THIS week is NAIDOC Week. Every year, NAIDOC Week has a theme and this year’s is Heal Country.
It encourages us to consider the impact of colonisation on the environment and the depth of Indigenous knowledge on how to restore the balance, for everyone’s benefit.
Not only has this knowledge survived colonisation – which in itself is remarkable – but it is as relevant and instructive today as it ever was to protecting and restoring our precious ecosystems to health.
The river is a prime example.
I remember listening to local elder Aunty Janine Wilson, in one of her famous welcome to country speeches, referring to the river as “the old girl”, saying she was unwell and that she couldn’t look after us if we didn’t look after her.
And it’s true. Scientists can tell us in extraordinary technical detail how the river works.
Farmers can tell us the monetary value of horticulture and how vital it is to our communities – and they are right.
But there is something particularly special and informative about the way our Aboriginal elders talk about the river. It cuts through all the economic and scientific jargon and gets to the fundamental truth that underlies all of it, that the river can only help us if we help it. Our fate and the river’s fate are intertwined.
When Four Corners reported on industrial-scale water theft and corruption in the north of the basin, National Party leader Barnaby Joyce said: “You know what this is all about? It’s about them trying to take more water off you.”
But that’s not true. Pulling up water corruption was a matter of basic justice and equity. Ensuring generational equity by protecting the interests of our future family farmers.
Ensuring cultural equity for our Aboriginal communities whose families have used and enjoyed the river for tens of thousands of years.
And ensuring economic equity for the $8 billion Murray-Darling Basin tourism industry, whose operators rely on the system to put food on their family’s tables.
Healing Country is good for all of us. It sustains our families, our communities, our economies and our wellbeing. We should all heed that message this NAIDOC Week.
