Ganngalanji – listening, calling out to, knowing and understanding

Abstract

ABSTRACT As geographers add their voices to the declaration of climate emergency, there is much to learn from First Nations contemporary art practitioners. Like other First Nations Peoples, we First Australians have a responsibility to care for and protect our Mother Earth to whom we belong. The maintenance of custodial responsibilities is something we enact through our daily activities. I speak as a Ngugi woman of Mulgumpin (Moreton Island) in the Quandamooka (Moreton Bay Area), and I acknowledge the Jinibara people on whose lands I am living today. From Jinibara high Country I can see my Island homeland across the bay. Our lands and waters give us our language. Through the daily practice of Ganngalanji, a Yugambeh-Bundjalung word, meaning simultaneously listening, calling out to, knowing and understanding, I continue our Ancient cultural traditions as I call out and listen to an intergenerational sense of knowing and understanding Country. My artworks arise from the lands and waters around me and seek to break through the destructive colonial overlay of the past 240 years. I am very pleased that my works speak to others, including geographers, whose endeavours are concerned with arts practices, memory, mapping and our connections to lands and waters.