Page 39 - 10th Annual International Charles Town Maroon Conference and Festival Magazine

Charles Town Maroon International Conference Magazine June 2018

You work in high schools as an Elder, passing on inner wise spirit. We all have a wise spirit living within
culture. What do students ask you about your us. We must all sit silently because we do know the
Connection to Country? answers, but in the chaos of life we forget about that
I teach them history and language. I explain about wise spirit. I have always found comfort from the land,
colonisation and the effects on us as an Aboriginal whether it’s the breeze, the birdsongs, the smell of
nation. We talk about totems and, when the kids don’t gumtrees or flowers, or watching dragonflies or
know their totems, I tell them it’s not their fault. We cicadas. I used to love climbing up the gumtrees,
are a living culture and you can reclaim a totem that trying to catch them.
you feel connected to because you have a right to
regain that connection. Many of them struggle with
identity and I tell them, especially the fair-skinned What do you hope will change about Australia’s
children, “Don’t let other people tell you who you are. management of its Country?
Know that you are a child of this land. Your bloodline I don’t think they care at the moment. I think they will
connects you to the beginning of the Dreaming, so wake up with a shock some day and see how they have
walk strong in your identity and in the skin you’re in.” damaged Mother Earth — when the waters are killed,
when the land is poisoned, and when they can’t grow
What advice would you give someone interested in their crops, and they can’t breed their introduced
strengthening their personal Connection to Country? animals, like bullocks and sheep, those hard-footed
At sundown, or you can do it anytime but sundown is animals. We’ve got soft-footed animals here that don’t
better, pick up a handful of the earth and you whisper damage the earth. I hope they don’t realise too late.
your name into it. Then, as the sun is setting, throw the You can’t eat gold or coal. We must stop before it’s too
earth up into the air, introducing yourself to Mother late because once Mother Earth dies, we die.
Earth. Say that you honour the earth and all the people
who have walked this ground before you, right back *Dreaming (or Dreamtime): is another word for
to the beginning of time to today. Say that you come here Aboriginal philosophy. It includes the idea of the
in peace, with the utmost respect and honour. I tell this to connectedness or relatedness of all things that is
special people who have touched my life. I tell them to revealed through creation stories. There are places on
do this ancient ceremony when they go walking in our traditional land where creation spirits and ancestors
Australian bush, to honour the ancestors. live – sacred sites. Aboriginal people are connected to
the land through their creation stories. The Dreaming
How has your Connection to Country helped you in gives meaning to everything in Aboriginal culture; it
difficult times? sets the rules about relationships between people, the
I found solace, peace and contentment. Once you sit land and all things.
there, everything melts away as you listen to your

Rhonda Collard-Spratt
Rhonda Collard-Spratt is a talented Yamatji and Noongar poet, Jacki Ferro
visual artist, and story teller from remote Western Australia. In Jacki Ferro is a community development worker, writer and
1954, aged 3, she was removed from her family and placed on a editor. Since the 1990s, Jacki has run cross-cultural, unifying
native mission. It would be over ten years before she saw her projects promoting self-determination, community education and
mother again. Her memoir, Alice’s Daughter: Lost mission child social justice. Jacki believes in well-researched, confronting life
(AIATSIS, 2017) co-written by Jacki Ferro, tells of Rhonda’s stories to both entertain and educate — raw memoirs that inspire
search for culture and family as she faced violence, racism, foster personal growth and social change. She lives in Brisbane,
families, and her father’s death in custody. As a representative of Australia. Visit her at www.rawmemoirs.com
the Stolen Generations, Rhonda officiates at National Sorry Day
events in Brisbane and Ipswich.

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