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2024​​​
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Tomorrow the Tree Grows Stronger
Judy Watson is an honest history maker, whose works impart indisputable truths about ‘Australia’. Born in Mundubbera in 1959, she moved with her family to Meanjin/Magandjin/Brisbane as a child. Over many years, she has travelled to and from her grandmother’s Waanyi Country—learning her culture, welcoming adventure, and understanding the survival of Waanyi people, who are known as running- water people. Watson’s life in Brisbane often governs the direction of her art. ‘The cultural history of this place is something that I’m really engaged with because this is where I live. I like the idea of bringing up and excavating histories of the place where I am’, says Watson.
mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri, at Queensland Art Gallery, is Watson’s largest survey exhibition to date. The title, translated as ‘tomorrow the tree grows stronger’, is taken from a poem in Waanyi language by the artist’s son, Otis Carmichael. The show brings together 130 works from a forty- year practice, addressing topics ranging from the environment to government policy affecting Indigenous Australians to the institutions that collect their cultural material and remains. Watson’s works resist the stain of racism that exists here due to settler colonisation. ‘As an artist you can stand up, you can resist, you can use art as a platform to discuss ideas’, she says.
Fellow Waanyi artist Gordon Hookey calls Watson ‘The Queen of Wash’. Through her formal training as a printmaker, she understands the importance of pristinely clean paper, the demands of precise registration, layering, composition, and creating movement through choreographing forms. But, when she works on her signature large unstretched canvases, usually stained with wet and dry pigments, she finds herself beyond the strictures of printmaking and flowing freely into another transformative space. Sublime, floaty background washes are later overlaid with drawings, impressions of objects, text, and sometimes detailed paint work. As a water person, Watson knows says that she ‘thinks very deeply in water’.
An experienced educator, Watson draws us in to deeply researched stories that emerge from her desire to centre the truth about Australia with First Nations histories. She says, ‘the process of making the work is one of the most pleasurable things for me, especially if I involve my family and friends in that processing. Sometimes it involves encoding. It might involve stamping and dancing all over the work, wrapping it with nets, putting it into fire, putting it into tubs of indigo, washing it out. There’s always a lot of laughing, cooking, sharing ideas, and gossip. And I think all of that embeds itself in the work too.’
Since the early 1980s, Watson has created painterly works, printed works, installations, sculptures, books, and films. Her work centres on local histories and identity, the sovereignty of First Nations people, loss of innocent lives and natural environment, land rights and feminist concerns. Watson’s retrospective gives us the opportunity to experience her Indigenous perspectives while learning something new about art, materiality, and resistance. Treasured stories shared through her grandmother, Grace Isaacson (to whom the catalogue is dedicated) permeate the exhibition, which has been carefully guided by Kullilli/Yuggera curator Katina Davidson. ‘It has been wonderful working with Katina and to see her ideas for the design and curation of the show’, says Watson. ‘The works she has chosen relate to feminism and identity from when I was a young art student living in Hobart … Art can time travel and speak to someone from a different generation and still be relevant’.
The gallery’s Watermall features the installation walama (2020)—a series of bronze sculptures of inverted dillybags and termite mounds, which appear to drift majestically on the water’s surface. Nearby hangs aAmong many earlier works is a major new acquisition, , moreton bay rivers, australian temperature chart, freshwater mussels, net, spectrogram (2022), which features in the gallery’s Watermall. It features a selection of bronze sculptures of inverted dillybags and termite mounds, which appear to drift majestically above the water’s surface. Pieces of fabric drape around them,The wide expanse of unstretched fabric featuresing prints of charts from leading climate-change scientists and spectrograms of language spoken by Aunty Helena Gulash from the Kabbi Kabbi/Gubbi Gubbi nation. ‘Aunty Helena’s spectrogram comes from speaking the word gila, which is the native bee, light coloured, in her language’, says Watson. ‘In the local area, the native bee is significant. Mt Coot-Tha, which overlooks QAGOMA, is the place of the native bee.’
The work is iterative. The fabric has been dyed and draped in many places. It was —botanically dyed at Burrum Heads where her parents were living, and in Maleny where her nephew Dan Watson and his partner, artist, Tor Maclean, live. It was, hung in trees at the Maroochy Botanical Gardens,, dyed with indigo at her cousin’s home in Oxley—, and painted openly and collaboratively. Back in her studio, the work became moreton bay rivers when it was overlaid with a map of Moreton Bay. ‘As various people, including my daughter Rani Carmichael, Cheryl Leavy, and various art assistants, friends, and colleagues visited me, I invited them to join me paint in some of this imagery of the map’, says Watson.
‘In true Judy Watson fashion, there are so many signifiers that create this map of southeast Queensland’, says Davidson. ‘It will be eternally popular because of its reflection of the local history of this place—mapping the Brisbane River and greater Moreton Bay region—as well as concerns around rising temperatures and the ghosts of freshwater mussels, which are our natural water purifiers, among others.’ The exhibition highlights other works, including freshwater lens (2010), a magnificent suspended bronze sculpture, and salt in the wound (2008–9), which recounts Watson's great-great-grandmother's escape from a massacre at Boodjamulla Lawn Hill. Wide ranging and visually arresting, the exhibition is a welcome celebration of Watson’s epic career, which continues to strengthen.
Watson is a consummate artist, industry leader, and ecological voice. Her works highlight the persistence of colonial dynamics in Australia, transcending fictional narratives about First Nations peoples and maintaining a critical position within academic circles. Her work and her devotion to community and culture place her at the vanguard of contemporary truth telling. Her Indigenous perspective is the foundation of her ethics, particularly through her family interactions, her community collaborations, her research, and her ongoing diligence as a leader, mentor, and educator for students and emerging artists. ‘As well as her creative practice, I am really inspired by how she gathers communities around her and advocates for emerging arts workers and artists’, says Davidson. The opportunity to learn from Watson’s cultural and artistic wisdom is right here and right now.
Watson has also impacted on my own journey and the journeys of those around me. We love and respect her. She has demonstrated sensitivity to our futures and the fates of all First Nations people. As we continue to work through the unravelling of our complex colonial histories, we are indebted to her for producing work that makes us visible. Not only is mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri: Judy Watson an enlightening offering of historical significance for all ‘Australians’, it is a revolutionary path to our collective liberation.
Essay From: Town Hall, 2024
Eds.: Robert Leonard and Tina Agic
32 Pages
ISBN: 29820332
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​2023
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A Culture Adorned​​​​​​​​​​
The profound tradition of creating objects that adorn the human body has long been an intimate process of visual and cultural sovereignty. Body adornment can communicate customary practices through the delicate action of dressing for ritual. It can also act as a proud and considerate acknowledgement of the maker, recognising their artistry. In this latter scenario, the beauty of the cultural object becomes spirited in exchange, as it unites with the body of the wearer and connects with the eyes and the minds of those who observe it. We are resourceful cultures. We have and will always be known as sophisticated makers of complex things. Our ancestors traditionally created clothing and objects of adornment from raw materials. These were collected from all areas of their environment: animal skins, seeds, ochre, bark, and plant matter from the land; feathers from the sky; shells, bones and scales from oceans and waterways; and hardened resins and timbers made malleable via special techniques with fire. Ancient First Nations makers worked ingeniously in sync with our Earthly elements. Using these objects, they created possum-skin cloaks, kangaroo capes, shell necklaces, hair skirts, feather hats, mixed media headdresses, and a myriad of inventive items of clothing, accessories and adornments, both utilitarian and intricate. These were worn for many purposes, including ceremony, performance, rank and ritual. More recently, clothing and body adornments communicate resistance, pride and belonging. We wear them to share stories and to continue our traditions. First Nations’ clothing and adornments speak of our ongoing connection to our ancestors, both in our continuing cultural practices and in the objects themselves. We have maintained our customary practices of assembling cultural objects as part of a dedicated commitment to lore: as people bound to these magnificent lands. Our ancestors’ sacred histories also remain in traditional clothing and objects. Whether they are cherished in our homes, or held in museums and private collections, the DNA of our families remain in them. They continue to share their old stories. And they continue to live through us.
True to this story of history and culture, the Europeans arrived here relatively recently. They interrupted our ability to practice our cultural traditions. For the first time, our ancestors upon this, their native soil, were forced to consider their freedom. Freedom to speak our language without the threat of murder, freedom to express our cultural traditions and for the importance of performance and ritual to be honoured, freedom to assert love for community, and freedom to live without fear of racial annihilation. Settler-colonial contact violently struck First Nations cultures here. Our homelands were besieged. And our people were faced with attempted genocide. In turn, many of our traditional practices suffered. Our ancestors’ abilities to hunt and gather materials freely and by age-old routines were suddenly constrained by new and confronting (white) boundaries. European farming practices resulted in the mass destruction of abundantly rich Country, disturbing and challenging Aboriginal communities. Further clearing of the land proceeded in step with the building of Aboriginal missions and reserves, which saw First Peoples captured, segregated and controlled, deprived of the simple practice to journey upon their own traditional lands. Strategic denial of our ancient existence gained swift momentum. A white Australian mentality ensued. This ideology of whiteness has persisted with purpose on our cherished homelands. To maintain its power and superiority, its believers continue to justify their racist actions. And due to the racist and selfish tensions forced upon us as part of this new colonial society, First Nations people have often been rendered socially, culturally and economically disadvantaged. When I consider this disadvantage, I reflect upon my own childhood: lived without monetary riches yet on the most pristine and enchanting freshwater Country I have ever experienced.
I am a Wakka Wakka/Butchulla/Gooreng Gooreng person. I was born in Meanjin/Brisbane in the early 1970s, and I was raised on Kalkadoon Country, outside the township of Mount Isa in north-western Queensland. In my earliest memories, I recall how alien my family and I were made to feel and how our old culture was a secret that we held close. These politically unstable years (post referendum) were dangerous and confusing. We were constantly reminded by white society that our black way was not it.
I was always a dreamer, a drawer, a maker. I spent my afternoons and weekends instinctively exploring the deep mountain ranges beside our camp. I ran barefoot in the sunshine on animal tracks with wallabies. I caught large lizards and dodged venomous snakes that lay hiding in the long dry grass. And when the sun became furiously unbearable and the landscape scorching, I found cool solace inside majestic rocky caves. For every moment I adventured in that magical and mysterious land, my connection to that Country refused to allow ‘disadvantage’ to cross my mind’s path. In hindsight I know I have always lived in two worlds. My grandfather moved my family to that Country from his own many years before I was born. He was the largest, proudest, blackest man I knew. He had an incredible creative mind (as do the majority of my extended family). He showed me that he could sew anything on his old sewing machine. His artistic process was cool and confident. He was and remains my hero.
I began to draw my clothing in exercise books when I was in primary school. With thanks to the influence of my family, my diverse practice continues to this day. While my childhood imagination was continuously forming new ideas, a nascent government scheme targeting Aboriginal artists was developing throughout our continent. Driven by the Whitlam government through the Australia Council, this scheme was similar to the current model of Indigenous art centres. One of its major goals was to support Aboriginal artists’ economic independence in remote regions like ours. In turn, Australia’s cultural tourism industry was born. Throughout the 1980s, various enterprises promoted the traditions of Aboriginal people’s mark-making techniques. And through newly introduced artistic workshops, non-Indigenous arts facilitators sought to extend the creative skills of many (already brilliant) people of culture by introducing them to contemporary materials. This program introduced new and innovative ways of working, creatively and economically, with a goal to attract a broader market for the sale of Aboriginal artworks.
With the emergence of numerous micro artist-communities, each producing innovative artworks and textiles, all people of Australia were given an opportunity to purchase newly created works from numerous locations. New bodily adornment works became available to the market, for acquisition and exhibition, including dynamic textiles from the incredible Tiwi people; their quality of work remains exceptional to this day. As fabrics and garments were created in screen-printing and sewing workshops on Melville Island via the growing arts business at Milikapiti, masterful fabrics continued to develop from Tiwi Designs at Wurrumiyanga on Bathurst Island. Meanwhile, the powerful Alyawarr and Anmatyerr women of Utopia created astonishing batik work, which had thrived since the conception of their community collective in the 70s. Their group, the Utopia Women's Batik Group, included a trailblazing number of now legendary artists. From the 1980s, screen printing was also introduced and embraced at Gunbalanya (Oenpelli) in Arnhem Land and Daly River. These skilled artists and entrepreneurs have maintained their drive to create exquisite fabrics within their studio centres, educating us all about the power and determination of First Nations people. Four decades after Whitlam’s introductory scheme, numerous art centres and art-making groups have become fully functioning incorporated businesses. These showcase the artistry and design work of a new generation of First Nations creatives. These artists’ stories reveal the deep-rooted connection they have with the land and their people.
Now First Nations textile artists throughout Australia are owning their cultural space in solo and collaborative methods. Via the growing industry of contemporary Indigenous fashion, many First Nations makers and designers - regional and urban - are designing fabrics, and creating garments and objects of adornment that beautifully express their belonging to these lands. As artists, designers, makers, they combine sacred traditional knowledge with contemporary economic proficiencies. They create work that acknowledges their ancestry and their identity as culturally proud individuals. And by applying their influence across their designs, through activism and social change they pave the way for our next generation of artists as knowing people, aboriginal to this place. The performative action of wearing their stories upon our bodies cleverly centres the power of our communities.
This is an exciting time for fashion. We are fortunate to witness the social, cultural and economic reclamation of space in this global industry for Indigenous artists and designers. Ultimately, Indigenous fashion is many things to many people. I like to think it is a combination of ancient histories and new traditions. And I know that it can teach us about self-expression, creativity, pride, resistance, activism, love and beauty, but most of all … freedom.
Essay From: New Exuberance Contemporary Australian Textile Design, 2023
Eds.: Meryl Ryan and Julia Beaven/Wakefield Press
184 Pages
ISBN: 978-1-74305-966-1
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2022​
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Earlier this year on Yuggera Country, my dear friend Gordon Hookey and I yarned over cups of tea in his studio. Thoughtfully, he told me: “Everything we do is part of the greater story of us.”
This prompted me to think about my contribution to culture: how I move through this world as a First Nations person armed with an understanding of the histories of deep time, and what actions I take to oppose the ever-changing politics served cold to my kin. He reminded me that as First Nations people, we are making history; we are the “dreaming”. While sipping my tea, I gazed at his epic paintings covering his grand studio walls and I realised that the story of Gordon Hookey living ‘Aboriginal Way’ in this place is not only the story of First Nations people, it is also the story of Australia.
Gordon is a dignified and kind, long-yarning, big-belly-laughing, considerate man, who was born in 1961 and raised with care upon his magnificent, ancestral Waanyi homelands. His childhood was spent living with his extended family near a place that is now called Cloncurry, in North West Queensland. He was and is nourished by the love of Aboriginal people. As a child, Gordon would frequently create graphic style illustrations of his world by using pencils or pens on lined note paper. Many of his young ideas were adapted from American comics, which his uncles bought for him, or from those poetically loquacious Doctor Seuss books, which he treasured.
Today, Gordon contemplates his lucid, childhood drawings and shares: “Earlier in life, I didn’t know there was such a thing as being an artist.” Yet, an artist’s life is what Gordon has lived, and as a ferociously impassioned history painter and sculptor, obsessed with word play, this artist is living his best life.
As we transport our yarns back to his childhood, he acknowledges that there is one key action that connects his beloved, professional practice to his light-hearted childhood drawings: play. For over thirty years, Gordon has ritually worked a sense of play (and satirically cool sarcasm) into his creative process, instinctively embedding his respect for culture and Country throughout. He speaks of play as a method necessary for constructing his refreshingly honest, politically charged bodies of work and reveals: “To me, it was always play, and in essence, even today what I do is play and have fun. Like the kid from way back then hasn’t left me, I’m still able to play and have fun with the work.”
Today, this notion of play transforms his studio into a vast, cinematically staged playground; the space becomes the artwork. The studio is abundant with meticulously selected art materials and rich with multiple canvases. Simultaneously masterful works of art emerge from his skilfully inspired processes. And he declares: “I like to work on paintings as a body of work, all paintings side by side, so that the body of work sings, so I can engage with it. In a sense, the whole space is an artwork in itself.” Through this process, Gordon’s intensely loaded works become interconnected stories; they materialise as monumental compositions embodying the artist’s foundational messages of love, care, and respect for Aboriginal people and land.
And although resistance and radical protest occupy legitimate space within Gordon’s work, as a response to the terrorisation of existing cultural societies here, I also see and feel significant sentiments of resilience and empowerment. When I interact with his larger works, especially when they are hung in major institutions, I feel acknowledged; I feel humanised. I am reminded that not all is lost to lore-less structures, and I am thankful to Gordon and his contemporaries for expressing their collective emotions through their professional art practices. They are reinforcing a sense of purpose and strengthening our sense of identity despite the savage disruptions caused by whiteness.
Gordon’s contemporaries are more than colleagues; they are the people who solemnly consider Gordon’s thoughts and opinions before the world sees them in his art, and they profoundly strengthen his life and direction. They are revolutionaries. Their allied composure as First Nations people, as artists speaking their truth, is positively unwavering because there is no fear or anxiety when your soul “has not been colonised”.
Of his dear friends, Gordon speaks with conviction:
"My contemporaries and I are making history - we are making culture and culture is our everyday engagement to everything. Each generation makes space for each other, and you’ve got to acknowledge that culture is something that is dynamic and changing. There’s room for the connection to the reality of now and the relevance of your tradition to now."
The enduring culture Gordon points to is living within us. Its fluidity creates a place for feeling secure and acknowledging the reverence of tradition.
So I agree with Gordon when he tells me: “memory is associated with everything”. I know this truth through my glowing memories of my grandparents. As First Nations people, during their fifty years of marriage, they became wise to the initial pursuit of genocide upon these lands. Like many Aboriginal families, they were directly impacted by slavery here. I recall, with unbroken clarity, their discussions around our cultural identity—how to keep safe, how to stay alive. And these bittersweet memories bring me such tortuous emotion. Why did we have to suffer this pain?
With work and time, my frustrations reconcile with love: this is the love I feel for generations of First Nations people who resisted the full force of white supremacy. I also reflect on those who, long before, lived their lives free from racial conflict, and whose children grew strong within a culture unscathed by the vicious clique of racism.
I recognise that the care I extend to First Nations peoples, land and culture through my work is the true labour that defines my existence in this world. It is the story beyond my life. The way I use the term ‘labour’ is better expressed in Erich Fromm’s influential theoretical writing. He once said: “One loves that for which one labors, and one labors for that which one loves.” In turn, when I encounter Gordon’s work, I know that in his radical acts to expose the dogmatism of Australian (and world) politics, he too is responding with actions of care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. These principles stem from the most important and powerful thing of all: love.
When I query Gordon about the emblematic representations of love within his work—specifically, his use of hearts as the yellow element within the Aboriginal flag—he responds by quoting the iconic leader and revolutionary Che Guevara: “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.” Having discovered this quote many years ago, Gordon has since positioned this representational heart shape throughout many of his works.
While contemplating the significance of Guevara’s words, Gordon shares with me: “The yellow heart is symbolic of the love that I feel for mob, land, and people. It is also open to translation by the viewer.” This affirms Gordon’s acknowledgement of the audience in his practice. Discussing his studio process, he continues:
"I look at the reality of a scenario and situation, and then imagine that scenario, then imagine the reality that I want: of being inside of that imagination or within a still of that scenario, but even that still does not represent the imagination . . . so often I will create details, like word play, metaphor. Each detail is as relevant as the other and then people will bring their own meaning or relationship to the story."
Therefore, Gordon is incessantly forming, building, symbolising, distorting, and communicating through language to create a sharper picture of the world in which we live. His methodical approach to the work embraces formal painting techniques to build extraordinarily complex scenarios. By creating artworks that unmask the reality of those once colonised, once engulfed by the attempted domination of white supremacy, he rattles the cage of capitalism and shares stories of the strength that we all shelter, as collective participants proceeding in solidarity for the love of Country.
Gordon’s nod to Guevara prompts me to pause and examine the parallels between these two history makers.
Respectfully, I observe that, like Guevara, Gordon transforms his feelings of love into objective actions, as a response to the everyday injustices that First Nations people experience. Gordon says:
"I like to change the narrative, where the “victim” is the one that’s empowered, where the person that is subjugated is no longer subjugated, put the boot on the other foot, showing the reality in which we live as Aboriginal people."
Through these progressive actions, his energetic history paintings position love as a radical movement, one that advances against the tide of hopelessness often proclaimed by colonialist thinkers. Guevara once said: “In these circumstances, one must have a large dose of humanity, a large dose of a sense of justice and truth in order to avoid dogmatic extremes, cold scholasticism, or an isolation from the masses.” I see this in Gordon’s work.
Guevara’s ideologies of revolutionary love continue today through Gordon’s distinct concern for those who are alienated and multiply oppressed through a failing political system. On this neoteric bureaucracy, Gordon states:
"A long enduring influence is upbringing: the conceptual spread of us as people and being at the interface where two cultures meet is the one constant. Because of that, I have to look at the reality and what is real."
Thus, Gordon’s stellar practice collides with the dolorous mechanics of NOW. And by generously reinventing contemporary realities for current and future generations, he is focusing on the confidence of community, placing sincerity, integrity, and compassion at the fore.
Gordon’s tenacious drive to maintain the intense, physical exercise of creating such monumental works of art is extraordinary. This is a career to celebrate. His riotous story and his critical body of work to date make him a foundational creator of true, Australian art. He is a maker of honest art that builds community and kinship and that documents our history in its totality.
Before I leave his studio, I ask Gordon one final question: What about the future?
Smoothly and calmly, he replies:
"I would imagine victory . . . and what could that be? Well, to quote one of my contemporaries: 'That could be the world seeing things Aboriginal way'—seeing things through the eyes of First Nations people, having the ability to see the world the way we do as a people. That would be the future. Which is why I paint glasses with Aboriginal flags in them, so that they see it Aboriginal way".
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Essay From: Gordon Hookey A Murriality, 2022
Eds.: Jose Da Silva and Liz Nowell
155 Pages
ISBN: 978-1-875744-07-7
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2021
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Kindred Spirits: Plants and People by Shannon Brett
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​​​Exploring State Library collections (including photography by the SLQ collection and Shannon Brett) and stories of Queensland’s First Nations people, Kindred Spirits: plants and people explores the interconnected relationships between Queenslanders and the natural world.
ISBN: 9781922467362
Author: Shannon Brett
Publication date: 10/06/2021
Format: Hardback
Pages: 94
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​​​​​A Fire Within​
Fire is an energy and a force that is eternally synchronised to our spirit bodies. Bodies that are bound to this land by guardians who have guided us to become the mortal custodians of this astonishingly beautiful, magnanimous place.
Left alone, our land will indulge itself, as it is innately wild. But a human presence demands a particular regularity of this land, and Aboriginal people’s traditional techniques of land management are considerate and sincere cultural duties. Such responsibilities live in our skin, they flicker like ghosts in our daydreams, and dance through our twilight silences like voiceless whispers casting an obligatory spell. These ways of being have been singing our path for over 120,000 years.
This precious land contains bountiful and extraordinary ecosystems like no other on Earth. They live within its soil, in its waterways, along its coastlines, and in its skies. And we hold the intelligence to recognise that this abundant biodiversity is essential for our continued existence. We are simply here as guests; and as guests we must surrender to the credence that there is only this land, and only this time.
Fire accelerated human evolution shortly after our Aboriginal ancestors pioneered this continent over 120,000 years ago. They were the first Homo sapiens to touch this luxuriant place and respectfully remain our First Peoples. During these early years, a mutually dependent relationship developed between human and Country: a new ecosystem was born along with our inaugural environmentalists. These first people used fire for practical methods, for cooking and warmth, not yet aware that it would become a highly effective tool for maintaining the biodiversity of this land as a whole. Our ancestors would have shared stories and songlines beside a flame, and practiced ceremonies with it, around it and through it. Songlines sing lore about land and people, about navigating waterways, and mapping our skies―realising a truly transcendental existence. A people at one with Country, our gifted ancestors habitually created songlines about the human experience, upon and throughout this place.
Over time, our people fine-tuned the energy of fire to skilfully fell trees, shape weapons such as spears and shields, craft canoes, and to create objects such as bark structures and clay vessels. These ancients gifted us an archive, recording their stories through incomparable paintings and detailed carvings, while incorporating fire in what are now ancient performances. Fire is alive and all-encompassing. And with the proper framework, we can maintain our land with it and alongside it.
The age-old practice of cultural burning, or cool burning, is a safe action of low-intensity burning off. This removal of scrub prevents larger catastrophic bush fires that destroy entire forests and endanger the precious lives of native animals, and their habitats, in turn severely threatening an environment’s multiplicity. By burning off specific areas of Country, fire regenerates native grasses and edible plant species, likewise rejuvenating plants required for producing utilitarian objects such as bags and baskets. Burning is also used to gain greater access to Country. Traditional incineration of large areas of grassland on healthy soils promotes small animals, such as wallabies and kangaroos, to explore and forage. These creatures are then hunted for food and skins. This resourceful chain reaction embodies a stable and richly functioning bionetwork of all living things. Aboriginal people, living in environmentally safe societies, hunting and farming their food, constructing their homes, and developing their unity with nature, generated minimal disturbance on their surrounding landscapes.
By the time Europeans arrived on our shores, for the purposes of colonisation, our land was well maintained by Aboriginal fire practices. Natural selection favoured plants and animals that were able to cope with fire regimes, while many larger species of mammals had become extinct. Human beings were safe, and if there was ever a more splendid utopia to violate, this was it.
The demolition began in 1788 and has maintained a swift tempo. By the European hand, forests and woodlands were cleared, including mangroves and salt marshes. Wetlands were drained and waterways redirected. Land clearing and introduced farming practices led to soil dilapidation and increased salinity. New species of flora and fauna were introduced, while many native species were mistaken for pests, and destroyed or squandered. The land was tainted with fertilisers and experienced its first invasive weed infestation.
There was no warning for Aboriginal people in 1788 concerning the mutilation of their ancient bond to this enchanting island continent. There was no funeral ceremony, no requests, no inquiry, no handover, no inquest, no explanation. Just death.
And we are still in mourning.
Our people have been broken in a way too insurmountable to express. The grief experienced intergenerationally over loss of land and culture prevails. The land and home taken from people, and people from people, is more than the loss of a material possession. It is the annihilation of a spiritual connection, one that was successful, thriving and flourishing. Aboriginal people know this place, and the knowledge of this land was a 120,000-year-old ideology that permeated every single component of life and living.
The colonist’s knowledge of fire was incredibly limited. They perceived fire as an element to be feared rather than a tool to be respected. Forests and scrubby regions became overgrown, resulting in bushfire-prone areas that endangered the lives of all living things.
And while Aboriginal people were murdered upon their homelands, for the sake of terra nullius, they were unable and unavailable to maintain their cultural practices of caring for their Country. The land suffered . . . the way it still suffers.
Today, human impact on our ‘all of country’ ecosystem is endangering more organisms than ever before. In the past two hundred years, our country has recorded the highest rate of mammalian extinction in the world, including the extermination of fifty animal species and sixty plant species . . . gone forever. Invasive plant and animal species have cataclysmically plagued our lands. Introduced mammals, such as hard-hoofed cattle, horses and sheep, require mass land clearing to keep them as livestock. As a result, as Alexandra Spring and Carly Earl reveal, our biodiversity is at breaking point. They write:
'One of the main threats to Australia’s biodiversity is habitat loss, and land-clearing is happening at a staggering rate. Projections suggest that 3 m[illion] hectares of untouched forest will have been bulldozed in eastern Australia by 2030, thanks to a thriving livestock industry and governments that refuse to step in.'
This industry is growing even though current methods of farming, which are predicted to continue long term, are unsustainable. This costs our governments billions of dollars annually in management and prevention. At present, there is nothing to suggest that colonial damages to the landscape will either be decelerated or reversed. The future appears precarious, unless there is an intervention from our government that includes first peoples, who are specifically and intrinsically competent to care for Country.
It is imperative that we acknowledge that due to the most horrific human errors, the climate crisis, along with the senseless massacres of indigenous people worldwide, is the defining tragedy of our age. For our collective survival, it is now the responsibility of every human on our planet to give this matter the most significant and continuous awareness available.
Enter our Indigenous rangers, those who have never forgotten the deep devotion and responsibility that lies within. They are managing this modern land by combining old and new ways. Willie Rioli, Tiwi Island man and Indigenous Carbon Industry Network steering committee member, explains that they are advancing our country toward a healthier future:
'Fire is a tool and it’s something people should see as part of the Australian landscape. By using fire at the right time of year, in the right places with the right people, we have a good chance to help country and climate. Importantly, people need to listen to science...the success of our industry has been from a collaboration between our traditional knowledge and modern science and this cooperation has made our work the most innovative and successful in the world.'
Cultural burning has the power to rejuvenate Country by enhancing the health of our land and therefore our people. One hundred and twenty Indigenous ranger groups across our nation are reinvigorating burning off practices and championing their methods internationally. Aboriginal people are taking back their traditional practices, managing the power of fire through systems now called patchwork, fire-stick and mosaic burning. Once again, they are able to control the force of fire, resprouting indigenous grasses and promoting the growth of valuable plants as food sources for all animals, including humans. In turn, they are increasing the number of game available for hunting. By working with the land in a considerate way, Indigenous ranger groups are preventing severe wildfires and reducing our carbon output. Dean Yirbarbuk proclaims:
'This fire management program has been successful on so many levels: culturally, economically and environmentally. Through reinstating traditional burning practices, new generations of landowners have been trained in traditional and western fire management, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gas have been abated, and the landscape is being managed in the right way.'
Fundamentally, the wretched grief of unnecessary colonial violence still lingers. Our mourning may appear as senseless anger to some, but our legions of vigilant people know that it is part of a journey of healing from the killing times. More than 270 senseless frontier massacres occurred here: this mass murder devastated legions of Aboriginal families, people whose names we know and whose faces we remember. Their fiery essences surround us constantly and their stories echo in our subconscious. Now, their storylines are repeated by our communities, just like they always were and always will be. Our fragmentary recovery is bolstered by over 120,000 years of kinship. Hence it is time to listen to the true stories of this nation, to feel the songlines of ancient times which echo through the lives of our contemporaries, in varied shapes and forms. And to understand that the fires that burn are not always fires that hurt us - they can be fires that unite us.
It is time to focus on our people who are doing the work; those who are unrelenting and on fire now; those who are our modern-day prodigies; and those who march these lands with their heads held high, just like their ancestors. Celebrate them for their bravery, their pride, and their dignity. Be empowered by the confidence of their declarations about human intimacy, ethics, relationships, and collective histories. They intensely feel this nation’s reality. They understand their cultural practices and their place within community. And they are available to share their stories with our combined society.
Our slow burn of grief will extinguish one day, and our righteous First Peoples will carry the fire for our nation once again.
Essay From: On Fire: Climate and Crisis, 2021
Eds.: Tim Riley Walsh, Liz Nowell, Tulleah Pearce and Evie Franzidis
120 Pages
ISBN: 978-0-6480181-4-8
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