Nimbin Rocks

Within the start of Love and Reconciliation in the Forest by Deborah Rose, she begins with a question raised by Mary Graham, “How would we live, as persons and as a society, if we accept that we are in connection and we are not primary?” This beginning question made me think about the inequalities found within different communities, between race, gender, religion. All people within a community share a connection, if it were recognized, those inequalities might not exist. Human connection to others provides a beautiful opportunity to work together and live through love rather than discrimination and hate. Connection is here to bind us together, if we allow it to reach beyond friends and family to our neighbors and strangers, understanding we all share this basic human connection of being, there might be hope in changing societies that break people down.

I have grown up with the mentality to show respect and treat everyone as equal with the reasoning that it was the right and only way to live, especially growing up within the catholic church. I have grown up with the thoughts of having a connection to god or a higher power but never started thinking about a deep connection to land or to strangers until I began the Global experience. I first learned connection and love to strangers when visiting an indigenous group in Costa Rica and spending a week living in their village, the second time I felt that connection was in Waytabu in Fiji. The people in those communities were so connected to others and shared all they had, including their love to those who visited and I believe that stems from their connection with land and nature. They do not have the same history of destruction and exploitation of land, resources, and people, meaning their connection to such was never intentionally broken whilst the European invaders broke that connection within the first taking of land.

In Australia, the Aboriginal peoples are the custodians of the land, there to care for it and allow for it to prosper under the correct conditions, and to keep it from facing destruction by outsiders. On November 1^st, our IENK visited a plant nursery maintained by the Ngulingah Local Aboriginal Land Council. From our trip I learned the responsibility felt by those in the area to protect their land and make sure it was in the right hands for care. Their connection extends from the people they share the community with to the land they have grown up on, while allowing others to come in and share that experience of the connection.

One of the things that interest me that day, was when Nigel stopped the bus, had everyone get out and talked to us about the mountains in the view as well as the commune that was created in the area. This was what I thought of during that beginning question in the reading, people coming together under the goal of living within the connection of human and nature to build their lives. They live sustainable lives, using only what they find to build their houses with help from everyone in the community. The people living in that commune have the ability to re-find the connection to land and to others.

Rose, D. B. (2004). Love and Reconciliation in the Forest. In Reports from a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation (pp. 193-212). Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.