conVerge - Genomics - Christine Morris

Genomics - Christine Morris

First I would just like to pay my respects to the spirits of this land and the people who live on it.

This little presentation is about what it is to be human.

There are a lot of artists here or Story Tellers, and that's who I was hoping to aim my paper at. There's several questions I would ask you to consider.

- How did you get to be sitting in the seat you are in today and what was your story for coming to this particular type of seminar?

- What were the dreams you dreamed?

- What makes you Human?

- Is it your dreams or is it your genes?

- Why do some indigenous say it's not your paternity that makes a person a complete Human, but only when a spirit enters them?

- Who are Senior Law Women and why do they say they are co-creators with Nature and that responsibility is more important than rights? and finally,

- How would you answer a child of the future when you're asked what is a Human Being? Would you get out a text book, draw a picture, do a powerpoint, tell a story or just look in the mirror and point and leave it at that?

These are just some of the questions you might consider.

I'll just answer some of those questions with my own stories to give you an idea of what I'm trying to get at.

This is basically meant to be self reflective for you as well because as the other speakers have said, it's terribly important that the public join this debate. This is a public debate. It's not, certainly not belonging to any kind of specialist because we are all Human.

I've just returned from the United Nations meeting in Montreal where I had to give a presentation on GURTS - Genetic Use Restrictive Technology. In that presentation my concern was the word 'seed'. As I discovered, the same thing I found was that when I first presented in front of the standing committee on cloning, the technicalities of the issue (of what it is to be Human - when does Humanity start, at what point, which cell, which stem cell etc) seemed to be the driving issue.

Now in other words, it's a technical debate.

And what they thought was diversity in opinion was whether you were a Catholic or a Presbyterian or a Jew, Scottish or Irish or went to Sydney University or Monash. That was diversity - so I really got terribly worried when I saw this selection of so called Australian representation on this issue so I began to reflect on this.

Rather that it reflected on the historical behaviour of those who have developed technology. As an Indigenous person (and as I said I'm not here talking about Indigenous rights, but rather a perspective from having an Indigenous background) I looked at how Society in general (but especially Australia) has behaved in the past toward their fellow man? This is a technologically advanced Society. You have to ask this question because the Romans considered themselves technically advanced and how have they behaved in the past toward their fellow man when they don't quite see them as fully Human? And as you know today people from the Third and Fourth Worlds peoples still perceive technologically advanced Societies as parasites and exploiters of the resources of the World. Why do they still enslave people - and remember they do it in a far more insidious way.

And where's the historical proof that they share technology, other than when they are looking for new markets or where the caring in Society demand that they share health benefits. And as I said, Australia still hasn't woken up to that one.

Now back to that UN meeting, as I listened to these rarefied debates I realised how important Artists and Story Tellers are in those debates. I was very fortunate to meet a group of Indigenous healers from across the world. Here was this group of little 'Hobbits' with their 'Ring' which was simply a message of the importance of Biodiversity - how precious it is and how easily it is destroyed.

So to continue the analogy, I think in this discussion the Ring is Biotechnology and is has this opportunity to change Humanity in the future. We have this Ring and who would you like to see it in the hands of?

And as that story shows it was very important that a Hobbit, someone who was close to the ground, who doesn't have vested interests - basically your average person. Those of us here up on stage today are the specialists, we're here to help the Hobbit. So it is critical to tell the average person to get involved in the debate. Get involved because it's all about you - dream your dreams about what it is to be Human. As Artists and Story Tellers you should be helping people to dream those dreams to see. For as far as Indigenous people see, we lost our humanity a long time ago when we decided that some people were Human and some people weren't. And when you come from a tradition which are both sides where you see people dehumanised merely because your other side of the family basically doesn't allow them to be human because they're diverse.

Getting back to the UN debate - where they consider diversity is defined by religion or universities - this is very upsetting. I want to just share a story to summarise my views on this. One night I had a dream about clones. I didn't quite know what these things were - they seemed to be like an ET with translucent skin, a pure person and I thought who are these poor hairless people. And it showed that they'd had a great gouging disease. I was with this great group of policemen and somebody from the group said to me 'you'll find the source to this murder if you look closely'. Now that's enough to make anyone wake up on a hot sweat. It's the last thing I want to have look at but once you have a dream, you're not going get away from it until its dealt with. What I found was that the source was not some horrible insidious Biotechnological company or a Multinational, but the source is to discover what is it to be Human. That's the source. That's the problem we must work out. Thank you.