The writing · Indigenous Australian

What Aboriginal Australians mean by belonging to Country

Country, with a capital C, is not scenery and not property. In Aboriginal usage it takes in the land, the water, the sky, the animals and plants, and the people who belong to it, all as one living thing that can be spoken to and can fall ill. Aboriginal Australia is not one culture — there are hundreds of nations and languages — and the entries below are recorded in the library as oral tradition rather than as passages from a named book, so that is how they are cited here. Nine concepts follow, each linking to its full page.

Country - Ngurra

Country is treated as a living entity with feelings, to be cared for the way you would care for a relative. The relationship runs both ways, which is why it can be neglected.

Oral Tradition

Belonging to Country

The direction of ownership is reversed: people belong to Country rather than holding it. Country provides food and identity, and people provide care and ceremony in return.

Oral Tradition

Country and Identity

Introducing yourself means naming your Country, your language group and your totem. The answer to who you are is largely an answer about where you are from.

Oral Tradition

Spirit Children - Conception Beliefs

In traditional belief a spirit child waits at a particular site and enters the mother as she passes. A person is therefore tied to one specific place from before birth, not by choice or purchase.

Oral Tradition

Walking Country

Moving on foot through Country is a practice, not transport. You read the stories held in the land and keep up your obligations to particular sites by turning up at them.

Oral Tradition

Speaking to Country

On entering Country you announce who you are, why you have come and ask to be there. The protocol assumes the land is listening.

Oral Tradition

Story Places

Particular rocks, waterholes and trees mark where something happened in the Dreaming, and the story stays with the feature. The landscape works as a record you can walk through.

Oral Tradition

Caring for Country

Care covers the practical work of burning, hunting and gathering as well as ceremony and song. Country left untended is understood to become sick, and its sickness reaches the people who belong to it.

Oral Tradition

Returning to Country

For people separated from their Country, going back is described as a homecoming in both senses — the land recognises its people, and the people are restored by the contact. This is why displacement is treated as an injury rather than an inconvenience.

Contemporary Account

The hardest part of this to translate is that Country is singular and specific. It is not a feeling about nature in general; it is one stretch of ground, with a boundary, a story and a name, that you are answerable to whether or not you happen to be standing on it. That also means the relationship cannot be moved somewhere more convenient.