The past sometimes intrudes upon the present in curious and unexpected ways.

Last week, on SBS, the irresistible and irrepressible Joanna Lumley began yet another series of television programmes about her travels. This time she was floating down the Danube. At her first stop she focussed on a group of men in traditional costume doing a Bavarian dance that was curiously reminiscent of traditional British Morris dancing.The reason why Ms Lumley chose to focus on this dance was possibly because all the men in the ensemble were gay. But it was equally likely that the focus was also because a substantial number of the dancers were not of German origin and were from other parts of the world.

Joanna didn’t explore why they chose to come to Germany to participate in this strange dance form. Whether they enjoyed donning the lederhosen, or were interested in resurrecting an archaic dance tradition, or were simply attracted to beefy German dancers was not explained, but the story was presented with the mischievous glint that Lumley does so well.

Also last week, while reading Passage to Juneau, by Jonathan Raban, I encountered a scathing criticism of the way that Canadian Kwakiutl Indians are represented today. He notes that, ‘Too often, Indian life on the Northwest coast was pictured as an idyll – the tribes, living at one with nature, in a region of unparalleled abundance – until it was violated by white intruders.’ Raban argues convincingly that life for pre-contact North American Indians was one of hardship and danger; ‘You might go picking berries and find yourself armed with no more better weapon than a bow and a few arrows tipped with mussel-shell points squaring up to an aggrieved bear. You might go fishing and find your canoe spinning out of control in the swirls as half a gale blows down…. You were constantly made aware of your own insignificance by… the rearing bulk of a grizzly bear, the crash of the whale, the massive turmoil of the tide.’

Raban’s book is about a voyage he made up the north-west coast of North America from Seattle to Alaska in which he retraces the path of Captain George Vancouver, the British sailor tasked with mapping what was then a largely unexplored region. Travel writing was once described as ‘an establishment in literature’s red light district’. Raban’s erudition and insight give the lie to such a disparaging description. His fascinating account of the unfortunate Vancouver’s exploration of the north-west American coastline is, for Australians, strongly reminiscent of Cook’s account of his voyage up Australia’s east coast. Passage to Juneau is historical and anthropological writing of the highest order and shows curious parallels between the evolution of contemporary Canadian and Australian society.

Raban goes into some detail about the ‘salmon ceremony’ practised by the Kwakiutl Indians in recognition of ‘the spiritual kinship that existed between the Indians and the wild creatures with whom they shared their world’. Raban notes that the salmon ceremonies died out one hundred years ago as the traditional lifestyles of the Kwakiutl people faded away or, (if you prefer), were destroyed. Raban notes that the ceremonies ‘were widely revived under the supervision of anthropologists. By the time I arrived in the Northwest, they were an annual feature of local TV news magazines, where they were held to demonstrate that the Indians, in revering the environment, were dedicated environmentalists from time immemorial’.

The parallels between the salmon ceremonies and our own smoking ceremonies are unmistakeable. Just as the salmon ceremony, after a break of half a century, suddenly re-emerged as entertainment for tourists and fodder for news cameras, so in Australia, over the past three decades, we have seen the re-emergence of smoking ceremonies whenever any event of even the slightest significance is to be covered by TV news cameras. Whether the smoking ceremonies re-emerged or were simply created is unclear. One of the best accounts of traditional Aboriginal ceremonies is found in Meggitt’s Desert People where detailed descriptions of rituals and ceremonies of the Walbiri of the Central Desert region make no mention of the use of smoke in the way it is used today. This is possibly because, at the time Meggitt was doing his field work, TV cameras had not yet arrived in the desert.

The relationship between the past and the present will always be a matter for debate. Lumley’s presentation of the gay dancers from around the world is a good-humoured account showing how German society has evolved to be more tolerant but continues to hold onto past traditions albeit in a modified form.

The contemporary use of smoking and salmon ceremonies reflects the commercialisation of a false or distorted recollection of the past. If we don’t accurately recall the past, how can we understand the present and, if we don’t understand the present, how can we prepare for the future?