Caring for Our Country Part 1 (alternative video The Professor )Sunday 1 August 2010, 1:30pm ABC1
Connection to the country is the universal touchstone of Indigenous Australians. Caring for our Country is also a Federal Government program designed to protect Australia's unique natural environment and manage natural resources.
From the sharing of traditional knowledge about plants and their medicinal qualities in NSW to the protection of the endangered sea turtle in remote Northern Territory, Indigenous people are working together to preserve knowledge and culture. These 10 five minute stories, to be broadcast over two weeks, show Indigenous people at the forefront of protecting and managing Australia's unique, natural environment and resources.
MIRIAM COROWA: Hello. I'm Miriam Corowa. Welcome to Message Stick.
Over the next two weeks, we have a wonderful collection of short films from across the country, which show Indigenous Australians at the forefront of protecting and managing Australia's unique natural environment.
So whether it's from the sharing of traditional knowledge about plants and their medicinal qualities in New South Wales to the protection of endangered sea turtles in the remote Northern Territory, Indigenous people are working together to preserve this important knowledge and culture.
I hope you enjoy these films, which were made as part of the federal government's Caring For Country program.
Listen to the Ngarrindjeri Speak. The Coorong, South Australia.
GEORGE TREVORROW: I think we're in unprecedented times in regards to the drought issues and all the other associated issues that affect the Ngarrindjeri people. I think the public of Australia deserves to know the stories that come out of the 'bottom of the water' people, the Ngarrindjeri.
MAN: Coorong Ngarrindjeri.
GEORGE TREVORROW: The Coorong is about 150km long. In our language we say 'Coorong', which means 'long neck of water'. Ngarrindjeri people have been living along this Coorong since it was created, since it was formed. And all throughout the Coorong, you'll find our history, our heritage.
MEL KOOLMATRIE: Culturally, what do you think is important about the water and landcare in general?
Ngarrindjeri people, we are water people. We've always lived by the waters. We've got the ocean over there, we've got the Coorong. We've got these lakes and we've got the river. This is the source and root of our culture.
NARRATOR: Our river don't flow anymore. There's no more current. Our lakes are drying up. Our Coorong's dying. The southern lagoon of the Coorong is dead.
MAN: There's not much hope of anything living there at the present time with the salinity of the water being about six times saltier than the sea.
NARRATOR: Our connection to country is that we've been taught that the lands and waters is a living body. And, unfortunately, everything's unbalanced at the moment.
EADIE CARTER: What is your perspective of the water issue?
It is a passion of mine to document what we're going through at the moment and to document the elders talking about their feelings and what they're going through at this time of the drought, the water problem.
GEORGE TREVORROW: The teaching and the passing down of knowledge and of cultural practice and traditions... Us older Ngarrindjeri men and women who have had to come to terms with electronic technology, we've gotta allow our young ones to use that. So we're sitting there in that TV looking at them, telling them their culture.
EADIE CARTER: I'm really enjoying the filmmaking project. Just to get our voices, as Ngarrindjeri people.
DEREK WALKER: It's good to see some young people involved in processes around filmmaking and also trying to highlight natural resource management.
WOMAN: My oldest baby is four and my baby is three and I can't take her to the same places that I did, that my mum and my nana and my aunties took me to. I can't, cos they're not there cos of the saltwater... ..taking over these freshwater lakes.'
SECOND WOMAN: It's just really sad because now it's disappearing, I'm thinking, "How can I teach when I have kids?" And when my children have children, how are they gonna teach them about their culture, if the water's gone? But to document it would be a good way so then she can actually see me and my grandmother and my aunties still teaching and keeping it alive.
MAN: We're saying to the young ones now, "We understand this world that you're living in. And that we can't give to you what we were lucky enough to receive".
OLDER MAN: The fear is, as the elders always preached to us, once the 'ngaityes' go, the totems, then so do the Ngarrindjeri. And so there is a great fear among Ngarrindjeri people, at the moment, that that is on the way.
WOMAN: I just really hope this makes a difference, because I don't want this to go. It's just too beautiful and it'll just really hurt.'
MAN: We've gotta try and find a way of respecting all living things around us, respecting our lands and our waters, respecting each other. And I suppose that respect comes down to don't be greedy, don't tell lies and don't take anymore than what you really need. If we could all live like that we'd have a better future ahead of us.
Back on Country. The Kimberley, Western Australia.
MAN: We're down here at this waterhole just to observe birds. Looking at Gouldian finches, purple-crowned fairy-wren, and other wildlife, trying to see if the numbers are growing again.
PHIL PALMER: I work with these guys to do land management activities on their country. With good fire management and some good monitoring hopefully we'll be able to record the recovery of the Gouldian finch on Karunjie Station.
ANDREW WUNGUNDIN: If we can control the burning then we'll probably see more and more of them coming back.
MAN: We're in the helicopter, we fly along. And what we're doing is dropping these little things out. We inject them with ethylene glycol and they get very hot. And eventually this catches fire. Throwing out fire incendiaries and burning the land can help protect their nesting sites. One of the instrumental things about the ranger program is the ability for rangers to engage their own people. Yesterday, the traditional owners went up in the choppers.
INDIGENOUS MAN: I was happy to go up in the chopper with my father. He told me things about this land. And I was happy to do burning and at the same time learn about the boundary and how far we spread.
PHIL PALMER: It's important to get everyone on country because that's when the stories start flowing from here, you know?
ANGELO D'ANNA: There's a lot of stories about this place. It's just that there's been a bit of a break between the elders to where I am today with the culture wise. While we have these kind of projects out here, we hope they come along, share the stories, get the knowledge and take it from there.
NARRATOR: It's really great to bring the two generations here, to ensure that there's not that big gap in knowledge.'
NONI JARIOT: They like coming here. What I'm trying to do is keep all the young ones here, the workers and the boys, and do the bushwalking. Might be some bush tucker, bush medicine.
NARRATOR: The young people, they're creating their own stories through the ranger program and the work they're doing. But they want that strong connection. In order to enhance that connection they need the old people here to tell them about their lives.'
GORDON SMITH: Used to get up at five o'clock in the morning, used to go up there. Most of the mob...in the morning.
MAN: At least if they're on the country where they're gonna talk about more information coming to them, you look around and there's these little places that bring back memory.
NONI JARIOT: Across the creek from there. That's where people do the dancing at corroboree and...
MAN: Just sitting around having a yarn with them. The more we questioned them, the more we pull things out of them and the more and more things we learn.
NONI JARIOT: You want a a good night's sleep tonight? Well, you better go in that smoke, hunt the spirit away.
NARRATOR: We've come into this beautiful bit, we're up here in habitat, doing a survey for the purple-crowned fairy-wren. They're an indicator of really good river health. And this is a healthy bit of river. We use a common technique called playback, which is just playing the male territorial call.
SECOND MAN: Two females...and one juvenile.
FIRST MAN: We step back five metres and we have a look at them. We sit for five minutes, then we move on to the next place.
NARRATOR: Late-season mustering last year drove fire, wildfire through right to the river's edge and has burnt out a large patch of freshwater mangroves and pandanus and paperbarks here.
SECOND MAN: This is the only area they live, the pandanus trees. We're just trying to keep them safe and keep the place healthy.
NARRATOR: We've been surveying through that burnt area and not finding any rings. Our main aim for this trip is to check on the population of the wrens and then put in strategic fire breaks around the outside of the habitat.
SECOND MAN: Every year goes by there's more and more things we're getting happening on the land. More or less, getting people back into land, as well.'
NARRATOR: We're here to protect those crucial resources for the finch. And, at the same time, bring back the families of people who belong to this country, give them an opportunity to take on a lead role in the management of Karunjie.
SECOND MAN: Coming back to country, hearing the wildlife and really seeing how it changes and that, and hearing our elders telling a story about they've done in their past... The more I come here, the more it feels like home.
# Ooh ooh ooh-ooh. #
Circle of Life - South Australia, New South Wales, Northern Territory.
Art is significant for Aboriginal culture and identity and traditions that have been practised for thousands of years are still being passed from generation to generation.
DANIELLA CHEDZLEY: My name's Daniella. Originally, I'm a Ngampa woman. I've been up here in the Newcastle area for 20 years now. And it's been a very healthy experience for myself and my family.
JESS WEGENER: This is a place that me and my mum and my brothers come down to spend some time together and collect some reeds, go fishing. It's where we can sit down together and just weave. Weaving is a part of what me and my mum like to do with our culture.
INDIGENOUS WOMAN: My grandmother did a lot of this around me as a child. So it's a really important part of their lifestyle. Everything they made they used, it was based on survival. Her mother was a weaver and her mother was a weaver. And here we are today, a cycle of us in the family are weavers. My great-great grandmother was a weaver, so it's passed on.
WENDY SIMON: When we go out bush, we collect the colour. We tell them young ones to come and see what we're doing. They come and help us collect some colour. And we give it to the old people. And when young ones go and sit and watch them, how they...you know, weave it.
YOUNG WOMAN: A bunch of women met with other weavers. The women from the Northern Territory came down, as well, to spend some time weaving and learning different techniques. Learning how to weave and produce something that my people would have made before me is pretty incredible, cos it's just really connected me to my traditional life.
OLDER WOMAN: A lot of time goes into weaving, though. A lot of time goes into collecting the rushes. And it's precious time. To sit and weave and tell stories, it's very valuable time. It's peaceful, it's therapy.
YOUNG WOMAN: I've become a bit of a basket case. If I get stressed out at home, my boys, they give me my space when I'm weaving. I'm able to actually create something that I can utilise at home or give to neighbours, give to my uncles and aunties. And it's a cultural exchange. That's how I use my weaving. Weaving is all about connecting. You can see within the weave itself that every single bit is connected. Every single time that you start something and you finish it you end up with such a sense of pride and you feel as if you've not just accomplished something, but you've actually achieved it. So within your story of your weaving is the story of what you've actually been talking about, while you have been weaving.
ANOTHER YOUNG WOMAN: The weaving gives me a chance to relax and interact with my mother on a one-to-one basis and it gives us a sense of achievement when we finish a basket, that you've accomplished something that means a lot to you.
WENDY SIMON: The older ones and the young ones, my nieces and nephews, are all a part of the support in collecting these rushes. We make a day of it and the children really enjoy helping. If I sight any rushes I point that out to the children, so that they know that if I'm not with them, they're able to go and collect from that spot. It's very important for the children to be a part of it and to carry it on.'
WOMAN: Weaving has never been held just to women. It's always been holistic, so everybody comes together and does their weaving. A lot of the time that around a campfire, middle of the day, and you sit there and you weave. You talk about what's going on, you talk about where you start. So you decide what you're actually going to make. Passion is shown by your work. And at the beginning you can see how wonky this is. By halfway through it you can see the chance in actual styles and you can see where I've been cranky and where the boys have been cranky. Everything changes. So you can see within the weaving where a person is. We've got this little spot and we're hiding this little spot. And we're keeping it safe and we're utilising it because it needs us and we need the fact that it's here. So while ever it's here we'll still keep gathering and still keep talking and keeping our family and our culture alive. # Ooh ooh ooh-ooh. #
Yanyuwa. Gulf of Carpentaria, Northern Territory.
MAN: The sea itself and the land, it nurtures us, you know? Gives us what we live off. It has been since time began. We're so proud to be Yanyuwa people, knowing that we work with the country. We look after it and it looks after you.
SECOND MAN: For Yanyuwa mob, enchantment, respect, trust, family - they're the things that actually bring about practical outcomes and that is healthy country. That feeds back into healthy people. You talk to them old people and there's these really sophisticated stories about who can take certain species at what time, according to family, the four clans, and really sophisticated natural resource management in white fella parlance.
LEONARD NORMAN: These clan groups are called Wurdaliya, Wuyaliya, Rrumburriya and Mambaliya-Wawukarriya. They've got special tasks that they do. They have special areas they look after. Each one of those clans has got their own certain work and purpose, how to fix things up in country, how to look after it. But when we come together it all fits and we have this one big plan together. It makes it perfect for everybody to utilise their skills towards making it better for this country. That is why the ranger groups, we work it out together, each and every one of them. Each boy has their own things, what they can do and the other person can do other stuff. But when this comes together and they help each other out they'll make it happen for everybody else.
STEPHEN JOHNSON: There are no real bosses here. I've got skills that Leonard hasn't got. Leonard's got skills I haven't got. We put them all together and we get a really good working relationship. With this part of the country there's no baseline data. Very little scientific information whatsoever, but there's thousands and thousands of years of close observation and finely grained knowledge from Yanyuwa traditional owners.' # (WOMAN SINGS IN LOCAL LANGUAGE)
STEPHEN JOHNSON: A lot of scientists are starting to hook into that. They can see the value of that knowledge, at last. It's been a long struggle to get that message through. We've set up a junior ranger program and I think there's a continuity where them old people are passing on what they know to us. It's then, to us, to pass that information through, that knowledge that goes back at least 8,000 years in this country and probably a lot longer than that, in fact.
NICHOLAS FITZPATRICK: I grew up out bush, I grew up on my mum's side, with my grandfather and my nana and learnt a lot of things about culture and language and ceremony and law. I went to Darwin for high school and I finished Year 12 and studied Conservation and Land Management. I always wanted to be a ranger since high school. I went to Alice Springs. I was doing a Tourism and Rangering course down there. I finally got the job down here. I've been a sea ranger for a year and a half now.
MAN: It's a small one but it does a bit of damage.
SECOND MAN: The Yanyuwa mob, they are so grateful that we're taking kids out to the island, we're showing them country, we give them language for each and every place that they visit. Cos it's been carried down from generation to generation just the knowledge and the language and everything and the culture together, it makes it strong for the Yanyuwa people. It carries them in their heart.
LEONARD NORMAN: The areas you find the strongest biodiversity values are the areas where countrymen are living on country. So it's no accident that those species are healthy, the numbers are high. It's because people are living there. That wilderness thing, that's just nonsense, you know? This is managed country, people look after this country.
STEPHEN JOHNSON: Kids are busy on these video games and everything else whereas before, old people used to sit us down and speak to us in a real meaningful way and telling us, "These are the things that you gotta keep on carrying on for you and your kids all the way through".
NICHOLAS FITZPATRICK: When we moved away when I was ten, I wanted to come back ever since. If I hadn't found a job here I wouldn't have come back. I probably would have ended up doing... I don't know. ..an apprenticeship in something. Probably mechanics. My dad kept annoying me in Alice Springs to get into the mines, but I kept telling him to wait so I'd get the job. And, yeah, I got it. I took off back home. Being Indigenous rangers on your own country, looking after it, you know, that's the best thing. Jobs for new generations to come. A lot of kids, back when I was at primary school, didn't get the chance to come out here, there was no rangers. Now with the junior rangers, it's good because we've got rangers to bring the kids out and educate them about their land.
LEONARD NORMAN: I'm so proud to be one of the ranger men. And with the other boys, I'm proud of them, as well. Cos this is something that gives us some pride in ourselves, knowing that we're part of this program that's gonna help this place, keep it strong as it were in the old days. # Ooh ooh ooh-ooh. #
A Shared Future. Western District, Victoria.
DAVID ALLEN: The Eel Fest, well, it began with Neil Murray wanting to have a walk across the country. Neil Murray, a singer-songwriter who lives in Lake Bolac. And this is the fifth year it's been going. So he was very keen to walk across country, as though there were no fences, like the early Indigenous people did for thousands of years.'
NEIL MURRAY: The Healing Walk is inspired by the fact that Indigenous people used these waterways as pathways all through the land. We try to emulate the way they had a dialogue with the country as they moved through it.
DAVID ALLEN: So he got a group of people together to develop that process. And I happened to be part of that, cos they were walking right past our house. So I got involved right in the early stages and that was the beginning of the Lake Bolac Eel Fest. And Neil's idea was just to have a walk up to the lake from the sea, sit down on the edge of the lake and have a jam session and a barbecue.
BRETT CLARKE: I feel privileged to be on this walk cos it takes me back to where my old people roamed, along these rivers with the hunting and the gathering and just to reconnect to the homelands what my people used to roam on is dear to my heart.
DAVID ALLEN: Lake Bolac used to be a really important meeting place for early Australians, where they used to come and gather around the shores of the lake after the opening rains every year. And that was when the eels began their life cycle, heading out to sea. Because the eels were plentiful, there was plenty of food. It's also a border area for a number of different tribes so they'd all gather here and they'd have weddings and ceremonies and you've got lots of partying going on.
LENNY CLARK: You could just imagine, years ago you'd find camp fires all around this lake. And people would have been having festivities like we've got here, like the great meetings for cultural exchange, for weddings, for a gathering of eels and food and also for trade.
DAVID ALLEN: In a small way we're trying to emulate that gathering of people who are interested in the environment. The social aspects and having fun is what the Eel Fest was all about.
UNA ALLEMDER: I think in the first year we were viewed with suspicion and amazement by a large proportion of the population who wondered what on earth we were doing. They were used to the B&S Ball, held over on the other side of the lake, but this was something quite different. Because the whole point of the festival is to draw attention to the issues of the environment and the waterways and the lake and also the Indigenous issues and the history of the district, the forum is a good way to collect some thoughts from various people, so we've had various topics over the years but all around environment issues. This year, there's Climate Energy In The Future. We've invited keynote speakers Mark Wootton of Jigsaw Farms and Neil Henson, a futurist. And they had two very different takes on the topic. That drew a lot of appreciative comment from the audience.
SPEAKER: I'd argue that Australia is the most vulnerable developed country to the ravages of climate change.
MAN: Everyone's on different levels of awareness so, having got that connection in whatever form it is, and whether it's people from the city who are walking on our walk, they can come out and they are caring for the country and they're walking across the country very gently.
UNA ALLEMDER: On the Healing Walk, I was fortunate to be able to walk across a station which is a property my grandfather managed early last century. So it was rather nice to be able to see that and think about where my father might have grown up when he was a little boy and played games and walked across paddocks, so that was pretty nice.
MAN: It's always a very emotional time for us to come here and stand here. Your imagination can just envisage how it would have been in the old days. All the groups, all the family clans, would have been all around the edge of the lake. It's great to see that they get Aboriginal people involved, because we have a vast knowledge to offer to the general community insofar as conservation of our traditional homelands as spirit lands. And we want to preserve it as close as possible to its original state.
DAVID ALLEN: The evidence of Aborigines with the scarred trees and tools and things that are found along the waterways and that the walkers come across is evidence that they've had a long and strong history of Indigenous occupation here. We, as white farmer landowners or land managers, have a connection to the country because we've been farming it. And often long and strong family histories, putting in trees and building houses and rearranging our farms the way we want to. It's a very important connection and that's one of the aspects of the Eel Festival that we're trying to develop and improve knowledge of is this connection with the country. And if you've got connection with the country, then you can start caring for the country better or caring for the country full stop.
MIRIAM COROWA: Great stuff. And we'll have another five examples of Caring For Country next week. If you'd like to watch any of these films again, then go to our website: And you can leave us a message there too by clicking on the 'Have Your Say' icon. See you next week.