​​Caring for Country: Lessons from Yuin Nation

In October, I found myself living one of my actual dreams when I was invited to spend a few nights on Uncle Bruce Pascoe’s property in Yuin Country, Yumbarra, Victoria. Reading Uncle Bruce’s book, Dark Emu, was a turning point for me. As I flipped the pages, I was also flipping an enormous narrative I’d carried deep down but couldn’t quite articulate. That narrative is the one that told me Aboriginal people were somehow less than; it had always felt wrong and sat weirdly for me, leaving me me with a sense of shame and also feelings of mourning for those old stories well into my adult life. Until I encountered Uncle Bruce’s words, I didn’t see the pathways out. Ceremony, language and those patterns that hold it all together weren’t something I grew up with, maybe it was, and I can't see it right now but either way I don’t remember it. So... here I was, stepping into a space where ceremony wasn’t just present; it was the foundation of everything. Like I said, actual dreams coming to reality.

We landed on Uncle Bruce’s land through an invite extended from Arthur Little, a Yuin man and part of the AIME family. Arthur, or Uncle Arty as I call him, practices his own ceremony with Uncle Bruce and Uncle Noel Butler in Milton up the road a bit. When Arty asked Uncle Bruce if we could visit during our tour, he didn’t launch into an explanation of everything AIME does, instead, he simply said, “We just want to come and make you happy Unc.” So, we added Black Duck Farm this to the list of stops as we made our way down the East coast

The buses were packed full of stories, drawings, and connections being made like songlines weaving down the roads.  Jack’s daughter and I traveled part of this journey together, and we turned the back seats into a studio. We pulled out the watercolors and turned the imagination switch on to create stories as we traveled. At one point, just outside Uncle Bruce's property, we stopped on the bridge over the river to pull out the guitar and perform Moon Banana, a story we had written. Then right there by the river, a tree caught our attention, a stump shaped like a platypus face and bill, as if it was making its way back to the water in deep time... slow, slow motion-like. This was wild to us because this is Jack’s totem and something we quite often look to for design intelligence on health and how monstrous creations can become a sublime species over deep time. It felt like a sign for sure!

As we got closer, I saw trees blackened and looking sick, still holding stories of devastation from the same 2020 fires that ripped through Uncle Noel's place too. Then one big tree wrapped in the Aboriginal flag, I stepped out of the bus and took a picture. It felt like a marker to me, a moment to pause, to take another look from the trees perspective and ponder what this land had been through, I felt sad and shamed as I looked around, wondering what it must have been like for those who called this place home when those fires came through.

Uncle Bruce welcomed us that next day with a morning ceremony and gifted us medicine and knowledge that held layers and layers of history, connection, and survival, he passed on the right notes and the right stories for us on this day, beginning with a warning about a black snake that lived nearby. “It hasn’t hurt anyone yet,” he said, “but it’s part of the ecosystem. Its presence means the land is healthy.” Then he pointed to the skies as birds flew over and called out, explaining how they too carry knowledge. “Listen,” he said. “They’re sharing their responsibilities with us. We need to pay attention to them, they are also part of caring for country.”

Uncle Bruce tied his a headband around his forehead, sharing the meaning behind the process. He held clap sticks in his hands and faced the four directions in the order he was shown to do, clapping the sticks once at each stop. I'd seen and been present with Arty when he did this with us, but this was different. The sound carried across the hillside in front of us, pulsing outward in ripples, and I immediately thought about all those sounds and different ceremonies that must have existed in some kind of beautiful symphony before the land and people where "removed" from each other. As he spoke and kept sharing stories with us, I was glad to have my notebook in hand. I started to scribble notes, phrases, anything to try and remember the download that was pouring out of Uncle Bruce as we stood in that circle together.

He explained the meaning of the red headband and how it always brings you back to the mother. “Through the mother,” he said as he touched the headband to the ground. It's a simple phrase, but it carries the weight of generations, of stories that refuse to be forgotten as long as there are people practicing and holding their lore. He shared stories of unwanted guests in the land too. That hill ahead of us was now home to some weeds we were set to pull. He said they are terrible, "so bad that even the kangaroos won't eat them, and that tells you everything you need to know about that plant," and that it was his responsibility to try and keep them down and at bay as much as he could because the seeds blow and spread to the neighbouring land and cause problems over there too, beyond the fence lines and "barriers" we put around country.

Photo Credit - Ben Knight

That night we gathered around the fire, ready to share our story with him and Aunty Lynn as a gift and to fulfil the promise Arty had made about "we just want to come make you happy". The professors worked their magic and the magician, dancers, signers and poet Shyaka did too, once we where done our team offered gifts to Uncle Bruce: a book on Hoodie Economics, a painting, and I gift him with the picture of the tree I’d drawn earlier.

I told him what the tree had taught me, that this is caring for country, when you wrap the land in Indigenous knowledges and ceremony and those old songs to prevent the devastation those big fires bring and a promise that all of us here around this fire tonight would keep telling these stories into all the corners of the world we were going home to and going into in the future. Uncle Bruce accepted the gifts with quiet humility. “Well..." he said, "You’ve gone and done it, you made me happy.” But he reminded us this wasn’t about him. “The mother is always listening,” he said. “She needs to hear these songs and stories right now.” Before the night ended, he gave us a new title: a caravan of clowns. It felt like an honour, a wave of fresh energy to keep carrying these stories into the world.

As beautiful as this experience was I must also share that Uncle Bruce’s work isn’t without sacrifice. Dark Emu challenges deeply held narratives across Australia and probably abroad too, making him a target for criticism from those unwilling to confront the harsh truth of Australia’s history. Yet, he carries this burden with a dignity that reminds us what it means to hold your lore, to pass on that knowledge and how to be a warrior without arms, "not actual arms" he joked as he indicated his arms, but the weapons that are usually associated with fighting.

As I left Yuin Country, I carried more than gratitude. I carried a responsibility to keep telling these stories, to wrap myself in the songlines and knowledge that connect us all. Caring for country isn’t a task or a project, it’s a relationship, a ceremony, a birth right. For the mother and for all our relations.

I encourge you too take a deeper look into Uncle Bruses work, his life and the beautful stories he keeps sharing - here is a video to get you started when he was on IMAGI-NATION TV giving a key note during the pandemic. It starts at 17:39 but theres som fun to dive into before that too if you wanna spend some eye ball hours in something meaningful that went on to build IMAGI-NATION

Appreciate you for making it this far x see you soon!!