The Land in My Heart is Burning

*Out of respect for the Aboriginal culture in Australia, there is mention of a person who is deceased in this post, along with a link to a video interview.

Last year, I had a dream that there were sparks in the house, a fire in the attic, and I was separated from my family. The morning of the car wreck, I kept asking Barton if the stove was turned off. We think that on the road, a guy in a truck in front of us threw a cigarette butt out the window, and we believe the guy who was speeding way too fast behind us saw that spark and lost control of his vehicle.

Since then, we’ve been impacted by many fires.

The filament in the oven sparked an oven fire, and Barton’s audition in CA was delayed due to the Kincaid Fire in Sonoma.

And, there are fires that are distant and still pierce the heart, making it difficult to breathe.

When I was a junior in college, all of my friends were traveling to Reading England as our college had a partnership with a sister university. But, of course, I had to go off on my own, the timid adventurer.

I travelled to Australia for the semester; this time was important for me, one where I was discovering independence.

As American students, we stayed with host families and had a host “guide” who we travelled with and was in charge of our classes while we were there. The first day, we took the Metro around Melbourne. Each student got off a certain stop, we had to find a location in Melbourne, and then we had to find our way back to our host guide’s house. I was so intimidated! And, it was the best way to discover how to navigate in the city on my own.

As a group, we took day or mini trips around Australia, even venturing over to Tasmania. My time was steeped in creativity and writing.

We each had an independent study project, and I took a bus out to Alice Springs for three weeks on my own. I stayed at the youth hostel, and each day was filled with a different experience of seeping deeper into the land. The land was my classroom. I met and spoke with the community, so many rich experiences listening to storytellers and artists.

A group of women named me, and even for a moment in time, I was a part of the community.

At the youth hostel, I remember telling another visitor I was studying Aboriginal oral tradition and history, and this woman told me how those drunkin’ Abos were good for nothin’.

It was the first time I had been faced with such direct racism, matter of fact. I spoke, I stood up for what I believed in. Both of my grandfathers were Methodist ministers steeped in service and both deeply involved in the Civil Rights Movement. This was the first time I found my voice.

Yet, these were hard lessons.

I remember watching as a policeman yelled at an Aborigine as he threw him into the back of a patty wagon.

I visited a school for Aborigines in Yuendumu, specific to Warlpiri community. The white tour guide talked about the benefits of education the children were receiving. She showed how most Aborigines lived in extreme poverty.

A few days later, I met a singer, Herbie Laughton, who took me to the back side of the land at the Ole’ Telegraph Station (The Bungalow), where he was taken as a boy. I listened to stories of being taken from his family, how the children stood on the posts at The Bungalow as punishment, and how they took slingshots and fought over birds to eat. He played country songs, spoken words of his lifetime.

How different these experiences and perspectives were from each other.

One afternoon, Herbie took me to a place where red ochre painted over the rocks.

There is a relationship to the land, each line drawn on the rock has a meaning we may never know, each place of water sacred, bringing life in the desert sands.

We have forgotten our sacred relationship to the land.

Even in our modern-day society, we are connected to geography. After the tornado in Tuscaloosa, people walked to the hospital and could not find their way homes because the streets were so devastated. Even coming back a few weeks after, I became lost on streets I had known for years, confused, even with the names of streets written on cardboard signs.

We are connected to places, lines created form our journeys each day.

Australia held these lessons standing by the cliffs painted with red ochre. My hand on a rock where another hand had been generations ago.

In this sacred space, our hands touch. People of the past. People of the present.

This is the land of my heart.

And the land is burning. The air is red and hard to breathe.

The land is speaking to us, over worked, abused, and ravished by our selfish needs.

And the land is burning.