The completion of a law degree and job offers from a number of law firms should have been a graduate’s crowning achievement; however, Art Costello meets it with indifference.

Art broods over his future before deciding to take a couple of gap years. Once committed to pursue other endeavours, he becomes hopeful that he may discover some meaning to his life. But he doesn’t anticipate that it would lead him to evaluate his very existence.

Art gains knowledge about a people considered to have the oldest continuous culture on the planet, to have the world’s longest living art tradition, and who remain true to their spiritual beliefs, since the time of creation, through their enduring connection to each other, to nature and to all living things.

And yet these very people have been subjected to the most atrocious injustices ever perpetrated against human beings.

Art learns a great deal from them, but the greatest lesson he learns is that of survival.

These are the Indigenous peoples of Australia.

F.M. Cipriano

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