In our Buran Nalgarra transdisciplinary studies this term, we continue to place at the heart, What could futures look like if indigenous worldviews and knowledges were guiding forces for our individual and collective lives? This article reflects the beginnings of an exploration of how aligning with the Dharug seasonal cycle, can be inspiration for living respectfully in place.
How changed is everything! Suddenly the cold and frosty time of Dagara (cold and frosty), aided by strong winds and warming - longer days, transforms into magical moments of awakening! On my bushwalk, the first Waratah is flowering, bush peas and flag iris line paths; and in my garden grevilleas, indigo and wonga vine are restaurants for bees. Not surprisingly, insect catching birds arrive in clouds.
Dugara Guwara (cold and windy): The diamond python Maliya wakes from its hibernation and seeks its mate. Maliya in its “increase”, is traditional food for Dharug people. The season prior to this has been Dagara, a time of fire on Country, the wallaby grasses soon green up becoming food and shelter for creatures. If “spring” is typically a season of balance, heralded by the equinox - equal hours of day and night; in this place it is also the balance that arises from reciprocity. Care for Country, as Country cares for people.
Reciprocity can be an act of sacrifice, which Wade Davis speaks of as an act of making sacred, our actions imbued with ways that nourish beyond self-interest. My understanding is there’s a common thread to Indigenous worldviews, where what we receive as beauty and bounty, also calls us to accountability and responsibility.
Maliya, awakening from hibernation and seeking a mate, is connected to warming days, greening up after fire, a strand in nature’s ever-generative book of wisdom. Procreative Maliya can inspire pro-social actions in our collective lives, ones that give back to the earth who nourishes, while also taking care of those in our shared communities.
Clive Hamilton in his latest book, Living Hot: Surviving and thriving on a heating planet, exhorts us to get cracking. He says, “If we prepare well, we give ourselves a fighting chance of preserving some of the best of what we have while building stronger and fairer communities able to navigate a path through the escalating pressures of a warming world – and even find new ways to flourish”. Some of these new ways may well be inspired by old ways.
In anticipation, in this season of flourish, of preparations that matter.
Lynn
Living Hot: Surviving and thriving on a heating planet - Clive Hamilton
