Category: Social Action

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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!

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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 Koans Online Zen Group Roshi Susan Murphy Sensei Kynan Sutherland Social Action Talks Teachers

‘Where can we meet after death?’

‘In the orchard of spring
There is neither long nor short
The heavily flowering branches grow,
Each according to its length.’

Talk #3 from Term 3 of our Online Zen Group for 2020. Click here for other talks in this series.

Teacher: Roshi Susan Murphy
Response: Sensei Kynan Sutherland
11 October 2020

Dedicated to Thich Nhat Hanh

True friendship transcends intimacy and alienation.
Between meeting and not meeting there is no difference.
On the old plum tree, fully blossomed,
Southern branch owns the whole spring!
Northern branch owns the whole spring!
Nyogen Sensaki

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

Questioner: Where can we meet after death?
Thich Nhat Hanh: We shall always be meeting, at the beautiful heart of peace.

zen open circle · Where can we meet after death?
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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!

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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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Dawn Dojo Social Action Words

Dawn vigils for kunanyi

A report from Ross Coward

A small band of concerned citizens, meeting under the auspices of the community group, Residents Opposed to the Cable Car, ROCC, formulated an action plan in early 2019 to protest against the Cable Car project by holding vigils in the area on the mountain summit where the proponents want to build a pinnacle centre . A number of vigils were held during 2019, some at dawn, some at sunset, one on a Sunday afternoon and one evening on the lawns outside Parliament House. These vigils have been symbolic but powerful statements made by us-two as a protest against the Cable Car project and as a mark of respect for this place that we love. 

We meet on the summit 30 minutes before the scheduled start then clamber down a rocky path to take up our positions. Eight sentinels, mainly women, dressed in red or pink or orange cloaks, stand upright on proposed drill sites (located by GPS). The bell ringers, two mountains & rivers zen practitioners, take up their positions, about 100m apart. A photographer moves around to document each vigil. On one dawn occasion a renowned wilderness photographer used a drone to take aerial shots. Sometimes vigils had to be cancelled when the mountain road was closed due to weather conditions, ice or snow. A few observers watch from a viewing platform above where the vigil takes place.

At the appointed time, the first appearance of the sun disc, three bells are rung. The morning light is spectacular. The proclamation is read aloud, for the mountain to hear us, for us to hear the mountain, to see the mountain, for those whose ears are deaf, we make this statement. Then 108 bells with a call and response dance between the two bell ringers. The bells resonate from bell to bell, from dolerite boulder to dolerite boulder, from me-to-you, and back again. As the final bell fades away we remain in silent repose for two minutes. The sentinels are magnificent, facing towards the east, their powerful silent statement flows down to the city below.

It is exhilarating being here on this high place, alone and with others, feeling the breeze, the cool air, seeing the formations of cloud above, below. Then we pack up, have a short de-brief in the summit shelter, and leave. This was a satisfying thing to have done.

The pic of the dawn vigil on Monday 7 January 2020 was the last vigil we have done and coincided when the proponents were submitting their latest documentation to the Hobart City Council. Covid-19 has been a stopper.

waiting for the bell
the green mountain walks east
a currawong calls

()
Ross

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Eco-Dharma Social Action Words

Proclamation: keep kunanyi wild and natural

This is a proclamation that is read as part of the Dawn Vigils for kunanyi in Tasmania. Click here to read a report from Ross Coward about those vigils...

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Acknowledgement of Country

We acknowledge that every place within this island lutruwita/Tasmania, is not a ‘thing’ but country – a lived mystery of the sentient kinship that creates every detail of place, held in mind and tended by the tens of thousands of generations of people who walk before and with us, the muwinina (moo-we-nin-ah) and pal-a-wa people. We just accept our indebtedness to them, past, present and future, with respect and gratitude for this 40,000-year deep tap-root in time and refined awareness.

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We, as citizens of this city, nipaluna/Hobart, oppose and deplore this proposed cable car development on this mountain by the Mount Wellington Cableway Company.

We deplore this proposed development which is planned to run from South nipaluna/Hobart to the summit of kunanyi/Mt Wellington.

We deplore the loss of the grand and open views to the east from the summit. And we deplore the loss of the uncluttered views from the city to the mountain.

We deplore the gift of public land for this cable car enterprise and pinnacle centre which will destroy this ancient alpine garden and boulder field and subsequent loss of habitat. This mountain and the views to and from the mountain are not to be ‘gifted’ to private entrepreneurs seeking to exploit and profit from its beauty.

This private enterprise is not welcome on the people’s mountain.

This mountain is our home, Palawa and Tasmanian.

This mountain is our place.

This mountain is for all people.

This mountain belongs to everyone.

When Peter Dombrovskis spoke of kunanyi/Mt Wellington, it was that “It’s value is as a place where all people can come and know its wildness.”

We will continue to make our voices heard.

We will defend this mountain, the people’s mountain, our mountain, from this cable car enterprise that has no place on this mountain.

We ask that all citizens respect this mountain.

We ask for kunanyi to be allowed to remain wild and natural and as a place of refuge for plants, animals and humans alike.

We stand here today to bear witness, to hold this vigil, to protest against this proposal that is not wanted on this mountain – kunanyi.