Whose Country Is It Anyway?

Photo credit: Shubham Sharma

“Country isn’t a place. It’s actually not a place. You foster that with you ... It’s a space.”
-  Nardi Simpson, Yuwaalaraay storyteller 

“Country is everything… It’s not land and trees. It’s everything. It’s the stars, it’s the moonlight. It’s the possum fur. It’s the sound of the magpie. It’s the water. It’s the dew. It’s all people. And what we have in Australia at the moment is Country that has a great gulf within it. And that’s what needs to be healed.” – Melissa Lucashenko

Recently I was present at a conversation about Country (linked below) at the Sydney Writers’ Festival. Speaking were Melissa Lucashenko, a Goorie writer of Bundjalung and European heritage, and Yuwaalaraay storyteller Nardi Simpson. It was curated with tenderness and honesty by Nayuka Gorrie.

The strength, wisdom, generosity, and eloquence from Melissa, Nardi, and Nayuka electrified the room for a profound, moving, and sometimes hilarious hour.

Their spoken words had the quality of a spell, invoking a truer way of being with Country: and, for non-Indigenous people, a shedding of blinders.

As the session ended, the woman sitting in the chair next to me placed her face in her hands and wept.