Dumbo Feather – July 2019

there’s part of me that thinks just a protection thing or a coping mechanism, but I do believe

that by focusing on them, they expand. They’re things like the work that’s happening in fire

management. How we burn off to prevent bushfires and the different processes involved

with that. It’s so much more than a physical task. It’s a deep connection to the land that

you’re on and knowing the boundaries and the proper lines and where one flammable part

stops and it’s this big intricate mosaic pattern of networks. There’s also so much amazing

work happening in places where fracking has been poisoning the water system. But the

community are not going through that in a way that they’re playing a passive victim. Whilst

they’re going through it they’re also on the front foot of exploring new technologies and

moving through it and within their own sovereignty and autonomy working through that

issue rather than that, “Oh my gosh, this has been done to us, we have no power!” There’s

examples all over the country where beautiful, beautiful things are happening in terms of

land restoration and caring for each other. I think about the old Lore, and what the old Lore

would say to us is that we are deliberate and conscious creators. We’re very good manifesters.

So whilst you don’t want to ignore the problems and be ignorant and walk all over people and

deny the suffering, at the same time you can’t focus so much on that stuff that it’s all you can

see. Because then the collective consciousness is starting to create a reality that you just can’t

actually get out of.

I guess for me I could never be poor enough

to stop other people from being poor. I could

never be sick enough to stop other people from

being sick. Or I could never be unwell enough

in terms of mental health to stop other people

from feeling that unwellness. So tending to

my inner world and actually making sure that

the real work is being done. And that the real

work is making sure that my vibration and

my sense of peace and belonging is the first

and most important thing to do every day and

then everything is an extension of that. And,

you know Berry, you are doing it. Your work

and everything that comes out underneath

your roof is extraordinary. And is so far-

reaching. Since meeting you, the way that I’ve been approaching different conversations

in my community and the provocations that have come out of that, it’s very powerful stuff.

One of my Elders, and this person has been in my life since I was 12 years old, I had a pretty

significant breakdown at 12 and tried to take my own life at my school. And my beautiful

mother, she is a wild and free spirit, but she knew. Instead of taking me to the mental health

clinic, she took me to this person who has been my teacher ever since. He would always say

to me, and I really value this so much, that we’re spiritual beings having a human experience.

We didn’t come here to talk about the problems, identify them and fix them. What if we

came here to shine a light on the things that are working? To shine a light on the wellbeing?

Because if you go back to energy and how energy and matter works, we know that what you

focus on expands. All of these Lores that we live by spiritually and culturally, they’re also

the Lores that are just in nature. It’s that very beginning of our conversation. The grit is so

important in making that pearl in the oyster. It sounds naff and corny but it is the darkest

before dawn every single day. So these Lores are present in nature. They’re present in the way

that we gather in our societies, culturally and spiritually. And if that other way worked we

So how do we get out of it? Because even I am traumatised.
Trauma, grief, the climate, the barriers between us, the
identity politics, things are just getting super tense. How do
we move to live in restoration narratives, to live in belonging
narratives where we can lean into a new imagining for how
we can be? That supersedes the baby boomer narrative.
We have to create a new narrative and it cannot be World
War III. It cannot be that eight men own more wealth than
the rest of the planet and everyone’s okay with that because
that’s commerce. It cannot be that the ecosystems and the
species will die and collapse around us and that’s just the
way it is and that little old me can’t do nothing about that. So
how do we live into restoration narratives? I know you are
saying stuff about that but how are you doing that?

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