My ancestors came by boat to this country
With arrogance and violence and ignorance
They made their home without regard for the spirit of this land
Without respect or care for her people
In 200 years very little has changed
Always was, always will be, aboriginal land.
My placenta is buried under a lemon scented gum in Mitcham
I spent my childhood holidays among granite mountains and wide beaches
Ormond point oversaw my first spiritual awakening
The great trees have guided and comforted me
When I have travelled I have yearned for these landscapes
This land has raised me, it is in my blood and bones, in the depths of my psyche.
The horror of our history is overwhelming
As much as I feel love and connection to this land
I am as a child playing by the ocean of indigenous understandings
All my life I’ve carried an ancestral guilt
The deeper I connect to this land
The more keenly I feel the damage done to the first peoples
The more I feel the personal loss of the knowledge they hold.
I love this land and I feel its claim on my heart
But it doesn’t belong to me
I can’t own the spirit of the land
I can only listen and serve and pay my respects
My spiritual connection gives me no rights
Only responsibilities.
And if I ever have the privilege of sitting with the elders
I would want them to know
As deeply as I love this place
I would give it up for our healing.
What I feel called to do is harder than that.
In giving my heart over to this country
I open myself to all the grief and love it has to offer
I feel the injustice of the ongoing process of colonisation
I see how my own spirit is dominated, controlled and subdued
Entwined with the land I love.
Humans are nature 
endearing touching
of the earth!
may future generations
know better days 🙂
Timely for me. I’ve been thinking about similar themes lately.
I loved your image of the child by the ocean of indigenous understandings that she can never understand. The same applies to our lost inheritance of indigenous European understandings. It’s like we don’t really belong deeply to any place or people. We inhabit the world in a strange, shallow way. When I feel into this I feel tremendous loss and grief.
Thank you for sharing your feelings Ruth, a strange, shallow way is exactly how the modern world feels to me. The aspen trees still live in my heart, they opened me up to love again. I find that reassuring, that i can connect with the more than human where ever i am.
I relate with that feeling very much, Ruth, well put.