Dreamtime Stories

Recommended Soundtrack: "Get Me Out" by King Stingray

My Australian dream was to visit the Dreamtime. The heart of the Country, Uluru Kata-Tjuta National Park.

I nearly made it there once, but quite stupidly I lost my flight. Yet (after some degree of frustration) I realised after that it was Country setting me on the right direction. Loosing that flight put me on the righteous journey of love and evolution. A path however, that came to a bifurcation.

During my campervan travels across the Country, I nearly made it there a couple of times too, but faulty transportation, fear and flies imposed a blockage on the road.

As social justice for Indigenous Australians. Full of promises – not even ‘full’ really, but a few promises that have led this community to believe that actions were being made for amendments. The Australian government approaches something near resolution at times, but perhaps it lacks honesty, or at least well-informed decisions. Which I believe is by the lack of equity and collaboration involved in decision making.

As a cultural heritage practitioner I am, or should be, the first line of defence for the protection and continuity of culture to continue humankind meaning and identity. I would like to continue to admire and support, in any way I can, the resistance intrinsic to the people who have inhabited the Australian Country for tens of thousands of years.

Resistance is what I see in First Nations people, and I feel resistant when engaging with Indigenous individuals and groups. But what does resistance really mean?

I believe for me it used to be (and still is at most levels) a force of subverting current norms and challenging the mainstream status quo. It appears in nonconformity, in social movements concerning race, gender equality and inclusion as well as First Nations matters. I see it in the aesthetic representations of our world, I listen to it in revolutionary music, and I read in the words of writers. It feels like wind and strength.

Alone I have never endured it as much as I did against the same emotional reasoning that propelled me to finally put my thoughts into words and into the public sphere. I have been a proud wee las for as long as I can remember, unbreakable specially at the face of romantic love, too independent for that. Still, when I parted ways from the very same partner that I ventured on my van journey across Australia, I felt broken. I felt the audacity of doubt and fear, limiting my every movement. As I went through my memories to indulge myself in pain, ironically, in stories of forgotten lands and lost people, I encountered the embodiment of resistance. In the traveller who embarks on uncharted journeys, embracing vulnerability and forging connections that transcend borders. From the longest living culture in the history of humankind, I wanted to learn how to sing you to me.

Then I finally made it to what is perhaps the most sacred place (at least from a tangible perspective) for this ancient community. Their sense of meaning and identity is of intangible qualities mainly, intrinsic to Dreamtime Stories, but translated in Country. And Country is everything. So, in the heart of Country, finding connections within my own empowered clan, and around me in the tangible and intangible memories of Uluru, I found my own dreams shifting to a different direction. Not when I wanted, but when I needed, I realised that that sacred land had sang to me.