where paths clash

I was quite impressed by an Australian film I saw this evening, Mad Bastards (check out the trailer above). Set in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, the story and film were developed over several years with a local Aboriginal community, many of whom also make up the cast of the film. While addressing some of the harsh realities that the actor-characters have lived through, I found it nevertheless a story infused with hope, where its main protagonists and the community they belonged to were depicted with a strong sense of agency, and a pulsating determination to move their lives forward.

A line from the protagonist of the film, T.J., quite struck me. Gazing over the vast plains of the Kimberley, T.J. comments to his new friend (in the screen shot above), "you must have a lot of sacred places around here," to which his friend responds in the positive. He then goes on to describe his own home place, Perth, the capital city of W.A.

T.J. recounts how the sacred sites of this land are now covered up by a road and a bridge. A natural spring had a brewery built on it. He described the anger this stirred up in him as a child, throwing rocks at it at whatever chance he got (an image that is certainly intended to be symbolic in the film, since the alcohol such a brewery produces now serves as one of T.J.'s weaknesses. He is still fighting that brewery, one way or another).

I thought it was worth a few brief reflections on the vast ideological differences between the two visions of this land as evidenced by these comments.

For T.J., the land was inscribed with a sense of history, and with the stories of his origins. In his book Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, geographer Yi-Fu Tuan describes this "origin myth" as being linked to an individual's sense of identity.  Quoting T.G.R. Strehlow from the book Aranda Tradition, Tuan notes that "he finds recorded in his land the ancient story of the lives and deeds of the immortal beings from whom he himself is descended, and whom he reveres. The whole countryside is his family tree." Strehlow also comments how "to Australian natives, topographical features are a record of 'who were here, and did what'. They are also a record of 'who are here now'."

As a result, strong emotional ties are established with the land itself, ties that teach one to value it as a sacred space and that encourage contentment with one's own homeland. Tuan describes how a member of the Ilbalintja tribe explained to Anthropologist Strehlow, "Our fathers taught us to love our own country, and not to lust after the lands belonging to other men."

Clearly, this view of 'the land' is in stark contrast to that which these images of roads and bridges represent. This usage envisages space as a way to move people, and to move them quickly, encouraging transit rather than settlement and attachment. This is all done in the name of development, in an attempt to create a faster, more accessible, more open Perth.

My intention here is not to get into details about the pros and cons of each approach. What I am interested in highlighting is how a fundamental difference between aboriginal people and their then colonisers concerned how they saw the land and its purposes. The act of arriving and stamping the land with one's flagpole is ideologically very far removed from the credo above that discourages the 'lusting' after land belonging to others. Land as a commodity, as something to be claimed and possessed, represented the ideas of the West making their mark on this space. In tandem, the building of roads and breweries signified the spatial erasure of the stories that served as a testament to how these communities came to be, and to who they still saw themselves as.

The appeal here is not one to go back; for there is nowhere to go back to. In places like Perth, that time is lost. But it is worth being reminded of how dramatically our conceptions of space can differ, and how those with less power have their perceptions of space so easily cast aside. In these cases, places of meeting can become places of conflict; when peoples' paths cross, they clash rather than merge.

How can we collectively perceive our connection to a land then, in this 21st century melting pot that we now live in? How can we share a vision of the way to use space that benefits everyone, while remaining respectful of a diversity of views and beliefs? These questions go much beyond who owns what, which would be a very superficial reading of the dilemma at hand. The heart of the issue concerns how we relate to a place, and how its usage can reflect those values we have in common. Any suggestions?