Responsibility

Responsibility \Re*spon`si*bil"i*ty\ n.The state of being responsible, accountable, or answerable, as for a trust, debt, or obligation. (dictionary.net)

Nyunymanu:
Dingo dreaming place
Paddy Anatari’s country.

Old man squints between wrinkles
drawn into a smile in the broad red land.
Played as a child; walked every foot in its sand.

“You see that rock over there?”

(The top had been rubbed smooth and
flat soft, as if it were cut by a diamond, but
Its been done by another rock
cupped in hundreds of hands:
Increase site for birth of dingo pup)
And
Paddy Anatari strokes the rock again,

And again. He says.
“You see this rock?

This rock is me!”

(from Billy Marshal-Stoneking, (1990) “Paddy: A Poem for Land Rights,” in Singing the Snake: Poems from the Western Desert.)

I so acutely feel the loss of connection between me and my place. So much severing of time and ancestors has set met loose like a soap bubble rising on the thin air of my own breath.
I am a woman of the west;

Dissociated
Lost
Without a voice.

Vin


NOTE:
In the Aboriginal culture each individual has responsibility to a particular place and its associated being, stories, meanings, rituals and so on. This responsibility to the wisdom of that place is expressed through art, song, dance and story. It is an oral tradition. We are accountable to the sacredness of place. It is a responsibility to keep the world alive. We are inseparable from our place.


"Like a Rock"
Collage 2005