“Dreaming ourselves into the landscape” Ms Julie Macintyre,
History Lecturer at Cooper University.
As a history lecturer at Cooper University, I was recently invited to visit Perrederr, a remote part of the Northern Territory. Jules Dumoo was my guide. I was apparently one of the few white people who had been lucky enough to view the very rare rock painting exhibits. It’s a place so remote and so mythical that the indigenous almost continue their lifestyle as they had, 40,000 years ago.
Jules Dumoo, the eldest of the nine Aboriginal men here, a father to some of them and also a brother and uncle and guardian, sits in the dirt of the first cave where kangaroos now live but where his ancestors did also. He’s only about 45 years old but his own uncles and his father are now gone.
Sitting in the cave, he put his own hand to the rock-art, and it was as if their spirits were joined.
It made me realise that I was indeed a foreigner in another land. I also realised just how much the land has shaped us in various way – one, an insider with century deep knowledge, one who lives on in the spirits of ancestors, and who literally feels those spirits, and the other, an outsider coming belatedly to a land that they subsequently try to conquer, subdue and control – often with paranoid results.
In fact, this sense of difference was reinforced when I later visited Uluru (not Ayers Rock); the indigenous ask visitors to think about how they relate to place which also reminds of our relationship with the land… They ask, “is this a place to conquer or a place to connect with”.
All of which reminds me of Rachel Perkins’ One Night the Moon, which I reviewed recently as part of Cooper University’s Indigenous Week.
Perkins captures so poignantly the various relationships to landscape and how these relationship shape and create identities.
The theme songs capture the aborigines’ experience with the land which is one of respect and mutuality. Even more, the land is their being. The land is their soul. So instinctive and harmonious is their relationship, that without it, they would lose their heart and soul. This symbiotic and heartfelt emotion is conveyed in the respectful phrase, “the land is me”. Land determines identity and community relationships. In other words, the land is bigger than the sum of their various individual parts. For aborigines, the land also speaks to them about origins. Albert says, “my being’s here where I belong”.
This intimate century-deep knowledge is also translated into physical actions like tracking – a dual symbol of their spiritual closeness. A closeness that outsiders will never learn. Albert states, “I can track the shadow of the moon from hearts to the limits of the land”. This knowledge could have saved Emily’s life. He instinctively knows that Emily would have followed the light; he knew immediately that Jim and the team of settlers had taken the wrong path, which becomes a symbol of a different landscape imposed upon the indigenous landscape that was meant for dreaming.
In contrast, the settlers are strangers in a foreign land – both physically and psychologically; their knowledge is only skin deep and as a sign of their inexperience and difference, Emily dies. As Europeans, they are indeed intruders and seek to own, subdue and control the land. QUOTES>.. They destroy and kill and are killed in turn. Their catchcry “The land is mine” captures their desire to own this contested space. They erect signs, “no blacks on my land”. Jim tersely reminds Albert of the boundaries and the fences of white occupation, and he becomes increasingly defensive and aggressive – even paranoid. The family’s estrangement is evident in the starched, white clothes. As Perkins reminds viewers, their’s is a fearful attitude based on difference because they lack the century-deep knowledge that is ingrained in their indigenous counterparts. Their prior knowledge and experiences breed arrogance and a sense of superiority because they erect fences and own a gun. Contradictorily, they feel threatened and humiliated by a land that cannot be controlled. A daughter is lost. Jim commits suicide (“i drove kindness from my door”) and Rose sinks into depression.
Ironically, the more we seek to erect fences, and control the land, the more we are indeed shaped and controlled by the land in paranoid ways. The settlers erect fences to mark their territory and try to gain a sense of permanence by warding off the aborigines: “This land is mine; all the way to the old fence line”. Jim is not unlike Robert Frost’s neighbor in “Mending the Wall”, who likes to erect fences as a way of staking his territory and trying to ward off fear of the unknown. He believes that by hemming himself in he can better maintain control over the unknown. Finally, Jim sings, as he takes the gun to shoot himself, “I drove kindness from my door”. Perkins suggests that his raw brutal and hostile emotions have diminished him. Fear and anger triumph. In this case, the world indeed shapes him in soul-destroying ways. (Frost)
More recently, our experiences with dingos, some commentators suggest, reflect a similar sense of belatedness as the landscape bears down on us in hostile ways. The Age writer Martin Flanagan remarks, “for thousands of years, there has been a dingo dreaming at Uluru, a story of a dingo hostile to human beings and their infants.” He believes that the Azaria Chamberlain narrative stands as a “marker in the consciousness of a nation, comprised of people from all over the world, predominantly Europe, coming belatedly to terms with a land with an ancient history and a nature all its own.” Indeed, this sense of belatedness is certainly a factor in Jim’s experience with the land and his estrangement, leading to paranoia, influenced his response to Emily’s death. The inability to track a hostile path bespeaks his estrangement.
The land, too, Henry Lawson would suggest shape personalities over time. One must never lose sight of the sense of the ridiculous in the vast expanse of the bush. The hostile environment makes exacting demands upon the mother in Henry Lawson’s The Drover’s Wife. It shapes her personality as well as her relationships and changes her through dire necessity. Because of the dictates and challenges of her harsh environment that involves confronting floods, fires, snakes and bushrangers, the mother must suppress her emotional side and model strength and resilience. She often gives scant emotional support to her children because she is so preoccupied battling the adverse challenges of the bush. As Lawson states, “she loves her children but has no time to show it.” Although she has had to suppress her fantasies and girlish romantic dreams, they nevertheless emerge late at night when she sits, during occasionally lonely moments, and reads the Young Ladies’ Journal. “Her surroundings are not favourable to the development of the ‘womanly’ or sentimental side of nature”. Rather she has become cunning, resilient and harsh to survive.
Contrastingly, let us for a moment imagine this deep sense of spiritual connection that arises from placing one’s hand over that of one’s ancestors.
This shows according to Malouf in his pivotal Boyer Lecture (1998) that we are “makers of landscape” . The landscape often becomes a product of our imagination (internal life) and tells us a great deal about our identity. Albert sings, “I heard your spirit calling” which shows how he gains knowledge and wisdom from the spirit of the land. Similarly, In stories of the Dreamtime aborigines create myths about they who they are and where they come from. In most stories of the Dreaming, the Ancestor spirits created the animals, plants, rocks and other forms of the land. For example, Uluru is not just a sandstone rock to the aborigines as it is to many Westerners. In Aboriginal mythology Uluru is the Intelligent Snake from the higher spirit realms of the universe and has become a symbol of fertility – the father and mother of all forms of life. The past and memories of ancestors who were also part of the land become integral to the identity of indigenous people. Knowledge of the past and the experiences of ancestors shape their future in a way that maybe strange to white settlers. Albert sings about how they “walk with dignity of ancient knowledge and wisdom of spirit of the land” which gives them pride. As the dedication note to Charles Perkin states, “we know we cannot live in the past but the past lives in us”.
Stories and songs also capture the way individuals make sense of their landscape – often in creative and imaginative ways. For example, the nursery rhyme, “One Night the Moon” captures Emily’s child-like knowledge and her curiosity as she imagines going for a ride. “One Night The Moon came a choochooing by Called all the sleepers to come for a ride”. Her spontaneous and intuitive wonder prompt her escapade that ends in tragic circumstances. Her child like curiosity propels her interpretation and influences Emily’s star-struck approach.
Finally, as I wandered around the ancient caves in Perrederr I was reminded of the work undertaken by the Australian anthropologist William Stanner in the 1950s and ’60s who reminded us that land is a “white construct”. Our desire to control, subdue and own and even exploit the land shapes us in equally alienating ways. Instead, we are left ”tongueless and earless towards this other world of meaning and significance”. We need only of course fast-track to the modern developments in our suburban worlds to understand the products of our alienation to place. These days, the colonial attitude of the acquisition of land as power and wealth can be seen in the faceless landowners that sweep into communities, according to Glenn Ford, “the last man standing” in Plumpton and acquire and control livelihoods.
I am heartened by recent work undertaken by authors like the Richard Louv who has identified the nature deficit disorder among the younger generation. He recommends a return to nature-based programs and schemes in order to reconnect. According to the aut5hor in the Nature Principle, reconnection is vital to restore psychological health and wellbeing, once again recognising that we are products of the world in which we live and to deny, subdue control nature, diminishes the pleasure of us all. (the need to experience connections, enjoyment… the recognition of roots… )