We’re thrilled to have the amazing Sarah Burr as this month’s Country to Canberra guest blogger! She’s shared a brilliant post with us in honour of NAIDOC Week.
Sarah Burr is one inspirational lady! She has a B. Environmental Management in Sustainable Development (Hons) from the University of Queensland, a Grad. Cert. in Public Administration from the University of Canberra, and a Master of Agribusiness via distance through the University of Melbourne. Sarah works full time at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in Indigenous Affairs, is a member of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Advisory Council, a foundation member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Canberra Hub, and plays the violin in the National Capital Orchestra. Sarah believes women can do anything.
Our Country
Written By Sarah Burr
What do you think about when you hear the term ‘country’? Do you think of sunburnt land and sweeping plains as described in Dorothea Mackellar’s My Country? Perhaps you think of your family’s rural property with its paddocks, fences, and trees. Maybe you picture a particular type of person who lives on the land. But have you ever heard Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people refer to ‘country’?
In Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, the concept of country is integral to identity. In this sense, country isn’t an easily defined idea of dirt, rocks, plants, animals, fence boundaries, or buildings; it is instead both a physical and spiritual location to which people belong. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives of country are constructed in the dreaming, defined by language groups, and determined by culture. In essence, country is very important to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples because it represents cultural traditions, dreaming stories, physical locations, boundaries between different language groups, historical events, and hope for the future that generations yet to come will also be able to find an attachment to culture and community through the land and sea.
So, why am I telling you all this? This week is NAIDOC Week (3-10 July). NAIDOC stands for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee, originating in the 1920s with Aboriginal groups seeking to increase awareness in the wider community of the status and treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. NAIDOC Week is a time to celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, culture and achievements, and an opportunity to recognise the contributions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to Australian society.
The theme for NAIDOC Week 2016 is ‘songlines’, an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander concept that is intricately connected to country. Songlines are the living story of the Australian landscape. During the dreaming, ancestral spirits created the earth, sky, people, animals, rivers, lakes, plants and land formations. As a result, dreaming tracks crisscross Australia and trace the journeys of the ancestral spirits who sung the land into life during the dreaming. For example, a song about a river details its creation from source to sea. Along the river’s route, it may encounter animals, plants, boulders and waterfalls, and each of these influences the direction and force of the river. The river’s songline is both its physical course (like a verbal or musical map) and its origin story from the dreaming.
Historically, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people would only sing the songlines on their country, but the songline in one language might join up with the songline of the next language group over, who would continue singing it to the edge of their country, and so on. The most famous ancient trade route in Australia follows connected songlines and reaches from the Gulf of Carpentaria in Queensland, through Central Australia, to the Great Australian Bight in South Australia. Today, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people still sing some of these songlines as part of traditional ceremonies, however, due to loss of language and culture (due to displacement, child removals, and other tragic social policies) many songlines have vanished.
The land on which you live, whether it is a rural property or in the middle of a city, has a songline. This NAIDOC Week, you might like to research the country you live on, and discover the dreaming and songlines which created it.