My love for and the protective relationship I have with the Earth, with water, animals, family and community/people came about because of exploring concepts that are only found in Indigenous languages.
In 2012 I was living on the land, teaching at a seasonal camp and revitalising an incredible Indigenous language, when an elder stopped me in my tracks with the simple but complex words, “You can’t own anything in the natural world.”
My eyebrows furrowed, and all I could think was, how am I going to make this lesson work if I can’t say “my water”?
In any colonial patriarchy, we are ...
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