One of the most striking things I remember being told about the University of Melbourne was that, if I was lucky, I might catch a glimpse of an eel through the drains on the Parkville campus. The university stands on the lands of the Kulin nation and before the uni was built, the Bouverie Creek was an important migration channel for eels. But, even though the creek had been drained and covered over, the eels still pass through, underground, and (mostly) out of sight, a reminder that Country survives, and continues to tell its story. As Barkandji woman Zena Cumpston writes1,
The eels, with their ancient knowing and belonging, tell us that waterway is still there, still holding its stories, still a conduit for old, old ways, just hidden deep down under a relatively newly-inanimate landscape.
The eels
This place is churned up
In constant motion
Heading somewhere off screen
And it catches you
Because it gleams
As it hits the light
But then it’s down into murky depths
And off somewhere
I came for the light
Caught by glimpses of silky bodies rising out of the water
And tried to ground myself
But soon found my feet sodden in black waters
A thousand slippery bodies
Corralling me on somewhere
No firm feet here
In this seismic rippling place
Only drowning beneath churning waters
Sometimes coming up for air
And flashing to others a sign that it’s ok
Everything that moves will catch the light sometimes
For me, the eels seemed to capture my own feelings as an Aboriginal person navigating white institutions, whether they be universities, governments or even certain social spaces. You know the path you should be on, but the crushing weight of colonisation hems you in, makes the journey near impossible through pipes and hidden waterways. You end up being corralled somewhere you may not want to go. And in the darkness, you’ll catch a glimpse of another eel, another blackfella, and they’ll be shimmering. You’ll think they are navigating these white systems with ease, and you fool yourself that if you follow them you’ll get where you need to go. But once you reach them in the darkness you realise they too are flailing, they too are trying to find a way out of the ever-tightening pipework of western knowledge systems.
Last year, my cousin Amber presented to Indigenous postgraduate students at the University of Melbourne, imparting tips for writing. Her first tip was to remember that English is a foreign language to all Aboriginal people, even if it is your first language. Language derives from culture, and English is not our culture, the words are not capable of expressing our ideas.2
That’s why the term ‘Indigenous ecological knowledge’ sticks in my throat. I use it sometimes out of laziness, but it reduces our system of knowledge into something discrete, rational, linear and easy to slot into existing western frames. The research that gains the most interest in this field—noting that even this research is often dismissed or devalued by white academics—tends to be ecological knowledge with clear cause and effect: cultural burning prevents wildfires; native plants treat illnesses. But Indigenous knowledge is more than this, and also not this at all. It is non-linear, cyclical, holistic. Cultural burning doesn’t just prevent wildfires, it heals Country.
References
1. Zena Cumpston, ‘Eel story/ Bouverie Creek’ quoted in Zena Cumpston ‘Cities are Country too: Illuminating Aboriginal perspectives of biodiversity in urban environments’, Report prepared by the Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub, 2020, 5.↩
2.Ambelin Kwaymullina, University of Melbourne online seminar with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander postgraduates, 8 December 2020. ↩
3. Joe Brown, cited in Sarah Yu, Ngapa Kunangkul: Living Water, Report prepared by the Centre for Anthropological Research, UWA, 1999, 13. ↩
Joe Brown, a traditional owner of the Great Sandy Desert tells us that:
Every jila (living waterhole) has its own songs, stories and skin group. A watersnake lives in the jila, he was human before he turned into the snake and went into water. Without the snake underneath the water will go away. Our old people know how to sing and talk to the snake.3
Joe’s knowledge of animate Country is also ‘Indigenous ecological knowledge’, though it is less likely to be recognised as such, because it can’t be proven within a knowledge system that demands certain forms of evidence.
One of my greatest concerns about the growing interest in Indigenous knowledges is that they will only be recognised when they can be verified through western frameworks. Books like Dark Emu and The Biggest Estate on Earth, did a great job of challenging colonial assumptions about Aboriginal society, showing we had agriculture, aquaculture and housing4. But, non-Indigenous people can also read these books and reinforce their assumptions about the superiority of western ways of doing: see, they were smart like us after all. In convincing non-Indigenous people that their racist attitudes are wrong, we often come to meet them at their window, instead of taking them outside their worldview to see the value in other forms of society and other ways of relating to land.
I remember at law school being taught that one of the reasons the Mabo case was successful was because the Meriam people had ‘gardens’ and are even described in the case as ‘devoted gardeners’5. In effect, the non-Indigenous judges saw aspects of their own culture reflected in the Meriam people. They seemed to exhibit a model of land management, ownership and ‘civilisation’ that the judges could understand. This precedent made it harder for other communities to prove title, when there were no gardens, no systems seemingly akin to western land management, and only deep spiritual and cultural knowledge of Country.
When I lazily refer to something as ‘Indigenous ecological knowledge’, what I’m really talking about are the stories of Country. As my mother and grandmother write:
For Aboriginal people, the land is full of stories, and we are born from our Mother the land, into these stories. To know Country, you must know her stories, and you must listen to what she tells you. Country holds stories even if we forget to listen to them, even if it is hard to recognise them through the buildings and the roads and the drains.6
Emu Sky reveals some of these hidden stories of Country. Take, for instance, the linocut which inspired the name for the exhibition, Badger Bates’ Emu Sky (2008). It depicts the emu constellation viewed from Barkandji country, which is formed not by the stars, but by the dark space between them. It reminds us that there is meaning in the dark or unseen spaces, but to see it, we must cast off the constricted frameworks of western knowledge systems which look only for the light.
Take also Michael-Shawn Fletcher’s sediment sequences. These long tubes of sediment extracted from lakes in the course of his research into environmental change are a visual depiction of the layers of deep time and the stories of Country that sit one on top of the other. The exhibition not only reveals hidden stories, but invites us to share our own with the river red gums, reminding us that Country is always listening and will always hold our stories.
As Aboriginal people, it is easy to feel like you are drowning in western systems, and your own stories are masked by the swirl of western narratives that continue to pile high. And yet, like Country, we continue to find our way through these systems and survive. We are born into stories, and we must remember to listen to Country and pass them on. To keep her strong, we must find our way out of the waterpipes and back to the waterways.
4. See Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident, Magabala Books, Broome, 2014; and Bill Gammage, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia, Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest, 2011.↩
5. Mabo v Queensland (No 2) (1992) 175 CLR 1, especially paras 3 and 33.↩
6. Jill Milroy and Gladys Milroy, ‘Different ways of knowing: trees are our families too’ in S. Morgan, T. Mia and B. Kwaymullina (eds.), Heartsick for Country: Stories of Love, Spirit and Creation, 24. ↩
Aurora is a Palyku woman from Western Australia and is currently the Senior Project Manager and Policy Advisor at the Secretariat for the Coalition of Peak Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Organisations. She was previously the Institute Manager of the Indigenous Knowledge Institute at the University of Melbourne and has held roles across the private, public, and not-for-profit sector focusing on Indigenous policy and leadership development. Aurora has a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws from the University of Western Australia and a Masters of Public Policy from the University of Oxford.
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