The Land I Come From & Land I'm On - Reconciling Place & Relationship
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My ancestors hail from England and Ireland (mostly).
My complexion and bodys’ general intolerance to heat certainly confirms that for me.
And yet, I’m here. In Australia.
Arrived by way of British colonisation, a lineage full of convict stories, I am the result of people being offered this foreign land as an alternate option to death.
For these ancestors of mine, I ponder:
What roots can you fuse with a land when you don't actually want to be there?
When the landscape seems so harsh, and all you’ve ever known is back at the start of a one way boat trip?
What connection can you spark when you arrive with a colonists mindset, seeing the land as yours to own, take and exploit?
After this initial migration, subsequent generations perhaps started to feel more similar to me I can only guess. Born here. All they know. Did they feel like I do, that within their viscera Australia is their home?
Within my family tree, whatever new roots were shooting down into this land, they grew a little deeper as the generations past and more people spent time here.
But I am here today, the result of one to two hundred years of my ancestors walking this country, and my roots still feel shallow.
Because that time pales in comparison to the age and timeline of the Earth.
Because it’s but a fleeting moment compared to the tens of thousands of years that my ancestors lived upon their indigenous Northern European lands.
Because the quality of this colonist-based connection is so flimsy compared to the true relationship that my ancestors had with the land that they and I are actually indidgenous to.
But I am here today.
Privileged to be here.
So I ask myself, in benefit to the Earth and me, how can I deepen these roots?
How can I enter into right relationship with this land?
It feels like my duty and right, being here as a result of colonisation, to try and develop a different relationship, made up of reciprocity, listening, co-creation and tending.
Because if I don't start consciously building and strengthening my roots, how will the people to come after me ever start to feel this place is deeply their home? To be revered, celebrated and protected at all costs.
Green rolling Irish hills, falling mists and alpine forests conduct a deep Knowing resonance within my bones. I feel their call, because of how much of me comes from there.
Could I even comprehend how many hours my ancestors would’ve spent walking on their land, farming and tending it, foraging it, celebrating amidst it, creating life, mourning death and living alongside it?
I feel this resonance in my bones for those European lands because of how inextricably linked and connected my ancestors were to their part of the Earth.
I only feel that connection because they were so connected.
How can Australia, the land all around us, ever truly thrive:
If we do not become as inextricably linked?
If we maintain this colonist mindset of ownership and extraction?
If we do not sit at the feet of First Nations people who DO have this link and connection and listen to them?
So yes, how can the land ever thrive if we don’t connect.
But also, how can we as humans living here ever truly thrive if we don’t connect with the land.
I want to acknowledge the deep roots I have in lands across the sea, that I’ve barely walked upon, because of the people who came before me.
And I want to acknowledge the shallow roots all non-indidgenous people who live in Australia have with this land, simply by living here, and how much it is our task to strengthen and grow them.
Each spring and summer especially, as my pale skin burns under this hot sun, I wonder how I can make sense of it all within me. The history in my bones, and the current land and task at hand.
Whilst also celebrating it, my deep DNA still seems bewildered sometimes by the humid heat, rolling surf and dry scrub.
But we’ve inherited the job of entering into a true and important relationship with this land, listening to it and tending to it.
It is our exchange for having the privilege of being able to call it home.
And as we do this work, our roots will grow - ever longer and more pliable.
Till the resonance of this land down our lineage hums so strongly, so resonantly, it is revered like the sacred Earth that it is. It becomes the land the generations after me feel so so connected to, it is knitted into their bones just as the UK is to me now.
So I am always pondering, and I invite you to do the same:
How can I land more deeply on this land?
How can I listen to her with more presence?
How can I always arrive to work WITH her?
How can I preserve and regenerate her?
How can I invest in this land with my time, energy and love?