poopyhelicopterbutt t1_iznbry4 wrote
Serious question. What does ‘always was, always will be’ actually mean in real terms? Like, what are the sincere beliefs and practical implications beyond lip service for people who say that? If you’re living in a house or sitting in a park on land that doesn’t belong to you, surely you’d give it back to its rightful owner of you believe it’s theirs, right? I don’t understand the very vocal assertion that it’s their land but only if I don’t have to give up anything of mine. Seems like it’s just a thing to say for brownie points.
MildColonialMan t1_izoyjsf wrote
Not Indigenous but as I understand it, in their cosmology, links between people and country (and between country and language) are permanent and part of the natural order of things. It's a logic of relationships rather than one of possession, and the permanent relationships were/are established in the Dreaming. You belong to country in a similar way to how you belong to a family. Same as I am always related to my family even if I'm totally estranged from them, they're always related to country.
The relationships between language and country were/are also established in the Dreaming. So Dharug Country is always Dharug Country even if nobody speaks Dharug on it any more.
At a more basic level, it's been theirs for at least 60,000 years. That's a lot of ancestors in the ground, literally becoming part of it.
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