EXPERIENCE
Voyaging into the aboriginal world Bruce Parry in conversation with David Peters Bruce Parry is an award-winning documentary maker, indigenous rights advocate, author, explorer and trek leader. In his films and TV programmes he participates fully in the life and rituals of remote communities, reflecting as he does so on the diversity and beauty of being human. DP
Bruce, thanks for talking to us. We’ve seen your work and your travels on the television. I am interested to hear what draws you into the back-country, into the physical and symbolic parts that our civilisation normally doesn’t get to and doesn’t easily comprehend.
BP
You’re talking about the deeper, philosophical kind of backcountry. Is that what you mean?
DP
Yeah, that’s what Gary Snyder calls the back-country: the wilder reaches of the human soul.
BP
The inner wilderness. Yeah, that’s the real adventure. I call myself an explorer though the term has negative connotations, but I don’t know another one that depicts what I do. Obviously I'm known for exploring the outer geographical realms. But I’ve also gained so much from the opportunity to look inside. And, of course in some ways, that’s the much harder journey and often it’s a scarier one. I was drawn there because I was invited by some of the tribal groups I’ve lived with. Although
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it wasn’t a place I would naturally have looked for. I remember as a child my upbringing was ‘don’t go inside, because that’s dangerous…just keep moving’. But when you spend time with tribal people you may be invited to do something like an initiation whose whole point is to go inside and look at who you are. Most memorably and clearly have been the times when I’ve imbibed their plant medicines. This could get especially frightening in the build up, because I was stepping into the unknown to take a deep, long look in the mirror. Thankfully these guided experiences, though scary, have always been profoundly positive. DP
I imagine you just had to do what a man has to do in those circumstances! But what first drew you into going adventuring? Were you looking to heal something in yourself by journeying into the outer wilds and finding lost tribes?
BP
Probably quite the opposite! I was very much a product of a society where that reflective element has gone missing. I went to a very Christian boarding school, joined the Royal Marines…. I was a pretty embedded member of society. The whole idea of personal journeys and looking at self and spirit wasn’t on my agenda at all. In fact I was on an ego drive to show myself to the world, and to be seen as being someone. So
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my initial journeys were just to go out and prove myself to the world. I guess like so many people today, I was desperately trying to find my identity within the wider group. I joined the Marines because I thought, if I can become a commando in the Marines then I’ll have become something. I think that most of us have the same drive, that’s why we join clubs or become goths or punks or whatever and fit in. Mine happened to be the Marines. I also wanted to prove myself physically. And in fact, my early expeditions were less about looking inside and probably more about avoiding it. As long as I was being stimulated by a new horizon I didn’t have to sit with myself and feel what was going on inside. I was very friendly but I definitely wasn’t comfortable sitting still. So my journeys were a symptom of that restlessness and wanting to prove myself. I had a lot of internal angst churning away. DP
A lot of the great mountaineers and explorers who survived the traumatic experience of the First World War found they couldn’t sit still. They had to keep moving. They thought they were hunting, but actually, they were being hunted by their past. And, of course, if you spend all your life with the accelerator pedal down, eventually you freeze and collapse. You burn out unless you can find a way to recover in your cave.
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