The 2023 AAPS conference theme emphasises the need to resist and reframe fatalist and narrow representations of Oceania.
From the highlands to the islands, the conference aims to advance multiscopic understandings of Oceanic people’s relationships and relationality of places through storytelling rooted in a trans-disciplinary, critical and creative Pacific Studies.
Tena koutou katoa
Ko Ngai Tahu te iwi, me Ingarangi me Kōtirana te whakapaparanga mai
Ko Takitimu te waka
Ko Takitimu nga maunga
Ko Aparima te awa
Ko Te Whanga nui a Tara te whenua tupu
Engari, ko whenua o Wurundjeri Woiworrung o nga tangata Kulin te kāinga
Ko Talitha au
Tena Tatou katoa
That is my mihi in Maori that acknowledges the Maori/English heritage of my mothers line and my fathers’ Scottish side.
I’m naming the mountains and rivers of the bottom of the South Island, this story follows the pathway of water from the high ground in the mountains down to the sea, recognising this catchment as ancestors and acknowledging the ancestors of these lands and myself as a visitor here in Wurundjeri country.
I am manuhiri (a guest), ngamatiji (a non-indigenous person) and it’s important to me to start from a place of recognising it’s not my land or language…
The Maori word for land (whenua) is also the word for placenta.
In both Maori and Wurundjeri Woiworrung deep memory stories – soil was taken and shaped in the figure of a person and divine breath gave earth life in a new form. We are shaped from earth, we are shaped by earth.
With funding made possible by Maribyrnong Arts and Culture, I was able to spend August/Sept undertaking a project called ‘Language Lines’.
A particular passion that has arisen from reading Healing Haunted Histories: A settler discipleship of decolonization is to connect more intentionally with my own neighbourhood as a Ngai Tahu/Pakeha settler on the lands of the peoples of the Kulin Nation. A resident of Footscray, I was delighted to discover that the Maribyrnong River’s name comes from the Aboriginal term ‘Mirrang bamurn’, which translates as ‘see’ a ‘ringtail possum’ at a time when we had some living in our roof. What other words are in the local landscape that might connect residents more deeply with place?
I am interested in mapping Aboriginal terms that continue to hold space in the land. What do they have to tell us about where we live? Are there words that have been erased that might be recovered? In Maori lore, there is an idea of the ‘hidden face’, this is similar to the way that you cannot see ‘wind’ but can see its influence. What might this exploration into the landscape reveal about what is already at work?
It was a continuous thread of my residency to keep updating a map of those places in my neighbourhood that I saw possums and koort boort boort – this allowed for a practice of quite intentional “presence” in my neighbourhood across the weeks. The central image above was submitted as an entry to the 2022 Picturing Footscray Photo Exhibition named: ‘Koort Boort Boort consultation’ for the conversation happening here between the trees that are local to this place and the new development going up along the riverside. The haunting mist makes it seem as if it is the new development that is disappearing and temporary rather than the trees.
The experience of these 6 weeks allowed for me to explore and play with new skills in eco-printing, pyrography, photography and different forms of weaving. So much of what I thought I’d do, and have to show for this experience, were confounded (and rightly so) by being open to where the investigation led me instead.
There’s a lot of stories to that journey, but let me frame them here within this invitation to advocacy…
My exploration of place names in Melbourne as part of my recent art residency helped me understand that there are layers of harmful naming in our landscape: there are names of early settler colonisers and “conquorers”, there are names of deceased Aboriginal people which shouldn’t be spoken, and then there are words like Maroondah. Maroondah means ‘throwing’ and/or ‘leaves’ in Woiwurrung language.
I just signed this petition advocating for the new Maroondah hospital not to be named after Queen Elizabeth II as Dan Andrews is suggesting. What Dan Andrews is missing here, as Victoria (ahem, we’ve already recognised a Queen) negotiates Treaty, is an opportunity to partner with local elders to reclaim language for a new naming. What words might mean ‘healing place’? We as Settlers need to progress on this stuff and not replicate and repeat harms of the past. The link is here if you want to sign the petition.
I would not have learned so much without support and resources from Maribyrnong Arts and Culture, the Footscray, Sunshine, and Braybrook libraries, the Footscray Historical Society, the Living Museum of the West and, most significantly, elder Aunty Faye Muir who encouraged me to wake up at 5am to Listen.
A good friend of mine got citizenship today. I’m having lots of feelings: relief, deep joy, hopefulness…
Those are all good things and yet I’m crying as I type this.
I’m crying because it was so brief, and so banal. A plastic flag, a pledge, a photo with the mayor. For those for whom its a legal formality, that’s probably enough but for those for whom it’s a lifeline I wonder…
If I were colouring you a picture the pencils would have names like FEAR (that my visa will be cancelled and I would have to make a choice between leaving my son behind or denying him the opportunity of life in Australia). DESPERATION (the visa is temporary, and constantly needs to be renewed, life feels like a cycle of filling out forms, keeping appointments, meeting my lawyer. There is barely time to recover before the hamster wheel turns). TRAUMA (I need to go to the ASRC for food but I have a Centrelink appointment. If I miss the appointment, they’ll cancel the payment. If I wait at Centrelink for 3 hours, I will miss out on food… I’m allowed to work now, but not too much. It needs to be 15 hours so that Centrelink don’t nag about Jobseeker. But 15 hours tips me over the income threshold. Three-quarters of the money I earn gets deducted by Centrelink. I can’t get ahead.)
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs talks about the things we need for survival: shelter, food, sleep, clothing. The level above those basics is: personal security, employment, resources, health…
Our societal system for “supporting” refugees and asylum seekers makes a full time job and mental load of balancing on a knife’s edge for survival for a long time… for a long, long time.
There were 37 new citizens today. From 20 different countries. I wanted there to be a party. I wanted to hear different languages, dances and songs. I wanted to hear cries of “sher-hoooooo!” to ring in the rafters, and ululations of joy so loud they make my ears hurt. I wanted an elder to cleanse us in smoke, to wash away the tears, grief and anxiety of waiting, to herald in and bless this new season on Country.
So many are still waiting.
They wait in Nauru, PNG, in community detention, they wait in Footscray.
This is the pledge:
From this time forward, under God,
I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people,
whose democratic beliefs I share,
whose rights and liberties I respect, and
whose laws I will uphold and obey.
The kingdom is here, and not yet.
We have work to do, and we just got some new recruits.
A creative reading today of Intercarnations : Exercises in Theological Possibility by Catherine Keller, Chapter 1: Returning God: Gift of Feminist Theology…
“I let Love be all that she is; I cannot understand her fierce wonders.
Hadewijch of Brabant (a 13th-century poet and mystic), Minne
Incomprehension, however, does not silence the poetry”
These times we’re living in are strange. We have the long-term impacts of social and geographical isolation. We have been separated from friends, family, and favourite haunts for a long time. We did it to be safe ourselves, and to make the world safe for others. Now the messaging is changing. It seems like there’s talk about “pre-COVID” times and “post-COVID” times but what about COVID-now?
This post offers two free downloadable PDF resources that we hope will be a gift to individuals and communities working to make sense of our experience of COVID over the past few months and begin to process what has been a pretty traumatic experience.
The first offering are some gentle questions from Dusk Liney from The Listening Squad with artwork by talented Tasmanian artist Elizabeth Braid. The Listening Squad crew offer amazing strategy retreats and have a podcast on contemplative listening. Dusk is also a Doula and Matrescence facilitator and she’s been running Listening Circles for Mummas through lockdown. Her voice here is a quiet invitation to healing that will hold safe space for you – just as you are.
This second offering is mine – I’m Talitha Fraser a NZ/Ngāi Tahu, Melbourne-based writer. I’m interested in theopoetics, radical discipleship and feminist theologies. My contemplative practice brings together photography and poetry, philosophy and theology, observation and mindfulness. Creating this resource was, for me, an exercise in practical theology – I knew I needed this and so I had to make it. Whether you are conscious of it or not, this life experience of a pandemic we are in is an extraordinary one and there is strength and wisdom in you – likely loss and grief and anger too – that is good to hold space for and acknowledge. This is less gentle I’ll admit, but it’s when we look into the shadows, I find, that we can see the play of light.
Lockdown #1 happens and I plant seeds. Like a lot of other people. Bunnings sold out of seeds, and potting mix, and all sorts. It interests me that, at a time of great uncertainty, for seemingly many, there was an instinct to connect to the land, to plant – which is always a kind of prospecting of its own subject to the vagaries of pests, weather, and apathy towards watering to name a few. But we default to a deep knowledge that, somehow, the land will take care of us.
Seeds. So much potential in something so small.
My approach to gardening is pretty much to fill in the space: food and flowers good = weeds bad. I trade seedlings on the Inner West Buy Sell Swap page and join the Pollinate the West group and score free things from the Good Karma page. In socially distant ways I’m more locally connected than I’ve ever been. My seeds bear seeds, and then there’s thousands of them: broad beans, parsley, rocket, nasturtium, calendula…
I put packets of seeds in my local Little Free Pantry and seedlings when I have them. It’s hard to picture the reach, the generational journey those seeds have made to me and from my hands to others.
What I was looking for from some groups changed. I joined new groups and left others.
I’m trying to give language to something which we’ve all experienced over the last few months but maybe haven’t given words or thought to….
The ruptures and disruptions have occurred at different levels within: our homes, personal relationships, at work, our city, our state. People have moved: house, state, country. Shops have shut down. Some people lost work and found it in totally different industries or haven’t found it yet. Some people will have long term impacts of anxiety and depression following these exhausting long periods of social isolation. …you know.
You know the ways your life will never be the same again.
There is no going ‘back’ to normal. There is only going forward, into something new.
What do you want to resurrect from what was? What do you want to keep from new fusions and connections? Name a few things or write them down. This isn’t an experience that is happening to you, how can you happen to the experience? How can you bring what you want to bear on it in some small (or big) way?
Do not underestimate the power you have to shape the world you want to live in at this extraordinary moment.
Plant the seeds now. Not knowing how or if they will grow.
So much potential in something so small.
The following found-poem is made up of words entirely taken from words written on people’s headstones. It isn’t intended to be some macabre or nihilistic exercise… but the opposite. What words of comfort or solace could we have said if there’d be time? What message of love?
Because of COVID we couldn’t be there when loved ones died. Because of COVID we couldn’t remember and gather together to celebrate lives well lived, grieve lives too short. Because of COVID we are hearing daily statistics of those who have died. They are a face to someone. They are family to someone. Almost 5 million dead so far… Worldwide it’s been over 5,000 people a day, every day for months.
What does it look like for you to recognise and acknowledge the presence of Death? Do you place flowers somewhere for remembrance? Float something out into the river water? Bury something under a loved plant in the backyard? Use water to cleanse your hands and head? Hold a series of ceremonies, dances and songs? Whatever rituals of grief you observe – take the time you need to reflect and grieve.
You might read these words and be comforted, be solaced, be loved now. Hear them deep in your soul, take them in and let them nourish you. For, although intended as words for those who are gone, they have something to say to those who remain.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will know the essence of life.
Peace, perfect peace,
let your song be delicate,
the flowers can hear.
In God’s care.
In the midst of life we are in death.
Let not your heart be troubled
neither let it be afraid.
In God’s care,
not here but risen,
Love’s Tribute.
Always loved, always in our hearts.
Sadly missed.
Behind all shadows standeth God.
Some time, some day, we’ll understand.
So deeply loved, so deeply mourned,
till we meet again, at rest,
in heavenly love abiding.
Abide with me: fast falls the eventide
the darkness deepens, Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
Thy will be done always in our hearts.
Loved and always remembered.
Resting.
All losses are restored and sorrows end
in God’s care.
Those we love don’t go away
they walk beside us every day
To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.
Love lives on.
These times we’re living in are strange. We have the long-term impacts of social and geographical isolation. We have been separated from friends, family, and favourite haunts for a long time. We did it to be safe ourselves, and to make the world safe for others. Now the messaging is changing. It seems like there’s talk about “pre-COVID” times and “post-COVID” times but what about COVID-now?
This post seeks to collate a few activities that will allow for some reflection, processing, escapism, nurture that meet you where you’re at…now.
Why creepy little skeletons?! This has been a time we are confronted by our own mortality, the mortality of those we love, the mortality of those we do not know and will never meet who are a statistic in our daily COVID status briefing. These characters engage and relate beyond gender. In many ways, enduring this pandemic has seen us stripped back to bare bones, laid naked our vulnerability – what is essential? what do I need to do to live?
What do I need to do to live?
Mint. Deadly. Fierce. There aren’t even words. You, you my friend, are a survivor. This pandemic took things away from you, you didn’t know it was possible to lose. You had never put a back stop or safety net round those things because it was inconceivable the world could change so much in so many, myriad and drastic ways. And here you are. Breathing still. Being-still. You are all over this. Well, maybe some of it’s on you, but you are HERE for it. You are PRESENT. So much stopped and you’ve kept going. Eat your heart out Energiser Bunny, I’ll show you who’s still going, and going, and going!
Maybe this strong, resilient, survivor-triumphant thing isn’t really your scene but – just for a minute – lean into it.
What’s one thing you’ve learned or done in the last year or two that you couldn’t have conceived of before? Learned how to make cinnamon scrolls? How to use Zoom break out rooms? New level on Halo? Made, then broke, and broke again, the records you set for Netflix binging? Moved out? Gone back to Uni? Homeschooled, cooked, cleaned, worked fulltime and paid the utilities? Way to adult!
Mentally, or literally if you’re feeling crafty, create and give yourself an award certificate, or a medal, or a trophy, or a flower crown.
You’re really great.
Where’s your energy at today?
A: GOING FOR A WALK?
As you walk today we encourage you to pick something up (or several things) that represents what you feel like you’re holding right now. Is it sharp? Is it heavy? Rugged? Smooth? Beautiful? Ugly?
Carry this with you for a while as you walk and as you come for the end of your walk, we invite you to consider is this something you can put down? Is this something you’re able to leave behind? Do you want to throw it? Or perhaps it may be that this is something you take with you and in your home find a place where you might see it – maybe on a dresser or on a windowsill where you will see it every day.
This is something you are carrying. It’s outside of you. It’s not all of who you are. You are not defined by what you are carrying. It is apart from you, and actually rather small as you look at it now in the grand scheme of things. It’s something you can hold in your hand. You are able to pick this up and put it down as you need to.
B: NOPE. JUST NOPE.
One reason it might be hard for some of us to feel ‘hope’ and ‘possibility’ right now is that the inchoate rage and unrelenting grief we haven’t expressed might be taking up all of the room.
I suggest getting lots of strips of paper or post its and writing down whatever thoughts, feelings, resentments are pent up inside of you and spewing them onto each piece then disposing of these in the most satisfyingly melodramatic way possible for you: tear them into little pieces; cut them up with scissors; stab them onto a cactus plant; let them burn; make a TaskMaster episode by giving yourself 10 mins in a plastic lined room with a range of assorted props with points for most creative destruction.*
You have missed weddings for this, not seen family for months/years, this was going to be your OE, you don’t even LIKE sourdough…all of us hold dreams and visions of how we thought our life was going to go that have been derailed. Most of us have been socially isolated from the friends and fam who might have helped us process this, and regulate our feelings about it, along the way. We’ve just been pushing it down and away because we can’t get into it right now. Today is your lucky day!
*Observe OHS and stuff. There will never be another you.
itellyouarise 