Getting to the stage where First Peoples interests are not systematically excluded by the "idiom of one of the parties" presents a real challenge to the coming generations of conceptual craftspeople. We have to say that the authorities provided by modern Western cultural masters are fatally flawed.

Habermas says, in defence of modernity, that is an incomplete project. Completing that project (or, at least, taking the next step in life) requires us to develop the means by which a centripetal system of the state can come into some kind of less damaging relationship with centrifugal systems of First Peoples. Modernity can only move to the next phase by repairing its relations with the rest of life - especially with First Peoples. "Australia" provides an important location for this next step.

Models of life provided by First Peoples themselves contain clues to how we can gain a degree of resolution of these immense problems. In place of the false certainties of modernity, we will need to embrace a more Eastern approach which accepts duality as a normal condition of our cosmos.

In moving towards an 'idiom' which can represent both sets of terms of reference in a case of differend - an idiom which can signify the wrong suffered by First Peoples - serious questions arise as to the adequacy of state (and Catholic) educations for intellectual craftspeoples.

The secularism of the modern nation-state has produced forms of representation which Clastres has identified as ethnocidal - killing the spirit of those First Peoples who survive the more direct forms of genocide.

Modern Australian anthropology has produced its share of ethnocidal forms of representation in keeping with the specifications of its Western cultural masters. New generations of indigenous people, subject to state and/or private school educations, run the same risk.

With so much (all?) of the Ways of First Peoples being subject to transsignification, it might be reasonable to expect people with a Catholic education to be able to appreciate the role of life's higher messages in original Australian systems of signification. But Catholics have accepted a place in the secular state which compromises them when it comes to aligning with First Peoples in an Australia as a land of a great life spirit.

A question also arises whether or not it is possible for non-indigenous conceptual craftpeople to fashion representations which can meet the challenges posed.

While there can be theoretical debate about this, the real test is the real test. Rather than focusing all intellectual resources on the finer points of language and culture - as studied from the outside in terms of modern academic standards of adequacy - what can be tried is a repositioning of Being.

By attempting to become as one with First Peoples - by attempting to respectfully enter into their cosmos and systems of order - a transformation of soul is possible. The aim of such an exercise is not to renounce one's own Way, but of becoming better at moving between two Ways. Many First Peoples are already skilled at this in the other direction. As are some remarkable non-indigenous people. We need more mentors in this crucial part of our craft.

Remaining balanced, though, may be extremely difficult as the forces of the state are forever seeking to sweep or knock people off their feet. Taming the whirlwind of the modern nation-state requires remarkable people to be centred.

As we develop more and more means of articulating our situation we can find the means by which we can play with subtle forces which otherwise slips through our hands.

My latest insight is the realisation that the secular state has replaced the flat earth theory with a flat cosmology. A flat cosmos which, in the names of 'nature' and 'science', factors out all those social and ecological dimensions which were long mastered by First Peoples.

The forms of representation of life which we need to fashion are those which factor back in the very things which were factored out by an unearthing and unstable process of one-sided abstraction in the genocidal Age of Reason.

Geography factored out the cultures and associated practices which were part of the "new worlds" of European consciousness. Instead of entering into acts of balanced exchange with indigenous people, Europeans had disowned them in advance. The world is now paying the price of the distortion which this introduced into our understanding of who we are and how we relate.

A flat cosmos is suitable for the flattened forms of Being - depression - which constitute so much of modern civilised life.

The 1985 "Warumungu land claim' , from what i saw of it from the sidelines, was dominated by the flat cosmos mob who, as 'experts', engaged in a one-sided cultural monologue by aligning with the modern Anglo-Australian nation-state and its 'reasonable' cultural forms.

Maybe some good came out of it - i hope so - but the senior men i worked with on the original Warumungu land claim were the heirs to a long tradition by which life passed down its hard won lessons about the full extent of the dimensions of cosmos.

They were participating in a non-indigenous defined "Aboriginal land claim" since it provided a potential means of cross-cosmos communication from one Being to another.

While fortunes are spent trying to communicate with imaginary aliens off the planet, Anglo-Australians have yet to learn how to communicate with their nearest neighbours - Australia's original peoples.