It is Palawa Country After all

Collection of three Poems for Native Forests, originally commissioned for MONA Forest Congress, 2023. ©Nunami Sculthorpe-Green

‘In the Forest’ 

How are you to know? 

Who pushed and moved the earth 

Who made mountains and cut the rivers. 

Who filled the lakes and gathered the soil 

Used country to breathe life into our people and spread the seeds for these trees 

How are you to know? 

What we have seen here 

To travel the milky way 

To watch the ice come and go 

See the forest grow in its wake 

To swim as the water rises and watch the caves disappear with the new tides 

How are you to know? 

How much we have shaped this land. 

To live, to dance, to move 

 with fire 

Care for the oldest grandparents great-grandparents 

when they had only just sprouted from seed 

Can you ever know? 

How to care  

when you haven’t known it whole 

Not segmented 

broken into pieces 

parcels 

characteristics  

and uses 

Known the wait for song 

for ceremony 

Wait to hear footsteps and hear the crackle of smoke 

Know what happens when the grandparents great grandparents are lost 

You do know 

That we are one in the same creation 

Witness to the change 

Know we share the breath that flows in each other 

The character of this place 

Roots intertwined 

You must know 

That native forests are not separate from native people 

This is Palawa country after all 

On the Water  

Did you introduce yourself on Kunanyi and let your words meet you here? 

The freshwater flows 

The water falls 

Down the mountain 

through the trees 

It comes to meet the salt 

To join Timtumili Minanya on which you now float 

Did you wonder who was here? 

To see the mountain carved by ice 

Here to fill this river with stories as the water began to rise 

Here to sing back to the whales that came to fill the bay 

To taste the shellfish off the rock 

Here to swim with the seals and dance with the moon tides 

Muwinina 

Mumarimina 

To see, to meet, to cross at the water 

Stringy bark in the forest in the water here too 

That memory and knowledge remains 

Etched, Engrained 

In this landscape 

As it is in us 

Do you plan to journey across every day? 

Skimming the surface and never feeling the water on your skin 

Never knowing the stories 

And all that holds you up 

Now I know you must know 

That there is no understanding of native forests that can be sperate from native people 

This is Palawa country after all 

Underground 

Our roots go down deeper than this 

What we have made here remains 

Still speaks, still sustains 

Shell, rock, fire, stone, story, culture 

Every ancestor forms nourishment in this land from which can still draw 

One in the same 

There is no digging, moving, crushing, taking 

That could sperate us 

Our roots will always go down deeper 

Always allow for recollection and reconnection 

To see us here all you need do is look 

To the stars, the seas, the mountains 

See us in our creator 

Take the whales from the bay 

Take the seals from the water 

The kangaroo and emu from the grassland 

Turn the river to poison 

Uproot the trees 

Take the natives out of native forests 

But what will sustain you here? 

What you build here, will it last? 

Will your ideas remain? 

Sustain? 

Sustain country 

Sustain life 

Will they last when you are gone? 

We will wait here 

Wait to see 

This is Palawa country after all