado came from Galicia, in the north-west of Spain. He rose a Benedictine community in New Norsia, where he made revolutionary contributions: he found a pioneer rural bank and he taught them to how to write and read, tools they defend their rights with. He was also who inserted the eucalyptus in Galicia, but this is another story. His profile and his legacy are analysed in a conference which starts today in the capital city of Galicia, Santiago de Compostela.
He was one of the protagonists of the defence of the indigenous' rights in a time of full colonial agitation and racist mentallity. Ramón Villasares, president of the Consello da Cultura Galega (The Council for Galician Culture) said: “He was a revolutionary person in changing our point of view of the other, what is not inferior at a time of colonial expansion”. And the researcher Doireann MacDermott his Galician origins led him understand them so well. She indicated: “ Although he spent most of his life away from Galicia, in his childhood and youth he must have been familiar with that rural Galicia of Celtic origins where ancient pre-Christian traditions still survived: a world of spirits and superstitions and a close relationship with the land. However, she marks that there was another reason more personal, since he was a “practical man who knew how to make the best of the natural talents of these people. He admired their great manual skills, their artistic sense, their love of music and dance”. And music was very present in Salvado, something that he was used for empathise with those communities where others colonialist attempts failed. There is a whole section dedicated to this last facet. In it, it recovers musics composed by Salvado, which are influenced by more than four decades he spent in Australia
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