In this episode of Cultural Currents, A Climate for Art speaks to Yaraan Couzens Bundle, a proud Gunditjmara, Keeray Wurrung, Djab Wurrung, Yuin, and Bidjara woman, Firekeeper at Camp Sovereignty, and Whale dreaming custodian.
Yaraan shares about the importance of embedding sovereignty within climate action, songlines and ceremony in practicing law, totemic relationships and interconnectedness with Country, and how settler environmental defenders might better align themselves with First Nations people who live this work.
Cultural Currents is supported by the British Council
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Centering Sovereignty
All right. Can you tell me where we are again? Camp Sovereignty. Camp Sovereignty. Camp Sovereignty. Camp Sovereignty. Camp Sovereignty.
So my name is Yaraan Couzens Bundle. I'm a proud Gunditjmara, Djab Wurrung, Yuin and Bidjara woman, mother of four, and currently the fire keeper at Camp Sovereignty.Camp Sovereignty is a place of unceded sovereignty, our inherent cultural birthrights. It's a place of honoring and remembering and paying deep respect of the deep time and the resistance of our old people.
So yeah, we're doing this podcast called Cultural Currents, and a lot of it is about cultural responses to the climate crisis. And we're specifically interested in talking to you about why a sovereign approach is really important.
Thank you so much for the invitation to yarn. It's vital. These conversations about climate and Country are vital, and that we need to move forward in making real progress in protection of cultural heritage and cultural restoration is yarning and walking with the First Nations people and listening to us in our complex knowledge systems that we have about caring for Country.
And that those storytellings that span through millennia are about not only caring for Country but caring for specific species, totemic species, that are keystone species in the climate that it all links to a healthy Country. So yeah, these conversations are so important to get out to the wider community about what First Nations people have to offer the world in climate solutions.
And that we have really strong and powerful medicine that we can offer the world in those climate solutions.
So I've had the honor and privilege really of being brought up with my cultural identity in a time where we're on a cultural revival story, a journey in Victoria, a time of Treaty. And so I've been really lucky in that way where I've been brought up with my mother tongue, my language, and it enabled me to go and sit down and connect with Country in a way that I hadn't before.
And learning about the cultural law and the teachings of those laws and everything makes sense about the systems of how the Country works, the water systems and the forests and the functions – the green lung and the blue lung of our planet. And so growing up with culture, language, and growing up, up out in the bush and being taken to different places, different sacred sites, of different nations – being able to have the opportunity to sit down with a lot of different elders from across Victoria and interstate that have shared teachings with me about, the southern law and what that means to carry that on, to hold that in your body, but also practice that.
And putting that into practice, for me, meant protecting Country, protecting family and Country, and that's the foundations of who we are as First Peoples in the oldest living continuum of culture. And so it's the greatest honor and privilege of my life to be able to try and do my old people justice of what they fought and died for their Country and protecting that and the knowledge systems that went with that.
Our knowledge is our data, our scientific data, and that's something that modern science is only catching up to now about how complex, we understood the different natural systems of the world and, that we're not separate from it – that all of what is labeled as tangible and intangible cultural heritage is our living culture.
It's our living, breathing culture. And just like the Country and all of the Aboriginal people that exist today, that is part of the living culture. So, all the different elements and different parts of Country, different types of Country, that sea Country, that mountain Country, that lava plain Country across Gunditj and Djab Wurrung, from my matriarchal bloodlines through my mother – that is who we are.
That is our identity. That's our cultural belonging in the law, and the law is absolute. It doesn't change, and it exists to care for family and Country and, and exists to behave properly on Country. So how you behave in taking your place of belonging in the natural world. And so to honor my old people and the law that the cultural governance and the spirituality connected to – in our blood really, and the songs and the stories that we have sung since time immemorial, that are all about creation, and creation of life, and how we sing that life into Country, and how we honor that and honor the cycles of birth, and death, and growth.
On Djab Wurrung country, we come from a place where the ancestor trees are ancient and pre-colonial, and they're nesting grounds of the black cockatoo and the white cockatoo, and the swift parrot, and the gang-gang cockatoo. So that's who our people represent. So our tribal nation's totems are the black cockatoo and the white cockatoo, so we have a cultural obligation to always care for them.
I grew up dancing and teaching dance, and language, and culture, some weaving, and different women's tool making and, cultural revival practices that have very much been sleeping for our people for a long time, since the time of colonization – the frontier wars and the time of massacre for our people.
And so it was even more important to revive the cultural practices that connected to the Country where I belong to. So the Country that makes up Djab Wurrung and Gunditjmara Country where I've spent a lot of time growing up is coastal – is part of the Great Ocean Road and the 12 Apostles and, the Grampians – which we know as Gariwerd – and they're very popular places.
mountain Country, lava plains Country, and swamp land and lake Country – right down to the limestone coast, along the Gunditjmara coastline. It's following those cultural obligations to protect those different parts of Country that my nation belong to, but my family clans belong to as well, and trying to revive the songs and the song lines in deep respect of how our old people have always done it.
So the different campaigns that we started were really in the footsteps of all the freedom fighters and the Blak sovereign movement before us. For us and our family, it was more about those cultural obligations to the different parts of Country that we belong to, and how we can link those kinships with our neighbors and support our neighbors to care for their Country, and the old-way systems put back in place without money, without these big programs, without these big-paying green jobs that are meant to be saving the Earth.
Our old people never needed any of that. They just needed to exist on Country and to be supported in upholding the law.
Is that what's brought you from that work to Camp Sovereignty?
As part of upholding the law – standing in the law and practicing the law, and being able to raise my children in their cultural identities the way that I was – and also honoring the law – we're honoring our inherent cultural birthrights, our true birthrights to so-called Australia. It's something that is born into us, and we're really lucky to have the opportunity to take up the torch for our old people in saving – if it's one cultural heritage site, one sacred site, to many – to our entire Country.
As much as we can protect and bring back, restore the old-knowledge systems, I think that's something that hasn't really been talked about in the climate movement as much. It's starting to gain a bit more traction now that the First Peoples of the world have had enough of waiting for the privilege to listen to us, and now we're demanding and asserting those inherent cultural birthrights back, and what that means is honoring, and upholding our law in a climate crisis.
I feel like people working in climate organisations – they wouldn't necessarily see Camp Sovereignty as a climate destination or a place where those conversations are important, but they're so integral. I'm wondering if you can trace that journey from that protection of Country and why Camp Sovereignty is a lineage of that?
Yeah, that's a great way to say it – a lineage of the legacy of what our old people have built and what we're continuing to fight for is those inherent cultural birthrights that belong to all of our bloodlines. And those bloodlines trace directly, that DNA traces directly back to the nations they belong to and the Country they belong to. So it's really important that anybody that's fighting to protect the natural world and contributing to reducing the climate crisis needs to understand if it's not done with the First Peoples of the world, it's not gonna be done by the law and the Country won't back it – the Country won't restore itself in the same way as it would with us, and upholding the law. It's the lore of the natural world.
And what that means coming back to a place like Camp Sovereignty that holds a sacred fire – it's a place where our ancestral remains have been re-matriated back to Country, in the aftermath of this ongoing genocide.
So that's one of the most significant reasons why I fight for Country across a broad spectrum of different campaigns. For example, our Sea Country campaign in the Southern Ocean – defense against gas exploration, being a kangaroo and dingo advocate – as them being the keystone species for the land.
The burnung, as we call the dingo, being the boss of Country, connected to the water systems on Country – the freshwater systems. And then of course, our cultural obligations through our nation and our family clans. A lot of birds, reptiles, insects, and the elementals – that's something that isn't really spoken about in the climate crisis either – is that our people are connected to these ancient elementals of the world:
Fire, water, stone, star. I think the concepts of those are starting to be more accepted in the world; that the science is catching up to the way that we've always spoken to the water – they just measure it in a different way. These are the basis of our complex knowledge systems that link – just like the synapses in our brain, millions and millions of connections that science isn't able to explain yet, but our law does. So that's something so important, that the governments of the world we know have deliberately ignored First Peoples for a long time, in all of our human rights, but in those inherent cultural birthrights that tie us to the natural world and our Countries.
So we're seeing all sorts of destruction – levels of destruction to our biocultural landscapes as a whole – because they're not separate. The forest isn't separate from the ocean, and the mountains aren't separate from the lakes. It's all connected. And the desert. There's just so many special elements of what the land of the rainbow serpent holds that we have to teach the rest of the world.
In a climate crisis, I believe the best thing we can rely on is our old people's knowledges, but in particular, our old people's star knowledges, and the sky Country knowledges. Because the Earth, and the atmosphere, and the oceans are changing at such a fast rate – our forests, the green lungs of our planet are being attacked and destroyed at a much faster rate than what people realise.
And so in that climate emergency: our sky knowledge is gonna be what saves the world, I believe.
I wanted to also speak about where we are – we can see the sacred fire and then there's a backdrop of that huge city with the huge skyscrapers, and it's such a contrast of worlds. But it's really poetic as well. We're in ‘Kings Domain’ that has been renamed Camp Sovereignty and hearing your connection and bringing it to this place as a place of protest – because it was also started during the Black GST protest, is that right?
Yeah, for the Stolenwealth Games, when the Melbourne Commonwealth Games came to Melbourne / Naarm and then mob came and lit the sacred fire in honor of the ancestral remains that were re-matriated here back in 1985. And that just happens to be the year I was born. And having that connection to some of the old people that are here resting, it's a really profound feeling and honor to be here in this unceded space that we've held ground for, and that in honor of Uncle Robbie and all the people who lit the sacred fire back in 2006, that after the August 31st Nazi attack – that we really came together and a lot of people united here and it became even more of a place of peace, unity and connection...
But in honoring the old law and the unceded sovereignty – what our people have always fought for, and what some of us are not willing to cede in any form – we stand to uphold our law here in a time of treaty in Victoria, that this is unceded ground. And the old fellas here keeping the fire for a long time.
But after the August 31st Nazi attack, it was time for the grandmother law to come forth and to be heard and shown, and that strength to be asserted back in the southern part of so-called Australia, where a lot of the white Australia and our international community don't know that we were here, and how strong we are, and why we're fighting to protect Country.
It's to protect the water for the world, for all their children. And so it's even more vital for us to stand ground here in a place of unceded sovereignty, with the protection and law of the sacred fire, to move forward in educating people about what we're doing and why we think the world needs to support First Nations people in caring for Country.
So grandmother lore is subtle and powerful, and it's something that we are born into, all of us. I've had the honor and privilege of being taught and shared knowledge that is my responsibility to carry on what our grandmothers, aunties, mothers, sisters held and our place of belonging on Country.It's the integral part of why we're fighting for Country, because the world and the patriarchal systems have damaged the natural world and the Earth so horrendously that – the women of the world, in all forms have paid the price of, down to the Great Mother Earth, herself.
So it's really important that we stand our ground and we honor our Grandmother Lore. That’s the foundation of who we are as Blak mothers and women, and it's something that is absolute, and it's something that also modern science, governments, white supremacists, nobody and nothing can break.
And it's the foundations of who we are and the foundations of the Earth. We are the children of the sun from the first sunrise. That's what Grandmother Lore means to me: it's just like seeing that rainbow, and feeling the wind on your face, and drinking the fresh water, and honoring a healthy mind, body, and spirit.
And that's what Grandmother Lore represents. To have that extension to Country, and have that protection and healthy mind, body, and spirit of Country – is what we're fighting for. The Grandmother Lore, that we know that we can restore. It's not too late, in terms of global warming, and microplastics, and the extraction of the Earth, and why it's being extracted at a faster rate to fuel the wars.
We still honor above all of that systematic falsehood and machine power – that we are song people of the Earth. And that is the great hope for the climate crisis, that all of the song people of the world come together in ceremony, singing life back in to the Mother Earth in all of those systems, and that there's a place of belonging for everybody to do that – not just the First Nations people, but for us to lead the way and guide everybody back to those old matriarchal systems that will support everybody.
And one of the parts of that is also listening to the storytelling of the whale and things like that. I'm wondering if you can talk about the importance of listening to that type of storytelling, or storytelling in the climate crisis. Because sometimes it can feel like it's a technological switch and we just move over all of society onto solar panels and it's all good…
We think that we need to do it through these particular ways, but storytelling sort of gets foregrounded as something that's… gets pushed to the background as something that's maybe not as important. But it feels like it's almost like the basis of your work.As I mentioned before, our yarns are our scientific data. Our language and the cultural teachings in our language have clues and specific teachings about how to care for certain types of Country.
So, one part of my identity is a Gunditjmara whale dreaming custodian. And so for Sea Country, we have Sea Country kin – our family, known as Koontapool. Koontapool is the Southern right whale. They're connected through our grandmother lore and matriarchal songlines – they come and give birth in the shallows on Gunditjmara Country, and in certain specific birthing places that are connected to us Gunditjmara women and the birth of our children, and the next generations.
And they have really sacred medicine of true, genuine, unconditional lov, and what that means – the true love of your Country, is the true love of yourself because they are one. So- Koontapool holds the medicine of Kurtonitj, which is how to behave properly in deep respect, and having that respect, awareness of your surroundings, and your place of belonging in the world.
And so I think that has a lot to teach modern society – in how to slow down and listen to their tumtumpe: their heartbeats, and honor their place of belonging. And once people understand these storytellings and these teachings, it does bring about a completely different perspective.
And so that perspective is hopefully something that people can attain in their bodies and bring about that understanding. Sometimes very important things take a longer time to say. A really beautiful example of that is Wuulok, the Blue whale, and the different languages that our ancestral family have, and the frequencies and vibrations that they emit to the world.
We believe there's a reason why they're the oldest storytellers in the world – they're still around now because of the lore that they hold, and the frequency and vibrations of how they belong in the world. And it's the same with our other whale family. As saltwater people, we have that connection, and cultural identity to care for our family, but also the meerrteeyt meerreeng – the saltwater, and that is the ancestral family, and that is our place of conscious sacred breath.
That is our place of grandmother lore. That is our place of birth. There is so much in the creation waters, of what our whale dreaming holds that it should never, ever be questioned about mitigating the damage of destroying that. It should never, ever be a question in today's society that, well, should this gas rig exist, or should these people and this songline exist?
And because it is like that now, it's even more important to get that knowing and understanding. We have a Gunditjmara word called tyama, and it's to know and understand – and to hold that knowing and understanding in your body. And so in the name of reconciliation – the true, genuine reconciliation – what that means is that we're already offering those teachings to everybody in the world, and it's up to them to meet us halfway, and take their place of belonging.
Fire in Gunditjmara, we call wiiyn. And in Djab Wurrung, we call wi. It's something that our family belongs to – a special sacred element our family belongs to. It's our ancestor.
As a female fire keeper, it's also one of the greatest honors, and part of the vital work that we're doing to revive Country in climate crisis, is bringing sacred fire and the right fire back to Country. As a fire keeper and also honoring the water, the salt water, and all of the different elements that my family are connected to, and the cultural obligations that we have.
Fire is one of the first things that we need – the first elementals that we need to honor in bringing, resetting Country back to its original form and resetting these old knowledge systems back in place as it purifies and cleanses, and that needs to happen on a Country that was built on the blood and bones of our old people, and the ongoing genocide that's still taking place.
One of the most important aspects of being a fire keeper is knowing fire law and understanding your place of belonging with your ancestral elementals, and learning their language, taking the time to understand the different woods and how they burn, and also the different purposes of what that fire does.
There's a few different elements of a cultural burn and a sacred fire, and the different ways that our fire nourished Country, and revived and upheld the law for the rest of the balance of the rest of the elementals. And that is another aspect that connects back to grandmother lore – that the women always wielded fire,that we belong to it, and it's part of our cultural responsibility to keep the fires burning.
[they sing the Koontapool song with beautiful whale blowing sounds]