Category: Black Lives Matter

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Black Lives Matter Resources Social Action

BLM Link Library Update

It’s NAIDOC and this year’s theme is “Heal Country”.

This update looks at what healing country might mean for all of us.

The Black Lives Matter link library is links to a wide collection of online resources referenced by members and through our discussions. It can be acessed at www.brightanddark.net/blmlinks or via the [CATEGORIES] menu above. You will land on featured items, but if you scroll through the dropdown menu you can view all items or select to view by topic or category: books, movies, articles etc

Contributions are welcome, email curlytrees@gmail.com

() Oonagh

Heal Country

Maggie-Jean Douglas ‘Care for Country’.

An exploration of the meaning of Healing Cuntry on the Naidoc Website

Country…sustains our lives in every aspect – spiritually, physically, emotionally, socially, and culturally. It is more than a place, it is spoken of like a person. Country is family, kin, law, lore, ceremony, traditions, and language. Through our languages and songs, we speak to Country; through our ceremonies and traditions we sing to – and celebrate Country – and Country speaks to us.

Increasingly, we worry about Country.

‘Although we didn’t produce these problems, we suffer them’: 3 ways you can help in NAIDOC’s call to Heal Country

In this Conversation article, Bhiame Williamson looks at what it means to heal country and three ways we can all help. Far from being powerless to protect Country, there is much an everyday Australian can do. Here are three examples:

1) Make a submission to the Juukan Gorge inquiry.

2) Donate to charities that support Indigenous land and sea management programs.

3) Write an email to your local MP and ask how they’re supporting local Indigenous land and sea management programs, including ranger groups or cultural burning initiatives.

Return to Uluru

In this historical narrative, Mark McKenna examines one event in 1934 – the shooting at Uluru of Aboriginal man Yokununna by white policeman Bill McKinnon, and subsequent Commonwealth inquiry – a mirror of racial politics in the Northern Territory at the time.

Through speaking with the families of both killer and victim, McKenna unearthed new evidence that transformed the historical record and the meaning of the event for today. As he explains, ‘Every thread of the story connected to the present in surprising ways.’ In a sequence of powerful revelations, McKenna explores what truth-telling and reconciliation look like in practice.

Narjong Means Fresh Water

The ailing Murray-Darling River system is almost constantly in the news but we hear very little from the people who’ve cared for this country and its water for millennia.

To make people aware of the environmental disasters from their point of view, Aboriginal elders, custodians and others from the Basin’s waterways offered an open invitation to their water healing ceremony at the birthplace of the Murrumbidgee River. Led by Uncle Max Harrison, with Sue Bulger, Bruce Pascoe, Richard Swain, Wayne Thorpe

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Black Lives Matter Resources Social Action

BLM Link Library Update

This week in Australia is Reconciliation Week….reconciliation with Australia’s first peoples, reconciliation with the brutal history of colonisation that continues to reverberate, reconciliation with country…

Some new food for thought in our Black Lives Matter link library

You can access the BLM link library directly at www.brightanddark.net/blmlinks or via the [CATEGORIES] menu above. You will land on featured items, but if you scroll through the dropdown menu you can view all items or select to view by topic or category: books, movies, articles etc

Contributions are welcome here or email curlytrees@gmail.com

() Oonagh

The invention of whiteness: the long history of a dangerous idea

Before the 17th century, people did not think of themselves as belonging to something called the white race. But once the idea was invented, it quickly began to reshape the modern world.

Across three-and-a-half centuries, whiteness has been wielded as a weapon on a global scale; Blackness, by contrast, has often been used as a shield. An article in the Guardian by Robert P Baird

‘The right thing to do’: restoring Aboriginal place names key to recognising Indigenous histories

In 2017, the Queensland government renamed seven places that included the word “nigger”. In 2020, after global Black Lives Matter protests, Western Australia renamed the King Leopold Ranges, named after the brutal colonial Belgium monarch, the Wunaamin Miliwundi Ranges, using both the Ngarinyin and Bunuba names for the area. But many Aboriginal communities argue that renaming landscapes should not be limited to removing overtly racist names. An article in the Guardian by Calla Wahlquist.

Dyarubbin: Mapping Aboriginal history, culture and stories of the Hawkesbury River, New South Wales

Leanne Mulgo Watson, Waterholes

This online story map, takes you on a journey through Darug and Darkinjung Country on Dyarubbin, the Hawkesbury River in New South Wales. Dyarubbin flows through the heart of a vast arc of sandstone Country that encircles the city of Sydney and the Cumberland Plain on the east coast of Australia. This map places Abororiginal names back on Dyarubbin the Hawkesbury River. The list was recorded in 1829 by Rev. McGarvie and has been researched by Historian Prof. Grace Karskens with Darug knowledge holders Leanne Watson, Jasmine Seymour, Erin Wilkins and Rhiannon Wright and a team of linguists.

New light in a land shaped by fire

Rare aerial photos intended to help open up the outback to mining following World War II instead deliver a lesson from the last generation of Indigenous people to live in the Great Sandy Desert on how to protect life and country. An article on ABC online by Ben Collins

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Black Lives Matter Resources Social Action

BLM Link Library Update

March 21 is the UN ‘International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination’. In Australia we call it “Harmony Day”

Reflect with some new viewing and reading from our Black Lives Matter link library

You can access the BLM link library directly at www.brightanddark.net/blmlinks or via the [CATEGORIES] menu above. You will land on featured items, but if you scroll through the dropdown menu you can view all items or select to view by topic or category: books, movies, articles etc

Contributions are welcome here or email curlytrees@gmail.com

Enjoy! () Oonagh

The 2020 Narrm Oration with Assoc. Professor Michael Shawn-Fletcher

Australia is in the midst of both environmental and social crises. With the highest rate of biodiversity loss on earth, the country is facing an ever-increasing barrage of massive catastrophic wildfires that wreak untold environmental damage.

Embedding the Aboriginal world view and notion of Country into mainstream Australia has the potential to benefit the lives and livelihoods of all Australians and our Country. Associate Professor Fletcher is a descendant of the Wiradjuri and a geographer interested in the long-term interactions between humans, climate, disturbance, vegetation and landscapes.

ABC RN broadcast a shorter podcast version of the oration here

Nurturing Country: We Need to Talk About Fire

In this Bundanon Trust Short Film, Vanessa Cavanagh (University of Wollongong) discusses the role that women and children have played in caring for Country through the use of fire. Cavanagh discusses the importance of intergenerational knowledge transfer as a way of ensuring responsiveness to the needs of the environment, highlighting its significance as an ecological resource we are dependent upon for our own nourishment and survival. 

How a long-lost list is helping us remap Darug place names and culture on Dyarubbin, the Hawkesbury River

Historian Prof. Grace Karskens with Darug knowledge holders Leanne Watson, Jasmine Seymour, Erin Wilkins and Rhiannon Wright have been exploring Darug place names along Dyarubbin, the Hawkesbury River recorded in the 1830s by Rev. McGarvie

Braiding Sweetgrass

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert).

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2020 Term 3 Black Lives Matter Resources Social Action

BLM Link Library Update

Some end of year reading and listening for big and little people in our Black Lives Matter Link Library.

You can access the BLM link library directly at www.brightanddark.net/blmlinks or via the [CATEGORIES] menu above. You will land on featured items, but if you scroll through the dropdown menu you can view all items or select to view by topic or category: books, movies, articles etc

Contributions are welcome here or email curlytrees@gmail.com

Enjoy! () Oonagh

The Intelligence of Plants

In this podcast botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Robin Wall Kimmerer joins science’s ability to “polish the art of seeing” with her personal, civilizational lineage of listening to plant life and heeding the languages of the natural world. She’s an expert in moss — a bryologist — who describes mosses as the “coral reefs of the forest.” And she says that as our knowledge about plant life unfolds, human vocabulary and imaginations must adapt.

Speaking of Nature

“In the English language, a human alone has distinction while all other living beings are lumped with the nonliving “its.” ”

In this essay published in Orion magazine, Robin Wall Kimmerer explores pronouns from the Potawatomi language that affirm our kinship with the natural world.

When We Say Black Lives Matter

“Little one, when we say Black Lives Matter,
we’re saying black people are wonderful-strong.
That we deserve to be treated with basic respect,
and that history’s done us wrong.“

In When We Say Black Lives Matter, a black child’s parents explain what the term Black Lives Matter means to them: in protest and song, in joy and in sorrow.

A vital and timely picture book from the prize-winning and bestselling Australian author Maxine Beneba Clarke

Cooee Mittigar: A story on Darug Songlines

“Cooee mittigar. Tread softly on our lands.

Know that this dreaming was here. Is still here.   

Will be forever.”

Cooee Mittigar, meaning Come Here Friend, is an invitation to yana (walk), on Darug Country. In this stunning picture book, shortlisted for multiple awards, Darug creators Jasmine Seymour and Leanne Mulgo Watson tell a story on Darug Songlines, introducing children and adults-alike to Darug Nura (Country) and language.

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2020 Term 3 Black Lives Matter Resources Social Action

BLM Link Library Update

A few recent offerings this Naidoc Week

You can access the BLM link library directly at www.brightanddark.net/blmlinks or via the [CATEGORIES] menu above. You will land on featured items, but if you scroll through the dropdown menu you can view all items or select to view by topic or books, movies, articles etc

Contributions are welcome here or email curlytrees@gmail.com

Enjoy!

()

Oonagh

The 50 Words Project

The 50 Words project is an interactive online map giving everyone the opportunity to hear Aboriginal languages spoken all across the continent.

You can search to hear language from across the continent – both those spoken every day and those being revitalised by their communities. The ideal tool to give you an introduction to language.

Indigenous Weather Knowledge

The Bureau of Meteorology’s Indigenous Weather Knowledge website is a formal recognition of traditional weather and climate knowledge that has been developed and passed down through countless generations by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It offers insight into the seasons and environmental indicators known by 16 different language groups across the nation.

A Call to awareness for White Buddhists

“At times like these,” says African American writer Ayesha Ali, “white people, and white institutions, reach out to Black people they barely know or have forgotten about.” In this article in Lion’s Roar she asks white practitioners to reach inside instead and examine their own life and privilege.

10 Things You Should Know About White Privilege

This SBS/NITV article examines the meaning and origins of the concept of White Privilege, starting with Peggy McIntosh’s 1988 essay in which she identified 50 of the daily effects of privilege in her life as a white person living in the U.S.

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2020 Term 3 Black Lives Matter Resources Social Action

BLM Link Library Update

We now have links to over 50 articles, books, podcasts, video, artworks and websites in our Bla(c)k Lives Matter Link Library. Here are a few of our recent offerings…

You can access the BLM link library directly at www.brightanddark.net/blmlinks or via the [CATEGORIES] menu above. 

Contributions are really welcome! here or email curlytrees@gmail.com

Enjoy!

()

Oonagh

I Am Not Your Negro

Director Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished – a radical narration about race in America, through the lives and assassinations of three of his friends: Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers and Malcolm X. Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson.

Ambelin Kwaymullina in conversation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDceCazXDjI

Ambelin Kwaymullina, author of “Living on Stolen Land”, in conversation with Teela Reid (Blackfulla Bookclub Co-Founder) discuss Kwaymullina’s book, a compelling call to action for Australia to come to terms with its past and present.

Beyond Crisis Webinar Series

A slide from Yin Paradies Presentation “An Aboriginal reflection on modernity and its discontents (August 2020)”

These 9 excellent webinar recordings with a special focus on indigenous knowledge in the building of a socially just and ecologically flourishing society, feature among many others Mary Graham, Yin Paradies and Victor Steffensen. There is a small fee of $10/15 to access these, but well worth it!

https://events.humanitix.com/beyond-crisis-recordings

Some Thoughts About the Philosophical Underpinnings of Aboriginal Worldviews

This essay by Mary Graham, offers a succinct perspective on Aboriginal philosophy. Mary is a Kombu-merri person, also affiliated with the Waka Waka group through her mother and has lectured and tutored on Aboriginal history, politics, and comparative philosophy at the University of Queensland and at other educational institutions around the country.

Valuing Country Let me Count Three Ways

An essay looking at ‘country’, ‘natural capital’ and ‘rights of nature’ by Jane Gleeson-White, published in Griffith Review 63, Feb 2019.

Jane Gleeson-White is an award-winning writer and author of four books, including the internationally acclaimed history of accounting, Double Entry (2011). Jane is a regular commentator on economics and sustainability, including at the European Union, United Nations and the New York Hedge Fund Roundtable

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2020 Term 2 Black Lives Matter Covid-19 Eco-Dharma Online Zen Group Roshi Susan Murphy Sand Talk Talks Teachers

‘Guilty as charged’

Talk #6 from Term 2 of our Online Zen Group for 2020. Click here for other talks in this series.

Teacher: Roshi Susan Murphy
23 August 2020

Click on the recording below to listen to this talk now. We will upload a transcription when it becomes available. ()

zen open circle · Guilty as charged
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2020 Term 2 Black Lives Matter Covid-19 Eco-Dharma Koans Online Zen Group Roshi Susan Murphy Sand Talk Talks Teachers

‘Tell me, who is that other?’

Talk #5 from Term 2 of our Online Zen Group for 2020. Click here for other talks in this series.

Teacher: Roshi Susan Murphy
8 August 2020

Click on the recording below to listen to this talk now. We will upload a transcription when it becomes available. ()

zen open circle · 'Tell me, who is that other?'
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2020 Term 2 Black Lives Matter Online Zen Group Sand Talk

BLM Link Library Update: New video & Podcasts

Hello Sangha,

Some great new topical listening and viewing in our Bla(c)k Lives Matter Link Library…

You can access the BLM link library directly at www.brightanddark.net/blmlinks or via the [THEMES] menu above. 

If you would like to contribute a link for the library you can do so here or email curlytrees@gmail.com

Enjoy!

()

Oonagh

New video & podcasts:

Country and the gift (2014) : Deborah Bird Rose

In this video, ethnographer Deborah Bird Rose looks at four pathways into country, drawing on the work of Aboriginal writers, elders and philosophers including Mary Graham, Ambelin and Blaze Kwaymullina & Jimmy Mangayarri. She considers working together for country as the most important issue of our time and asks how we could re-imagine cities if the aim of city life was to inhabit and care for country.

The Sydney Which Has No Postcode (2003) by Susan Murphy

An audio feature, written and produced by Roshi Susan in 2003 for Radio National. Exploring spirits of place and how they might talk to us; with Uncle Max Harrison Dulumunmun, Aunty Joan Cooper, Aunty Edna Watson, and sisters Pat and Fay, John Gallard and Red Cloud the kelpie.

Indigenous Language & Perception. ABC RN All in the Mind Podcast Produced by Lynne Malcolm. 2019

Relevant to our explorations of yarning, this program includes discussion of how our perception of the world is significantly affected by the language we speak. It frames our worldview by training our brains in line with cultural understanding. Indigenous languages from around Australia pose a vastly different perspective of the world than that of English. We explore how these languages influence perceptions of self, kinship and the natural world. With Dr Tyson Yunkaporta, linguist Prof Nick Evans and Bardi Psychologist Prof Pat Dudgeon.

I can’t Breathe – ABC 4 Corners Documentary by Stan Grant. 2020.

A profoundly moving story from special guest reporter Stan Grant in the wake of the shocking killing of unarmed black man George Floyd captured on camera in the United States. Mr Floyd’s death under the knee of a white police officer unleashed a wave of grief and anger across America. That wave reached Australia’s shores with thousands of Australians coming out to protest in support of our Indigenous community. In this deeply personal story, Stan Grant gives voice to the frustration and hurt that has defined the life experience of so many Indigenous Australians and explores why the death of George Floyd resonates so profoundly.

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2020 Term 2 Black Lives Matter Online Zen Group Roshi Susan Murphy Teachers Uncategorized

‘The Sydney which has no postcode’

Susan told the story of John Gallard “downloading” traditional knowledge in her June 28 teisho “Coming From the Side”This story is elaborated in “The Sydney that has no Postcode” a search into the deepest layers of the feel of place,an audio feature, written and produced by Susan in 2003 for Radio National.

The program explores spirits of place and how they might talk to us : sensing the secret agreement that runs through land (still perceptible beneath development) : old roads of Sydney following ancient walking tracks : freeing the old spirits in the land to speak :  the song in the land : conversations with with country without words : feeling the land and spirit places with your body : sacred sites as body : reconciliation with the spirit of the land : belonging in this country with no postcodes : inviting the spirits to make themselves felt : stories of spirit places/sacred sites with Uncle Max Harrison Dulumunmun, Aunty Joan Cooper, Aunty Edna Watson, and sisters Pat and Fay, John Gallard and Red Cloud the kelpie.

zen open circle · The Sydney Which Has No Postcode