Published: 7 July 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
SIDRA KRANZ MOSHINKSY recalls an early Zionist catchphrase as she visits Indigenous homelands in the Northern Territory
It came as a shock to many of us when the states closed their borders to each other amid COVID lockdowns. Free movement is something we take for granted and while there are differences in culture, climate, politics and some linguistic quirks (bathers/swimmers/cossies), travelling interstate generally comes easily, unlike long haul international travel.
But we also have the capacity to encounter other nations within our borders, indeed within our states and cities. Something we are being called on to address as a matter of urgent national redress is the recognition of the rights and place of our First Nations people in our constitution, polity and our national psyche. As a country, Australia has displaced, decimated and destroyed much of the fabric of these ancient nations, among the longest continually functioning in the world.
Recently, I had the privilege to be a guest in the Tiwi Islands and in the country and homelands of the Yolngu nation. It felt like an international journey of sorts: I needed a permit to enter and was welcomed through traditional ceremony; I didn’t speak the language; the hierarchies and power structures were different; family and kinship systems complex; the culture rich and deep in breadth and time, while the underpinning values and aspirations strong and palpable. It was a strange sensation to feel a foreigner.
Bawaka homeland is a couple of hours drive down a sandy, bumpy road from Nhulunbuy in East Arnhem Land and is on the land of the Gumatj clan. The homelands movement began in the 1970s, when family groups opted to leave the centralised mission-led townships, often near mining towns, to return to their tribal lands. Many elements were at work here: in part wanting to get away from the negative influences and social dysfunction of these places; in part to preserve language and customs and to care for country, integral to health and strength of body and spirit.
