Heartsick for Country

by Sally Morgan

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  AMBELIN KWAYMULLINA

  Introduction: A Land of Many Countries

  GLADYS IDJIRRIMOONYA MILROY

  Different Ways of Knowing: Trees Are Our Families Too

  DAWN BESSARAB

  Country is Lonely

  LEN COLLARD

  Kura, Yeye, boorda‘from the past, today and the future’

  IRENE WATSON

  De-colonising the Space: Dreaming back to Country

  NOEL NANNUP

  Caring for Everything

  BERYL DIXON

  Back Home to Country

  GREG LEHMAN

  A Snake and a Seal

  PAT DUDGEON

  The Sinking of the Enid

  BILL JONAS

  Places of Wonder and Fear

  TJALAMINU MIA

  Kepwaamwinberkup (Nightwell)

  BOB MORGAN

  Country—A Journey to Cultural and Spiritual Healing

  JOAN WINCH

  A Feeling of Belonging

  JOE BOOLGAR COLLARD

  A Strength that Can’t be Broken

  SALLY MORGAN

  The Balance for the World

  Endnotes

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  To all our ancestors

  who have gone before us,

  we honour you by still carrying

  our country in our hearts

  AMBELIN KWAYMULLINA

  belongs to the Palkyu people from the Pilbara, in the North-West of Western Australia. She is an Indigenous lawyer currently employed at The University of Western Australia. (Image A)

  Image A

  Introduction: A Land of Many Countries

  When I walk in the footprints of my childhood, the years just fade away and I feel like I am there again as a young girl. I am flooded with wonderful memories of the sounds and smells of the bush, the joy and laughter of my sisters and me, and the connectedness and security from the voices and words shared with us kids from our Elders. Going bush was something we did all the time when I was young and it kept us grounded in culture and closely connected to our land.[1]

  The stories in this anthology speak of the love between Aboriginal peoples and their countries. They are personal stories that share knowledge, insight and emotion. Each story speaks of a deep connection to country, of joy and pain, and of feeling heartsick because of the harm that is being inflicted on country even today through logging old-growth forests, converting millions of hectares of land to salt fields, destroying ancient rock art and significant Aboriginal sites, over-use of water by industry in semi-arid areas, and a record of species extinction that is the worst in the world. Each contributor’s voice represents an ancient continuum, a way of being in the world that forged a mutually nourishing relationship between people and country that sustained succeeding generations for millennia. This anthology was driven by the need to speak of deeper things, and to share what is often only shared among Indigenous people. It has taken courage to tell these stories, and the telling has reawakened many feelings—old grief, past joys, and questions about the future and what will happen when these writers, too, have passed on. In an era of global environmental challenges, we all need to listen to the voices that offer a way of seeing and relating to country that will allow the earth not only to survive, but also to thrive. These stories provide an insight for other people everywhere to gain a better understanding of the relationships to country that Indigenous people hold close to their hearts. These are the diverse voices of lived experience and they share one passionate desire—to protect country for all the generations to come.

  This continent, named Australia by Captain Matthew Flinders early in the nineteenth century, is a land of many countries—and for every country, there is a people. We are the Nyungar, Palkyu, Martu, Gumilaroi, Worrimia, Bardi, Indjarbandi, Palawa, Tanganekald, and Meintangk, and we are many others. We were formed with the hills and the valleys, the water and the sky, the trees and the plants, the crows and the kangaroos, created by the ancestors who gave meaning and life to our world. And for each of us, our country is not just where we live, but who we are. The countries of our hearts are the red sands of the desert, the green gullies of the forests, the white shores of the coast and all the places in between. Our blood is carried by the rivers and the streams, our breath is on the wind, and our pulse is in the land. There was a time when the rhythm of our hearts was strong and steady and sure, but now we all struggle in our different ways to care for country, to hold up the connections between all life that is our life, in a world where those connections are so often unseen and unheard.

  Aboriginal people in country

  Long, long ago, when this land was without form, the ancestors journeyed across the world singing and dancing, laughing and crying, fighting and loving—and everywhere they went, life sprang into being. The ancestors created all life, and gave all life knowledge and law. Each country has its own people who hold the stories of these great events. Len Collard tells of the powerful Rainbow Serpent, the Waakal:

  ...the Waakal is the Creator, the keeper of the freshwater sources. He gave us life and our trilogy of belief in the boodjar—the land—as our mother and nurturer of the Nyungar moort —family and relations—and our katitjin Law—knowledge so that we could weave the intricate tapestry known as the ‘web of life’. [2]

  All Aboriginal people are descended from the creation beings. Today, we can still follow the paths they travelled, see their tracks in the land, and feel and honour their presence in country. And, through the world that they made, the ancestors continue to teach us, showing us how all life is interconnected and interdependent. Dr Joan Winch tells of the Butterfly Dreaming:

  [There] is a women’s Dreaming site in the Perth area that is called the Butterfly Dreaming, and it is tied to the beautiful blue and black butterfly. The butterfly lays its eggs in ants’ nests near a small shrub we call a bacon-and-egg plant. The ants carry the larvae up to get the nectar from the shrub. Then they carry the larvae back down again at night and the larvae exude this nectar, which the ants collect for food. This is a symbiotic relationship, where what is good for one is good for the other. That is how we have to think about the natural world, because in the long run, when everything is in balance, what is good for the earth will be good for us as human beings too. [3]

  As Aboriginal people, we are a living, breathing, thinking physical manifestation of our land—a thread in the pattern of creation. Dr Bob Morgan writes that ‘... my culture and worldview is centred in Gumilaroi land and its people, it is who I am and will always be. I am my country.’ [4] Country is not simply a geographical space. It is the whole of reality, a living story that forms and informs all existence. Country is alive, and more than alive—it is life itself:

  Imagine a pattern. This pattern is stable, but not fixed. Think of it in as many dimensions as you like—but it has more than three. This pattern has many threads of many colours, and every thread is connected to, and has a relationship with, all of the others. The individual threads are every shape of life. Some—like human, kangaroo, paperbark—are known to western science as ‘alive’; others, like rock, would be called ‘non-living’. But rock is there, just the same. Human is there, too, though is it neither the most nor the least important thread—it is one among many; equal with the others. The pattern made by the whole is in each thread, and all the threads together make the whole. Stand close to the pattern and you can focus on a single thread; stand a little further back and you can see how that thread connects to others; stand further back still and you can see it all—and it is only once you can see it all that you can recogni
se the pattern of the whole in every individual thread. The whole is more than its parts, and the whole is in all its parts. This is the pattern that the ancestors made. It is life, creation, spirit, and it exists in country. [5]

  The world the ancestors made is one in which all life is joined in a web of relationships, a web that exists both within and outside us. And it is by maintaining and renewing the connections linking life together, that country—and so all of reality—is balanced and sustained. This is why, to Aboriginal people, our relationships with all shapes of life are of vital importance. As Dawn Bessarab comments:

  Spirituality to Aboriginal people is connected to country and is about relationships; spiritual relationships with the trees, the land, the animals, the sky, the water. Country is not viewed as a bit of dirt with economic value but as a living entity... [6]

  Country is the source of all creation, all beauty, all wisdom. It sustains us, nourishes us, guides us. It gives us life, and teaches us how to live so that life—in all its shapes—will always go on. Country is our joy, our love, our hope.

  Our country is our heart.

  Other peoples in country

  For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples cared for their countries, and were cared for in turn. Our Ancestors were not to know that, far across the seas, other people saw country in a very different way. One day the peoples of Europe would come seeking the place they called the Great South Land. It was the British who ultimately prevailed, with James Cook claiming our east coast in 1770, and the establishment of a penal colony in 1788. Those who arrived in our Ancestors’ time did not understand that the bush they saw around them was not a wilderness, but a culturally managed landscape; that life in all its shapes watched them anxiously from the ground, the water; the sky; and that there was not a single grain of sand beneath their feet that was not part of a thinking, breathing, loving land. In their language, the British described and catalogued the land as an object, not as grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, sister, brother and family. And by being named as the land, country became hidden—for, as Greg Lehman writes ‘words like “mountain”, “tree” and “wind” are no invitation for them to show us their presence.’ [7] Unlike Indigenous people, who had lived in cooperation with country for so many, many years, the British would cause the rapid extinction of numerous plant and animal species. This devastation was itself a product of a worldview in which land was, and could only ever be, an inert possession:

  [The British] had left their Mother country far behind, and sought no new Mother here. They came to tame, conquer, subdue; not to be nurtured, taught, cared for. To them the continent was harsh, strange; empty of meaning except what they themselves brought to it; a place of which they were often afraid. These invaders—these strangers to country—could no longer feel their Mother’s heart as it beat beneath the green lands of their home. They tried to understand the world by breaking it apart. Without their Mother to guide them, they could not see how the parts fit together to make the whole, or that the whole was more than the parts. Their science told them that human reason could make small and known a vast and mysterious universe; their religion said that of all the life there was, only they had been made in their Creator’s image. [8]

  Paradoxically, with every action taken to ‘claim’ this continent, the British only succeeded in creating greater and greater distance between themselves and the territory they wanted to make their own. For there can be no belonging in country without honouring and respecting the spirit of this living land.

  Change in country

  In the thousands of years before the British arrived, this continent had known transformations, not the least through extremes of climate change. But never before had there been a people here who could not hear the voices of the land, could not see that everything around them was alive, and could not feel the pain of country as pain to self. Greg Lehman writes:

  ...problems began when the British decided to stay. Killing began. Not just of cartela the seal, but us palawa mob too. That’s the simple truth. Lots of killing. All of this happened because of one thing: the sons of England did not know tunapri manta. This is our knowing that comes from the Old Stories, handed down for a thousand generations. It give us our law and a way to know the world that works for everyone. But the sealers and soldiers would not learn! [9]

  The invasion of this land was an assault, not just on Aboriginal peoples, but on all life in country. Aboriginal peoples were killed, forced out of their lands, and confined in prisons, lock-hospitals, reserves, missions and other institutions. Country was attacked with the axe and the plough, scarred by roads, fences and mines, and subjected to a barrage of foreign species. And even when we were able to remain on our land, Aboriginal peoples were prevented from practicing the culture that sustained country. As Jill Milroy notes:

  Land becomes real estate, an economic commodity, and a source of tradable wealth, duly assigned a particular value based on productivity or use. Land is packaged and parcelled: towns, parks, gardens, farms, stations, missions, reserves, mines, factories and prisons. There are desirable and undesirable places. Fences are erected, people are locked out and country is locked up. [10]

  And Tjalaminu Mia comments:

  We were forbidden to use language or undertake men and women’s business which also included environmental sustainability practices; like seasonal burn-offs of particular tracts of land, maintenance of gnamma holes and ochre deposits and the maintaining of food resources, like the fish traps along the Kalgan River near Albany. [11]

  Traditional food sources dried up as native species were hunted, habitats were destroyed, and waterways were poisoned, by ignorance or design. Country struggled to provide for her people, and Aboriginal people were forced into working for those who were harming their land. Elder Beryl Dixon recalls:

  It ... [was] impossible for us to look after the land the way our old people would have done in the times before the white people came. Our lives were hard. We had no opportunity and little access to a proper education or regular jobs with decent pay. The farmers employed us because they couldn’t get anyone else to do the work cheaper. They also took advantage of our situation because they knew that we needed the work to survive. It was the only way we could put food on the table for our families. There were no hand-outs to talk of in those days, only the rations the Native Welfare Department gave to Nyungars, but this didn’t amount to enough to survive on ... Looking back now at some of the jobs our people did, especially labouring to clear the land for farmers in the South-West, I think sadly of some of the consequences. The felling of all those trees has degraded the land and caused the water to become salty. Also, there are fewer places for the birds and animals to live. This could have all been avoided if, when white people first came to Nyungar country, they had listened to the wisdom of our Elders. [12]

  Aboriginal people continue to be affected by the violence of dispossession. This is not distant history but a living experience that is held within people and country. The sorrow, pain and trauma are still felt deeply, both where the stories are known, and where there are gaps in memory and history that might never be filled. Bill Jonas reflects on the world of his childhood:

  Now, when I think about the valley which nurtured me, I see this lovely part of the world in yet another light. In some ways it is a gloomy, even sad and tragic imagination that now takes hold of my thoughts. I find myself constantly wondering about what happened to the people who once lived here. Did the original inhabitants suffer the same fate as Aboriginal people in the surrounding valleys? Was that spearing at Hells Gates an isolated incident or, as now seems likely, was it part of a broader pattern of Aboriginal people being forced to defend their country and their lives? What awful secrets may lie hidden in that large lagoon? [13]

  It was not only Aboriginal people who were, and still are, affected by colonial violence. The land remembers where blood was shed. Tjalaminu Mia speaks of visiting a place where a waterhole had been deliberately p
oisoned in colonial times, killing many Nyungar people: ‘I felt depressed like I wanted to cry out in pain. It was like I was experiencing pain that did not personally belong to me but belonged to someone else.’ [14]

  The consequences of damaging the connections between people and country are profound, both for Aboriginal people and the land itself. Dr Bob Morgan comments:

  When Indigenous people become disconnected from country, the teachings, steeped as they are in generations of traditions and wisdom, are open to abuse and indeed systematic erosion. Disconnection from country is a pivotal factor in understanding the level of dysfunction that sadly can be found in the lives of far too many Indigenous people across the nation. [15]

  And in her story, Dawn Bessarab writes of how waterfalls in the Dampier peninsula dried up and no longer flowed. Elders in Derby had told her uncle that:

  Dat country im lonely, people dey’ll gone, no-one dere to look after im anymore, so dat country lonely, im sad, dat why dat water bin dry up, ee missing ees people. [16]

  Like all colonial nations, Australia must reconcile its history. There has been violence here, and harm, sorrow and pain. But there is also joy in this place, and wonder, and creation. For despite all she has suffered, country yet lives. So there is still an opportunity to heal the connections that have been broken, a chance for us all to work together for country.

  Healing in country

  Despite the damage done to Aboriginal peoples and countries, the spirituality of this land remains strong. Connections have been damaged, but they are not yet broken. Our ancestors are still with us, teaching us and guiding us along the right path. And because the land holds memory, then for as long as it remains, nothing is ever truly lost. Songs, stories and knowledge that have passed from human memory can still be brought back to us. Pat Dudgeon tells how she dreamed of the death of her grandfather, who had died many years before: