Aborigines

After four days on the Stewart Highway, a lonely, two-lane stretch of pavement from the south of Australia to the north, I was approaching the halfway point on my journey to the top of the country. As the van rolled towards Alice Springs, a tourist-centered outpost for Outback exploration where I would be staying for several days, I caught glimpses of manmade structures dotting the mind-numbing monotony of the empty desert landscape. I later discovered that these were the homes of Aboriginal people who lived in the area.

In Alice Springs and other towns in the area, Aborigines reside in glaring opposition to their white Australian neighbors, mostly passing their days sitting in small groups in the shade while intimidated tourists scurry by. Since most of the tourists come to this destination to witness “Authentic Australia” in the outback, their fear is ironic. And it is only the white locals who profit from the tourist industry by peddling Aboriginal cultural artifacts such as didgeridoos and boomerangs.

Before the Europeans took the Aborigines’ land and dispersed many of their tribes, these true Australian natives had a legacy many thousands of years old of defining themselves through their relationship to the land. They harnessed nature and thrived in one of the world’s harshest climates, which we visitors had immense difficulty tolerating without amenities like air conditioning. Through oral tradition alone, Aborigines preserved their culture, including one of the world’s most complex legal systems. The forced separation of tribes and families from each other as well as from their native homelands and lifestyles is gradually wearing away the cultural identity so crucial to a people’s survival.

Witnessing this disintegration of culture inspired me to grapple with the question of identity. I asked myself who I was without the factors I usually rely on for self-definition -- my home, family, and friends -- in a place where no one cared about my academic credentials and in an era when not everyone adores Americans. While traveling, I went without some of my accustomed affiliations or labels, forcing me to define myself by different terms. I enjoyed depending upon my internal compass, my common sense, and my personality to guide me through foreign places. However, my homeless situation was my choice, and it was temporary. For Aborigines, their forced detachment from their land and their distance from one another has changed the course of their civilization and perhaps set the pace for its demise.

These questions have already begun to influence my interest in law. Because I like to examine issues from all sides in order to try to reconcile opposing arguments to reach a middle ground, I have always known that I wanted to be a lawyer. My time in Alice Springs reminded me that the law can be a tool by which we preserve and protect identity. For instance, there are laws written by the U.S. Congress to protect U.S. citizens from socially destructive forces like discrimination and hate crimes, so that we can safely identify ourselves by our ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender or race. The law cannot dictate how people treat one another, but it can set parameters in order to help us peacefully coexist despite our differences. It also cannot reverse harmful events, or fully compensate for the loss of one’s cultural identity, but it can be a tool that we utilize to inject more justice into our futures by learning from past mistakes.

My travels and subsequent discoveries equip me for a richer and more conscious life as a lawyer and as a responsible citizen of the world. Since my time in Alice Springs, I approach conflicts and questions with a more open mind, and I try to understand situations by looking through the lens of others’ life experiences. The situation in Alice Springs was disturbing, but bearing witness to it has been a kind of blessing for me. I did not have to travel 12,000 miles to see examples of displacement and loss of identity; these situations have occurred -- and continue to occur -- in my own country for centuries. But by stepping out of my familiar comfort zone, I was able to see injustices more clearly and to appreciate the magnitude of humanity’s seemingly endless struggle for peaceful coexistence. I look forward to being an integral part of this struggle as a practitioner of the law.

點評：

1. 本文以旅游作為開頭，營造一種輕松、愉快的氣氛。

2. 通過旅行到澳大利亞的一個小鎮來發現當地的文化來寫文化對民族的重要性。可以看出作者有很強的觀察能力和分析能力。

3. 作者通過文化，聯系到了法律，并說明法律的重要性，從而點出想成為一名律師。

4. 本文結構清晰，邏輯性強，是一篇很好的短文。

譯文：

澳大利亞的土著居民

斯圖爾特高速公路是一個偏僻的、雙車道的公路，是澳大利亞南部通向北部的高速公路。在這條公路上行使了四天以后，我馬上就要完成了在這個國家一半的旅程。當車行使到愛麗絲斯普克林的時候，我會在澳大利亞內地邊區的旅游中心停留幾日，我發現在空曠的沙漠里人工的建筑看上去就是千篇一律的點。我后來才發現這寫是當地的土著居民的房子。

在當地的愛麗絲斯普克林和其他城鎮，土著居民對他們的白澳大利亞鄰居非常的敵對，白天，他們在陰暗的地方聚集在一起以此來嚇跑游客。大多數的游客來到內地主要是為了觀賞“Authentic Australia”，而他們的害怕是非常可笑的。白當地居民從土著的文化產物的旅游工業來獲取利益，比如迪吉里杜管和回飛棒。

在歐洲人占領土著居民的土地和趨散他們的部落以前，這些真正的澳大利亞人通過他們息息相關的土地而獲得了數千年的遺產。他們在世界上最糟糕的環境之一里生存并發展壯大，那里的氣候，我們這些旅游者是很難適應的。經過口頭的傳統慣例，澳大利亞的土著居民保護他們的文化，包括世界上最復雜的法律系統。被迫分離的部落和家庭以及他們與生俱來的國家和生活方式正逐漸的消磨了文化的特征，文化特征對一個民族的生存是很至關重要的。

目睹了這次文化的瓦解，激勵我去探究特性的問題。我問我自己如果我沒有了我所依賴的個人因素-我的家鄉，家庭，和朋友-在一個沒有人關心我的學業和一個沒有人崇拜美國的時代。 當我拋掉我以前的所有聯系去旅游的時候，各種不同的條件迫使我從新定義我自己。我喜歡根據我內心的羅盤、我的常識和我的個性去指導我旅游。然而我選擇了無家可歸，這只是暫時的。對于澳大利亞的土著居民，他們被迫家破人亡已經改變了他們的文化，或許已經開始慢慢滅亡。

這些問題已經開始影響了我對法律的興趣。我喜歡去調查問題的全面性來試圖調節正反雙方去達成一致，我一直都希望我可以成為一名律師。我在愛麗絲斯普克林度過的時間讓我了解到法律是保護和保障身份的一種工具。舉例來說，有美國國會制定的保護美國公民免受社會暴力，像歧視和仇殺，所以我們可以在種族劃分，宗教信仰，性傾向和性別上可以保護自己的安全。法律不能命令人們如何對待彼此，雖然我們有分歧，卻可以設定一個參數來幫助我們和平共處。它也不能扭轉不利的事件,或完全彌補一個人的文化特征的損失, 但它可以是一種通過學習過去的錯誤，來為未來注入更多爭議的工具。

我的旅行和后來發現我作為一名律師和這個世界上有責任感的公民所具有的豐富的、有覺悟的人生。我在愛麗絲斯普克林度過的時間，使我可以用更寬廣的觀點去處理矛盾和問題，我通過觀察別人的生活經歷去試圖理解形式。愛麗絲斯普克林的情形是糟糕的，但對于目睹它的我來說，是一種祝福。我沒有去旅行12000公里去看流離失所的例子，這些情況正在發生-也一直在發生-在我自己的國家發生了幾百年。我走出我所熟悉的區域，我能夠清晰的看到不公平的現象和表面上為了和平共處而發生的大量的、無休止的戰爭。我期盼我作為一名法律職業者成為這場戰爭的一分子。