My brother spoke of its importance and how its story relates to our everyday living, being, doing and existing. Our Ontological understandings as Gomeroi peoples, of how we are not only of the earth, we were born from her and we are made up of the very same matter. My brothers and uncles arranged the stones at the Dhinawan site for teaching but they tell us that the Dhinawan had always been there, and that it just hadn’t been arranged like that before. It is as much a teaching site now as the Dhinawan in the sky has been for millennia. The Dhinawan in the sky belongs up there in that Sky Country, our next home. Where, when we pass on, we go to sit by the campfires in the sky that, from the earth, look like the stars in the Milky Way. We go to learn story, kinship, language, lore, we go to learn everything all over again sitting with our old ones by the fires in the night sky, haven’t you ever wondered why the night sky looks so smoky?
That Dhinawan in the sky was born from stardust in the beginning times. That Dhinawan teaching site, a stone arrangement, was born far more recently. Both of them had always been there, they just hadn’t been put together like that before.
Much like us. Same same, just different.
So, if I may, can I ask two questions?
If we are made of the same dirt that the earth is made from, the same matter that cannot be created and cannot be destroyed, is it possible that everywhere is home?
And if we are made up of the same stardust, born from the beginning, is everywhen home too?
Our travels took us to Sydney, Melbourne, Mildura, Shepparton, Brisbane, Alice Springs, Cairns, Sydney again and then back to the Central Coast where I currently am based. I’m not sure if it is really home yet as I’ve only been here eight years.
At least it’s welcoming.
Mostly.
Some of the arguments in our community and many other communities are tearing us apart from the inside. The arguments about ownership of land are ones that, if they were not so detrimental, I would find amusing.
It’s as if we aren’t owned by the earth herself.
As if we don’t give our bodies back to her when we eventually and inevitably pass on to that next place. Personally, I think that ownership is such a foreign concept for many, not just Aboriginal peoples, especially when we discuss place.
Custodianship maybe; but ownership? I’m not so sure.
