Groundswell

A photograph of a white body on crackled ochre appears in a sustainability magazine with this description: 'Bushfires were raging all across Australia at the time and my anxiety levels were high and finding landscapes that were safe enough to photograph was difficult.'

An innocuous postscript concerned for our climate future, but the result centres the photographer’s agenda rather than expressing genuine concern for the land and its people. This sentiment runs alongside a glib and unrelated acknowledgement of the landowners, famous astronomers who used the dry lake as a key tool in their custodianship of Country.

A widely known tension in photography is how a camera offers a certain distance from responsibility. The Susan Sontag catchcry might here be flipped to: regarding the pain of Country that others created, not me! But there’s a convenient amnesia and disjuncture between the creative vision of the photographer above and the realities of living on Indigenous land. Land impacted by the direct actions of settlers who separated it from sustainable custodianship from its traditional owners.

Photographers often use the camera to hold themselves at convenient length from engaging with histories embedded into the Australian landscape. The various terra firma become interchangeable sets that morph into something new no matter where you go: luscious tropical Gondwanaland in one location and a barren, extraterrestrial scene elsewhere. Or Earth in 50 years, wearing the consequences of climate change.

The deep time of Country remembers what took place. Country remembers how we were prevented access to food sources and shelter. It remembers the genocide, massacres and warfare, plus the interventions into traditional custodianship of land – the consequences of which we are only just beginning to understand. It’s these unacknowledged memories that become tangible feelings of unease held in the landscape, heard by settler occupants.

Barkandji researcher and curator Zena Cumpston, during a conversation earlier this year, explained to me that in the early days of settlement 'our need to access food put us in the greatest danger. That’s directly linked to violence we experienced because when we started to push back trying to get food, stealing sheep and traversing Country – that’s when our lives were most at risk.'

In her booklet Indigenous plant use – an outcome of her 2019 exhibition The living pavilion at the University of Melbourne – Cumpston documented thousands of Kulin Nation plants. Emphasising the holistic approach of caring for Country, it draws attention to cyclical seasons and the interdependence of all things. Subverting scientific classification is one of the key concerns in Cumpston’s practice. Through exhibitions, writing and research she asks: how can Aboriginal people have agency in the sciences when this field has caused a disproportionate amount of harm? “Especially when we consider its role in body snatching and devastating systems of classification central to the theft of our old people and our children.”

This significance of classification and naming is considered by photographer James Tylor in many of his recent works. In We call this place... Kaurna Yarta, beautiful depictions of Kaurna Country in South Australia are overlaid with place names in Kaurna language in a copperplate-style script. The use of a florid, European font reads as a wry emphasis on the reclamation of place. Tylor’s other bodies of work terra botanica i and terra botanica ii refer to the classification work of botanist Joseph Banks, whose task was to collect specimens on Cook’s voyage to Australia and determine whether the land was habitable. The photographs capture the moment of separation, blossoms and leaves severed from their mother plant. The result is a sequence of eerie horror scenes, at once underlining the artifice behind beloved botanic illustrations and photography, and foreshadowing the consequences of Banks’s success. Deeply felt and engaged with Country and its embedded knowledge and emories, Cumpston’s and Tylor’s practices are the antithesis of the photograph mentioned above.

First Nations artists have gone further than interventions into colonial depictions or representations held in archives. Cumpston’s and Tylor’s projects are practical applications of the holistic knowledge of caring for Country and the environment that is required if we are to make crucial interventions into the climate crisis. Author Tony Birch, in a 2017 essay for the Sydney Review of Books, refers to what Country holds, analysing how amnesia by settler occupants has had a lasting impact on our ecological future. He quotes policymaker and ANU academic Seán Kerins who, in spite of being non-Aboriginal, understands that “caring for Country encompasses being spiritually bound to Country through intimate connections with Ancestral beings still present in the land and waters”. The unease and anxiety that lingers in landscape is from centuries of occupation that have disrupted the connection.

The First Peoples-led youth climate movement Seed Mob sees these intimate connections to Country as a strength in its campaigns for climate justice. As Australia’s first Indigenous youth climate network, it runs campaigns, fundraises and protests, all with the view to protect Country. Its approach emphasises sustainable practices of our Ancestors and Elders, highlighting how this custodianship of land can empower young First Peoples.

'From Borroloola in the gulf of the Northern Territory, to mob in Tasmania, to communities across the Kimberley, and island nations throughout the Torres Strait, we support young mob with the skills, confidence, networks and plans to lead our movement for climate justice,' Seed Mob states. 'We believe that by building the power of those most affected and confronting the systemic injustices that have led to the climate crisis, we can build strong, sustainable and resilient communities where everyone can thrive.'

Given that today’s young people will grapple with the long-term consequences of climate change in Australia and beyond, this leadership and momentum is so important. Seed Mob refers to itself as 'Elders of the future' with projects and campaigns that instill hope in the ongoing bid for land rights, self-determination and climate justice across our communities.

With ancestral knowledge embedded in its approach, this understanding of deep time foregrounds the intelligence of our Ancestors and reframes their custodianship of land with a lens of authenticity. As white guilt and eco-anxiety reach new heights, Seed Mob’s bid to become an independent organisation is well timed. Its current campaign is a bid to fundraise $1.5 million which will enable its independence from the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, a move towards autonomy it says is 'critical in the collective fight for climate justice.'

With such staunch young people advocating for climate justice, it’s possible that there is hope for Country yet. Birch’s suggestion is that the way forward requires a 'shift in the collective psyche of white Australia [and] necessitates an acceptance of, and a subsequent ability to embrace, the realities of living on and in Indigenous Country.' This poses a direct challenge to non-Aboriginal people, particularly creatives, whose struggle with the personal responsibility that comes with occupying stolen land is exemplified in the photograph mentioned at the start of this essay.

What we need to move through these dual anxieties is not surface level. Robert Macfarlane’s astute observations in his book about the worlds buried beneath our feet, Underland, are bound up in years of research about deep time, reflecting on how peeling back layers of what is underfoot will benefit our planet’s future. Yet awareness and acknowledgement alone does not create change. When we have been speaking on and adding to the upper layers for so long, to pause and feel, listen, hear what is held within the ground that’s holding us up is the radical act of now.