Heartsick for Country

by Sally Morgan

  The health of the land will sustain future generations, but contemporary Australian law is impotent to protect the land for the future. Both State and federal laws fail to provide the power to protect country beyond sites where there is development. Site protection only occurs where it can be accommodated by development. Australian law and policy have failed to provide adequate protection and guarantees to both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people that their lives will not be affected by environmental disasters, such as the pollution of underground water bytoxic waste run-off. Historically Australian governments have treated Aboriginal lands as vacant, but they have always been intimately known to us. Every part of the continent comes under the jurisdiction of Aboriginal peoples and their distinct laws, and every part has an Aboriginal language name. Ivy Stewart, another founding member of the Kupa Pita Kungkas, travelled country thought of as an empty landscape, but for her it is far from empty; it has been known, nurtured and loved by generations, and it is hoped that it will be known and cared for by many succeeding generations:

  I’m a Yankungtjatjara woman, and I was born at Yuintja, and our family took us away east from there. They never took us back to their own area to show us their country but we always been out east and that’s where we grew up, near Macumba way. We walked around there—Macumba, Pitjiri, Oodnadatta; we hunt around there, we lived around there, we moved around. A place called Alpainta, that’s our area. I worked at Macumba, then I used to go down to Oodnadatta and moved around Anna Creek Station; I worked there. We still got our Laws, wangka religion, you know, we have that knowledge. I am going to talk about myself, and my grandmother taught me lot of things and they showed us all how to hunt, how to dig, get the rabbits out, cooking and all that, and they used to take us out and teach us inma [88], kungka inma and I know all that. They taught us how to hunt and inma, I got it. I travel around everywhere, I know the country when I was young, but I am slowing down now, because I am getting ageing, but I know the country.

  Eileen Crombie, a fellow founding member of Kupa Pita Kungka Tjuta, spoke about travelling over country and the hardships of day-to-day living. It is culture that makes us strong with the knowledge that culture is still alive in the land:

  I been born in Sailors Well, and I’m a Yankungtjatjara woman. My father been taken from there, his woman’s from Sailors Well and he’s been married and we been start travelling from there ... I grew up and we been come this way, Coober Pedy ... That big Maralinga test [89], they been shift us from Boolgunya station, policeman took us away to Yalata ... After that I been live here [Coober Pedy] for a long time, till kids grow up they can all get married and make a home here.

  Culture make me strong, and I know; I just wake up, from just like a sleep, you know, like that story I been telling ’em this morning, I been wake and you know, ‘Ha this one’s all right,’ and I can fight for my country. Story still in the land, today, today, not from book: we singing, we from here [points to her heart] and bring ’em out from heart, we know. Grandmother’s inma, tjamus inma, grandfather’s knowledge we got. And we can tell ’em. We telling ’em young people, and they don’t listen, they go, ‘That’s you fellers.’ See, how they going to learn?

  We telling them, ‘Story, you got to keep ’em, you know, for the kids, so you can learn your kids.’ And they say, ‘No, that’s all rubbish’. But rubbish wiya. We been fight over that dump, that’s through culture. That culture we been showing ’em, this culture still in the land, never die, we still ... and you fellers got to learn too. See, big story. Tryin’ to tell young fellers, tell kungkas, they go other way, white man’s way. They don’t worry about old culture. They worry about white man’s culture: drink, marijuana, breaking in, going to gaol. They lose everything. But some of them, we helping ’em, everything, culture. They said, ‘No. We don’t want to go culture, no good. We want this way, white man’s way.’ How they gunna keep their story, tell their children, grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren? Grandchildren take it on. We said, ‘You fellers got to take it on. When we going, you fellers got to take it on, show all the families.’

  Some of our people have been taken away from culture and though, as Eileen Crombie States, many of her younger generation refer to culture as ‘rubbish’, she responds by stating that wiya, culture, is not rubbish; culture is still strong in the land. Our biggest struggle is against the demonisation of Aboriginal culture, and towards its restoration as a central source of our survivalas distinct Aboriginal peoples. The Howard government’s emergency measures, which I refer to above, have the potential to do more harm than good and further isolate Aboriginal children from their culture.

  While there is cause for concern about future generations when it comes to handing down cultural knowledge, it is not just the older people who care about such issues. Kokatha woman Dylan Coleman is two generations younger than the grandmothers who have spoken above, yet she, too, talks about identity, culture and land, and of the desire to care and nurture country for the benefit of her son.

  Probably since I have gone back to Ceduna, since I have had my little boy, I have learnt a lot more about our Dreaming and ask a lot more questions of the old ones. I feel that when I drive back to Ceduna, and knowing the places and the different things that happened along that Dreaming track, even though that’s not our country there, but it’s knowing the story. When I see and drive past Iron Knob and see that there, I throw my energy down there into the manta, and I send my energy down and I think about the Seven Sisters, and I think about the country that has been damaged, and I think about our women and the struggle we have and the need for us to come together. I think about that Dreaming story and I always think about our women and the struggles we have, the strong ones and the weak ones ... I think our Dreaming has brought a lot of understanding back to me.

  Dylan’s mother, Mercy Glastonbury, also of the Kokatha people, was born at Kooniba Aboriginal mission on the west coast of South Australia. She spoke about the contemporary struggle for traditional owners to speak for country and to keep culture going, particularly during the competitive and soul-destroying era of the federal government’s Native Title Tribunal, investigating claims and rights to country:

  I have seen myself as a strong Aboriginal woman, but the struggles with Native Title have pulled me down. But I do believe I still have enough strength because my kids, my grandchildren, they look on me as someone with strength. The Native Title business has tested all women, because the men, in our area anyway, have said the women are not to have any say over the land, that’s the men’s business. But us women, we know we have got very sacred sites and we’ve been told by Aboriginal women all over in South Australia, as far as Blackstone in WA, that we have to look after those sites that we’ve got in our area, and don’t let the men go there because the men can become very ill. And we have been struggling for our sites. The Dreaming has got to do with the Seven Sisters, and it is all there in stone and in the land ... Native Title has caused dispossession of tribal clans and tribal groups, and the loss of identity through the wrong groups claiming land that don’t belong to them; claiming language, as well, that don’t belong to them. And it’s like some groups are losing their identity. This has broken my heart. But within myself I still feel strong, but what strength I feel now is for my children, and to teach them and to give them support. I don’t want to be out in the political arena struggling anymore, I’ve spent my whole life out there and I feel like I have done enough, and now I am pulling in.

  We’ve got a very strong history, through our forefathers and where we have stood in society, and just the knowledge of having forefathers who have been bosses in the tribal ways before, that knowledge, that strength. I think about them. I think about what my grandmother used to teach me, and my standing, my place, even though two hundred years has changed it now and we’ve been robbed of a lot of things. A lot of our people don’t speak fluently our language anymore, particularly the younger ones, because we were dumped on the mission and told not to spe
ak our language and not to practise our culture. But my grandparents used to take me to different waterholes to clean them out, and I can remember, as a little girl, those kind of things. My times in the bush and the bush tucker we lived on and my relationship with my extended family, you know, and that was really warm, and even though now it is drifting apart, especially with the younger ones coming along, you lose contact with them. But you just know where you stood in this society, and that’s what gives me a lot of strength.

  Many of our families have travelled large distances. Roslyn Weetra tells her story of journeys across family lands, crossing both the north and the south, and of the many obligations these crossings hold for her.

  My mother’s Narunga, my father’s eastern Arrernte, my grandparents are Nadjuri, Kaurna and Ngarrindjeri. I was born in Alice Springs, and Mum moved down from there when I was about six months old. Then we moved and lived on Pine Point, which is in the Narunga country, on York Peninsula, and we lived most of our early childhood there.

  In my life, I think it is the culture that has kept me strong, whatever that culture is, as I have developed over the years. It’s been my culture, and sometimes back then, we weren’t allowed to talk about it, we didn’t even know our language groups, we didn’t talk the language. Going through in the fifties, going through primary school, it wasn’t a pleasant place to be. But the culture was there and we are born into it. But we have got no way to express it, or to use it, or to be a part of it, while we are growing up in the city, because city life, urban life—even country life—doesn’t allow you to be and to shape and develop and grow with your culture. You’ve got to earn a quid; you’ve got to depend on the government, they make us into a welfare people and we think that is the way to survive. But now I am here, I know the way I survived was hanging onto that very slim thread of my culture. When I had my back up against the wall, instinctively my culture said to me, ‘Roslyn, this is the way to go, depend on your culture.’ It’s there; it’s in us, all of us;, it’s not up here [pointing to her head], it’s in here and it’s in here, and it’s in your body. But when you are young and you are not taught this continuously, you’re picking up what you can from the black and the white culture just so you can survive, so you can be whoever you want to be. And you’re teaching those same things to your children, that the white stuff is what you need to survive, which is the wrong teaching. It’s the black stuff. It’s the culture, but we can’t see it, we can’t hold it. We can see the white culture, you can get your pension cheque, you can go to school, you can do all those things. They’re visible, they’re acceptable. But what’s hidden inside of us and comes with us everywhere is our black spirits and our black culture. So that was the biggest learning curve for me in my whole life when I was diagnosed with cancer, and it just came up. And I had it here, in the mankari, and it just came up from nowhere and to me that was a turning point for me in my whole life, not ever, ever before. I am still experiencing that. When it comes, you have to be obligated in a whole new different way. It’s not just about looking after your people; it’s about giving strong obligation.

  In concluding, I return as always to my traditional country, my spirit home, a place my mother worries and cares for, a place that I, too, worry and care for with her. It is the land which makes us strong but also makes me cry, just like when I cry for the many losses of so many of our people who were too young to pass from us. Our bodies and the land are connected. Our health and wellbeing are tied together. That is what I have grown up to believe. The modern world sees ideas of belonging to land as antiquated, but why do they see disconnection from country as progress? In the current climate, with the Howard government’s state-of-emergency intervention in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, the Aboriginal idea of caring for and belonging to country is under attack from people we might have thought were aware and sensitive of the Indigenous position. As the keynote speaker at the Cape York Institute conference, ‘Strong Foundations—Rebuilding Social Norms in Indigenous Communities’ [90], Michael Meyers, president of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, was quoted as saying: ‘... Indigenous cultures are an antiquated concept in the twenty-first century: People have to move out of their ghettoised attitudes, get away from the idea that people belong in certain lands.’ [91] These comments could be construed as in support of the Howard agenda to remove Aboriginal people from remote areas. Colonialism stole everything from us. It stole from us the entire Australian landscape, our ability to govern our lives, and our relationships to our country. Many Aboriginal people, just like my mother, were removed from their country by Aborigines Acts policies. That was my inheritance: dispossession and assimilation. But though I am dispossessed and assimilated, I am still a resisting Tanganekald Meintangk mimini. I still belong to country. It is bred into me and it is an old idea and it is one that still lives. It may not survive in the landscapes of Wall Street, but it lives in my life, in my backyard, as it does with my mother and all of the nieces, sisters, aunties and grandmothers I have spoken with. Belonging to country is an old idea that keeps us alive and in which we live to pass onto our children and theirs to come.

  NOEL NANNUP

  is a Nyungar/Indjarbandi man who works tirelessly to promote public awareness of the importance of caring for the world we all share. (Image 5.1)

  Image 5.1

  Caring for Everything

  As an Aboriginal person, I am connected to the South-West and the North-West, two very different very areas of country in Western Australia. This is because my father came from the south and my mother from the north. My dad, Charles William Nannup, was born in 1910 near Mundaring Weir, in the hills on the Darling escarpment just east of Perth. He had links to the Whadjuk people, the Wadandi people who are down near Busselton, and the Balladong. They are all, of course, Nyungar people. My mum, Alice Isabel Basset, was also born in 1910; but she was born on Abydos Station, which is just south of Port Hedland in the Pilbara. And she is a Karriarra person. Mum’s mum, though, was an Indjibarndji woman from Roebourne, so Mum had connections to country through those groups as well. There are many ways in which Aboriginal people connect to country, and what I mainly want to share in this essay is how the stars and the waterways connect different people to different countries and different countries to each other.

  I will begin with the stars, which are very important to Aboriginal people. Mum told me stories about the stars for as long as I can remember, but one story used to really fascinate me. It was a true story about how three young girls left New Norcia mission and followed the stars all the way back home. This story impressed me because I thought it was so wonderful that the stars in the sky could actually tell you things. It made me understand very early on that there were a lot of useful things in the sky and I should learn about them. As I got older, I heard more star stories; and I began to realise that as the world turns, the star patterns pass overhead all the time, too. I used to sit outside at night and watch them, because by looking at the stars you can actually tell what time of the year it is. There is a pattern that the different seasons follow. Nyungar people have a six-season cycle that allows you to know exactly what is in the sky and when. Each season lasts roughly eight weeks. Our lives used to be guided by the seasons in the old times.

  It was my dad’s brother, Uncle Thomas, who taught me about the Nyungar side of culture. He liked to tell the story that I call ‘The Carers of Everything’. When he told that story, he liked to point to the sky and to what he called ‘the star pot’, which he referred to as comal; the possum’s skin pegged out with the tail still attached. Comal is the possum shape in the sky that the stars make. There are many shapes in the sky that we know to look for. For example, the Southern Cross and the stars around it are really the head of a kangaroo. You can see the ears and the teeth, you can see the kangaroo’s back coming down and the tail going off. Then there is the very important story of the Seven Sisters, which some call the Pleiades, and how they came to be in the sky. Many differen
t groups across Australia have stories about the Seven Sisters because it is an important Dreaming. You see, certain stars are connected to certain Dreaming tracks and stories. When it comes to the story of the Seven Sisters, there are really only six, as the seventh is one of the planets, and the planets go the opposite way. This is why you will always hear the desert people saying the seventh sister is coming home. You can see what they mean by sitting outside at night and just observing the sky. You will see the seventh sister getting closer and closer, but then she will go past and continue her journey. And when that happens, the people will say she has visited her sisters. That is the Dreaming of the desert people, the Wongi people. Their Seven Sisters Dreaming starts at a place called Weibo, north of Kalgoorlie in the Goldfields, at a very special spot where the sisters came down from the sky. It’s a spot that needs to be protected because of its significance.

  The Milky Way, the home of our solar system, is the main feature of our sky; and the whole of the Milky Way is represented by a spirit woman from the Dreaming who had long silvery white hair with a real sheen to it. Djindalade they called it. Dyoondal was the colour and djumbar was the hair. This spirit woman once walked on the earth and dyoondal djumbar was where she put the little spirit children that she collected from the landscape before she became the Milky Way. One of the stories tells how the spirit woman was waiting at a place where a large gathering was happening to determine who would be the Carers of Everything across the land. There was a process of elimination going on, and all the birds, plants, trees and the animals were eager for a chance to be picked as a carer. But slowly, as each one realised they couldn’t do the job well enough, they left the gathering. The wetj, though, the emu, he ran off after the others trying to gather support for himself. The yonga, the kangaroo, thought the wetj was karta warra, which means thick in the head, and before he left he made it clear he didn’t want wetj in charge of everything because he didn’t think he would do a good job.