312
Subtle Agroecologies
with them. These two rocks are 80 m long and 15 m high and have been weathered over hundreds of
millions of years. Partly submerged in the soil, they curve like a pair of giant blue whales breaching, replete with deep eye-sockets and blowholes. It is perhaps no coincidence that a pair of regal
wedge-tail eagles nest in a large ribbon-gum tree overlooking this Gurrubung.
There are other spirits out in the grasslands: nature spirits such as the Mirrakarbalee, the ancient
bird people. Children around campfres are told of these bird people, with their long, curved beaks and
strange legs, who dwell in Narrawallee ready to pounce on and steal any child who wanders off alone.
Central to this story is that most Australian indigenous people (who are animists) have evolved
a worldview called ‘totemism’, in which they form what seems to ‘Westerners’ to be mystical associations with plants, animals, natural features or phenomena, and even created objects. This runs
parallel with uni-lineally related human groups (such as lineages, clans and tribes). A person’s
totem can thus determine their name or group and can involve totemistic symbols and emblems,
taboos and prohibitions applied to their totem animal, plant and such. This connects them with a
large number of animals and natural objects. Again, living in the spiritual world is the basis of their
animistic existence and their close association with, and indivisibility from, nature.
The depth and complexity of the Australian Aboriginal worldview and its longevity in sustaining
and managing Australia’s varied ecosystems are due to evolved, interconnected and diverse features
such as The Dreaming, The Law or Tjukurpa, Dreaming Tracks, Songlines, and their associated
kinship arrangements that are linked to totems. All these are enmeshed in reinforcing Aboriginal
myth, story, song, dance and art.
This Aboriginal knowledge and its associated beliefs organised the management and nurturance of ‘country’. In a brilliant speech at the National Library in 2013, historian and scholar Bill
Gammage pointed out that the knowledge that guided Australian Aboriginals’ sustainable and
regenerative management of ‘country’ was gained both physically and mentally over millennia, but
also was a fusion with the spiritual in the land – with the religious. He said that the extraordinary
indigenous knowledge and understanding of country – this ‘mighty intellectual achievement…a
fusion of ecology and religions’ (Gammage, 2013: 2) – was because the Dreaming
Is grounded on ecological realities, whatever its social applications. It taught why the world must be
maintained; the land taught how. One made land care compulsory, the other made it rewarding. One
was spiritual and universal, the other practical and local. In their country, people lived the World of
the Dreaming, thronged with plants, animals and elements, each in their appointed localities. Not only
obvious features which Europeans named, but every pebble and ripple disclosed both the ecological
logic of its existence and the Dreaming’s presence.
Gammage (2013)
‘Dreaming site and ecological niche alike proved the need and reward in caring for country’ continued Gammage. He further explained that
Totems expressed this. In English ‘totem’ can mean just a badge, for Aboriginals it is a life force stemming from and part of a creator ancestor – the soul a person shares with that ancestor’s plant or animal
and its places and ceremonies. An emu man does not have emu as a mere badge: he is emu, of the same
soul and the same fesh. He is of its totem, not the reverse, and he must care for emu and its habitat, and
they must care for him. A man “born along the track of the wallaby” might say, when seeing a wallaby,
“that is me, that wallaby, that is me”, or “that is my father”.
Quote from a 1984 manuscript “Nintirringu” in Bradley (2001) 9
We modern Westerners may scoff at the idea of nature spirits and people’s ability to communicate
with and, even, encounter them. We may even dismiss indigenous people as primitive, superstitious
9 M de Graaf, ‘Nintirringu’, ms 1984; John Bradley 11 July 2001, cited by Gammage, 2013.
Subtle Agroecologies
with them. These two rocks are 80 m long and 15 m high and have been weathered over hundreds of
millions of years. Partly submerged in the soil, they curve like a pair of giant blue whales breaching, replete with deep eye-sockets and blowholes. It is perhaps no coincidence that a pair of regal
wedge-tail eagles nest in a large ribbon-gum tree overlooking this Gurrubung.
There are other spirits out in the grasslands: nature spirits such as the Mirrakarbalee, the ancient
bird people. Children around campfres are told of these bird people, with their long, curved beaks and
strange legs, who dwell in Narrawallee ready to pounce on and steal any child who wanders off alone.
Central to this story is that most Australian indigenous people (who are animists) have evolved
a worldview called ‘totemism’, in which they form what seems to ‘Westerners’ to be mystical associations with plants, animals, natural features or phenomena, and even created objects. This runs
parallel with uni-lineally related human groups (such as lineages, clans and tribes). A person’s
totem can thus determine their name or group and can involve totemistic symbols and emblems,
taboos and prohibitions applied to their totem animal, plant and such. This connects them with a
large number of animals and natural objects. Again, living in the spiritual world is the basis of their
animistic existence and their close association with, and indivisibility from, nature.
The depth and complexity of the Australian Aboriginal worldview and its longevity in sustaining
and managing Australia’s varied ecosystems are due to evolved, interconnected and diverse features
such as The Dreaming, The Law or Tjukurpa, Dreaming Tracks, Songlines, and their associated
kinship arrangements that are linked to totems. All these are enmeshed in reinforcing Aboriginal
myth, story, song, dance and art.
This Aboriginal knowledge and its associated beliefs organised the management and nurturance of ‘country’. In a brilliant speech at the National Library in 2013, historian and scholar Bill
Gammage pointed out that the knowledge that guided Australian Aboriginals’ sustainable and
regenerative management of ‘country’ was gained both physically and mentally over millennia, but
also was a fusion with the spiritual in the land – with the religious. He said that the extraordinary
indigenous knowledge and understanding of country – this ‘mighty intellectual achievement…a
fusion of ecology and religions’ (Gammage, 2013: 2) – was because the Dreaming
Is grounded on ecological realities, whatever its social applications. It taught why the world must be
maintained; the land taught how. One made land care compulsory, the other made it rewarding. One
was spiritual and universal, the other practical and local. In their country, people lived the World of
the Dreaming, thronged with plants, animals and elements, each in their appointed localities. Not only
obvious features which Europeans named, but every pebble and ripple disclosed both the ecological
logic of its existence and the Dreaming’s presence.
Gammage (2013)
‘Dreaming site and ecological niche alike proved the need and reward in caring for country’ continued Gammage. He further explained that
Totems expressed this. In English ‘totem’ can mean just a badge, for Aboriginals it is a life force stemming from and part of a creator ancestor – the soul a person shares with that ancestor’s plant or animal
and its places and ceremonies. An emu man does not have emu as a mere badge: he is emu, of the same
soul and the same fesh. He is of its totem, not the reverse, and he must care for emu and its habitat, and
they must care for him. A man “born along the track of the wallaby” might say, when seeing a wallaby,
“that is me, that wallaby, that is me”, or “that is my father”.
Quote from a 1984 manuscript “Nintirringu” in Bradley (2001) 9
We modern Westerners may scoff at the idea of nature spirits and people’s ability to communicate
with and, even, encounter them. We may even dismiss indigenous people as primitive, superstitious
9 M de Graaf, ‘Nintirringu’, ms 1984; John Bradley 11 July 2001, cited by Gammage, 2013.