This year we held the third iteration of the Healing Rites for 7 Sites walk in Footscray.
We are convicted anew of the necessary work of telling our ‘hidden’ stories, acknowledging the pain, and undertaking the healing rites that not only work for our own recovery, but also towards the collatoral benefit of our neighbours and communities.
The Healing Rites for Seven Sites are an invitation to walk the way of the Southern Cross, and visit seven sites looking at issues we all grapple with, such as the referendum result, addressing food security when the cost of living is so high, climate change and the impact of the Maribyrnong flooding. By connecting with significant social issues of our time, in curated and collective ways, we believe can develop tools in creative resilience and recovery that can keep us hopeful.
This tool is most effective when it tells site specific stories – do you know the stories of your place?
This is an offering we make free to our community – if it’s something you see value in, please feel free to make a koha (gift) to our work to support us to show up this way.
I have been a visitor of Gembrook Retreat for over 10 years, visiting more or less often depending on work, community, covid…
As someone living in Footscray, an industrial suburb of Naarm Melbourne’s inner west, getting “across the city” to the eastern hills is the part of my journey that feels longest. Today, as I set out, my Google navigation advised that there had been an accident on Elliott Ave (round the Zoo) that was causing a 17 min delay on my route and advising this was still the fastest route because of road works.
At this point, I am thinking unkindly about Melbourne roadworks, drivers who have accidents, and more unkindly still, about the frustrated and angry drivers who pass them. Briefly, I consider whether this is a sign not to go, instead… I take another way. It is out-of-the-way, it is further north than I need to go but I am moving and avoiding angst.
I have made a decision about the kind of drive I want to have and the kind of driver I want to be.
It might be because I had this heightened sense of alert towards route variations activated that I noticed – for the first time ever – an alternative road towards Gembrook that is purportedly only 4 mins longer (I meandered taking it in and stopped and took photos for this post so don’t hold me accountable to that).
This new route took me ‘below’ the Cardinia Reservoir instead of following the main road C413 above it.
This windier route (Boundary Rd, Alber Rd, Stony Creek Rd, left on the C406 to Paternoster Rd, Bailey Rd, McBride St) is therefore slower, and more scenic. There are not buses, nor schools. Old gums soar outstretched arms to the sky and create a welcome avenue of shade on this 30° summer day.
The hay is being rolled up, sprays of golden wattle are opening, and the pops of orange Flowering Gum are like unexpected flumes of fireworks, highlights amidst lush greens.
As I come this slower and more beautiful way, I can feel an easing in my breath and body. I am becoming more present to where I am now – rather than focused on getting ‘away’ from home or ‘arrived’ at Gembrook. The emphasis is not on the fastest way or most direct.
The image of a labyrinth comes to mind. The residential community has formed one in the render on David’s Cabin.
I think there’s something about old pilgrim cities with the church at the centre meaning you had to work to find your way through. The sacred isn’t easy or straightforward to find, you have to work for it, you have to persist.
If you are finding barriers keep coming up to what sacred connection looks like for you, be it: rest, lighting a candle, being in nature, a creative practice, meditation, listening on Country, attending a faith space… Be encouraged, as you take in the above image, that even when the path seems to turn and lead away, there’s really only one path to take and, whatever directions you follow, you’ll get there.
I also got slightly lost on a detour to try and find Gembrook Park which, I did indeed find, but only after exploring what is probably local access rather than the main entrance.
I extend an invitation to you Reader, to get lost and pursue a path more beautiful.
An early settler name for Footscray was Cut Paw Paw a transliteration from the Yalukit-willam tribes’ Koort boork boork meaning: A clump of She-Oaks.
Image description: Harakeke (flax) seeds have been used to symbolise my footsteps as a migrant arriving on Country to contextualise myself as ngamatiji (a non-indigenous person)
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’.
“On Country, after a birth, the father would have the placenta and the mother would have the seed from the bush tucker. They would go and plant a tree, which is called a directions tree. That tree would then represent that baby. And that baby would grow in conjunction with that tree. So, that’s there for that child to go back to and reflect on their life. However that tree grows is a direct reflection of how that child is growing – that child’s life.VicRoads and Major Road Projects Victoria are cutting down Djab Wurrung Directions and Birthing Trees in order to widen a road. Culturally there is a clear association to devaluing human life and potential by destroying these trees.“ Djab Wurrung man Zellanach Djab Mara
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.
This image shows some of those small pieces of language for place that remain in the landscape around us to learn from once other names are removed. An opaque sheet of acetate sits over the map covering those names beneath which are now ‘ghosted over’.
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.
The desire in the woven pieces is to represent cultural exchange of welcome between the Welcome to Country, during which gum leaves are burned, and a Maori powhiri (welcome) where an elder speaking in the ceremony might wear a pataka around their waist as a skirt or across their shoulders. There was learning over this residency, that to deeply connect with the culture where I am, I will need to deeply connect with the culture where I am from. 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. When I am grounded by where my placenta is buried, know my mihi… when my introduction is from a deep memory story, not a colonising story, we are starting from a place of shared understanding and Welcome.
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.
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?
My current forethoughts are around these queries… in my hemisphere (southern), it is summer/autumn and there is abundance, harvesting, preserving… it doesn’t seem like a time of year that makes much sense to give things up. I think that part of ‘giving up’ for Lent was that people died because there wasn’t enough food to get through the winter. They had to food ration to make it through. I like the idea that feasting on Sundays was someone bringing out a faithfully reserved jam, or stewing their last apples. The community survived the winter because they worked together. Spring brings relief of the austerity measures. Because of this, Lent has made more sense to me when I took something up (rather than personally giving something up) because it connected me with others.
With over a 100 days of the last year spent in lockdown, I think we’ve given up on plenty: a 5km radius, a curfew, only so many visitors or none. What do the learnings of our season and context in this moment have to say to our rhythms of church?
In the Eastern Kulin seasonal calendar March is Iuk Eel Season. Hot winds cease and temperatures cool. The days and night are of equal length – rather than austerity, what if we heard a call to balance? If you’re anything like me, areas of: exercise, food, drinking, social connection, and work became unbalanced during COVID and boundaries between home and work, and work and rest, have blurred. How might they be redefined?
The Iuk (eels) are fat and ready to harvest as they make their way downstream to spawn at sea. On the way they change from the dark pigmentation of freshwater eels and become silver. What if some of those things that have felt ‘lost’, like access to our creative outputs have actually been maturing during this time? What procreative energy is in you, seeking to move, to be fulfilled in its purpose and becoming? What brightness emerges from your season of darkness? What does it look like to make space for this procreation through Lent?
The Binap (Manna Gum) is flowering, and the hot summer air dries it’s sugary white sap (manna) and this a good treat to eat – what have you looked forward to all this time? How sweet is it after the wait?
My second thought is that Jesus knew the road he was walking, and what was at the end of it. He walked it anyway. When we commit to choose to do something difficult, we know there’s going to be times that’s hard. When we follow our commitment maybe, in a small way, this is an act of solidarity with the path/choice Jesus walked and offers insight to his sacrifice. So, when you live on the 7th floor and give up stairs, if you’ve left your bus ticket up there then you’re going to be tempted to take the lift. When faced with a choice between as easy and a difficult path – what do we choose to walk?
I think all of us know of relationships that broke up during lockdown. People decided to move – regionally, interstate, “home”. People changed jobs. In the crucible of limitation people had to make choices about what was most important. Decisions about what was necessary to flourish in scarcity. These decisions weren’t made lightly or easily, sometimes they were forced by circumstances outside of our control. The choice when there were no other options to choose from. Hard choices. Choices that cost us something. National Close the Gap Day and Harmony Day fall at this time of year… we reflect on the long road so far and the hard road to walk yet, what choice can we make but to keep walking? On the flip side, lockdown gave effect to many restrictions we thought couldn’t be done in the face of climate change – is the hard road that, despite our freedom, we continue to live within our restrictions of travel, working from home and shopping within 5kms?
Easter falls in April this year, when morning mists begin and nights become longer, we move into Waring Season. Wombats emerge from their burrows becoming active. Migrating birds arrive from Tasmania and male bulen-bulen (lyrebirds) display their mounds, tail feathers, and songs to attract a mate.
We know where we have been. Where are you planning on going?
What expectations did we have of ourselves over the last year that we did not meet? Of others that they could not meet? As you emerge from the burrow and become more active, how do we show the best of what we have to offer to each other again? We need to forgive ourselves and each other for what we have done and all we have left undone. Let’s have Good Friday and grieve, acknowledge what we have lost, but let’s also have the resurrection of Easter Sunday. What does it look like to celebrate that the season of loss and grief might be over? What about making a commitment to have friends or family to your house? To share and hear the stories of what the last year has been? To share you hopes for the future. To share a hug.
The community survived the winter because they worked together. Spring brings relief of the austerity measures.
Today I am writing about place. Specifically about how do you capture the essence of place? Stories, memory, land and an invitation. Word count = 0. Work in progress…
Tonight, mid-vote proceedings of the Legislative Council on the Conversion and Suppression Practices Bill, I paused to join communion at Dwell.
Amidst our contemplative silence, this poem by Jan Richardson was read and I prayed for those who know their first free breath today, and those who feel a cold shadow of fear. We sit at the same table – eat the same bread, drink the same cup, pray for protection from the same God… we all find welcome, and blessing, at this table.
Consider the map that’s brought you this far. We each carry ‘no map but the one you make yourself‘. Somehow mine always leads here. Back to this table.
The Map You Make Yourself by Jan Richardson
You have looked at so many doors with longing, wondering if your life lay on the other side.
For today, choose the door that opens to the inside.
Travel the most ancient way of all: the path that leads you to the center of your life.
No map but the one you make yourself.
No provision but what you already carry and the grace that comes to those who walk the pilgrim’s way.
Speak this blessing as you set out and watch how your rhythm slows, the cadence of the road drawing you into the pace that is your own.
Eat when hungry. Rest when tired. Listen to your dreaming. Welcome detours as doors deeper in.
Pray for protection. Ask for the guidance you need. Offer gladness for the gifts that come and then let them go.
Do not expect to return by the same road. Home is always by another way and you will know it not by the light that waits for you
but by the star that blazes inside you telling you where you are is holy and you are welcome here.
This afternoon I got to hear some of a fantastic panel session moderated by Sandra Kailahi, on the panel was keynote speakerNgāhuia Te Awekōtuku, with Sheridan Waitai, Leali’ifano Dr Albert L. Refiti, Nigel Borell and Zech Soakai.
I came in late but these are some fav snippets for listening and learning, I’m sorry they’re not attributed!:
“Decolonising” is a new word but this is something we’ve been negotiating since first contact.
Not all knowledge is taught in the same school (or held in the same museum)
Know me/us for our joy before knowing us for our trauma.
Our youth are defined as “troubled” instead of resilient.
Message from youth: “We could do so much more if people believed in us”
Success is so often measured by tertiary education but we have many paths that are not seen as ‘less than’
Whakapapa got us here, but whakapapa will get us further.
It’s a practice: play the game, beat the game, to change the game.
We need to leverage space to talk about our truth.
Connections with others around the world has been invaluable. Other people of colour. Our ideas, ways of thinking and doing are heard and valued.
Stuff has travelled so far, had an amazing story. They are rooms full of dead things. We need to sing the vā and ask: how do we receive this here? Sing ancestors to the present. Wake them up. We need to articulate that and make plans.
Exhibits can be enriching. We can feel embraced/represented. But not by telling it in the Master’s voice. We need to seize the doing.
Need to establish relationships/partnerships that aren’t pass/fail but allow for narrative, vision, space… where we are all experimenting together and able to try, learn, and try again.
They are a visual representation of self. Take your things home.
When/if Pacific lands are lost to climate change, what role might museums play in preserving taonga of a place that doesn’t exist anymore? How can they be guardians to preserve and protect so that people can visit and remember.
Can the word ‘decolonised’ even be applied to spaces like museums? The collection might be decolonised but the structure remains >>need to make a commitment to opening other avenues.
If you cut up a text that shows violence but if you read a text, read with the grain. What’s unemphasised? I try to read the two texts together, see how they can address or talk to each other.
It’s different for Māori and Pacific people they can always address directly – land taken or land given back.
1500 guides were trained for Te Māori. The guides felt safe, there were aunties and koro around but they were deterrents too. To touch tapu or to be around it, some saw it as a house of dead things. A trophy house. From the other side, to see weaving or wood carving… there can be joy, learning, and ownership.
If you work within an institution you must celebrate the small wins e.g. paradigm shifts. If the mauri of an object means it has to be worn. That’s it’s remit. If you can’t see it on display, someone might be wearing it. Be brave. Know what you have to achieve.
2 Māori contemporary curator appointments in the 1990s… there’s still only 2 roles. Allies need to advocate.
The kaupapa is of collecting the odd, exotic, the other, curiosities. We need a reiteration of beautiful, exquisite ‘other’, to decolonise that, to see Te Māori and Pasifika as here.
Decolonising? That’s work for the pālangi and pākehā. I’m already overworked. It’s enough to work to protect and pass on our knowledge. Our absent partner. That’s the ‘other’.
Decolonise oneself, claim all your ancestors including the armed constabulary from 1860s… Norwegians, Germans… we are all of them.
Act like you own it. It’s your whakapapa. We don’t need to decolonise… we didn’t ‘colonise’ it. Be ready for you to be colonised by us!
My friend Maria and I spend the afternoon in the garden. The broadbeans are spent, it’s the end of their season and we sort the remaining pods for food and seeds to dry. We hold the end and the beginning of life in our hands.
itellyouarise 