Australia - on this day of great heartache.
Dorothea Mackellar's poem, "My Country", reminds us of the need to see this country as the core of ALL our hearts.
Today is a day of great heartache for many Australians. The rejection of a Voice for first Australians in the Constitution will invoke a period of grief from which it will be a long road to recovery.
First Nations peoples wish to share this beautiful land as equals with those who came to colonise it. It is to be hoped all Australians want that, although they have not yet found a way to achieve it that is acceptable to the majority.
I firmly believe there is a way to achieve it and that all Australians are equally motivated to find it through their love of this country - a love Dorothea Mackellar found a way to express in her poem, “My Country”. I hope this setting of her iconic poem to music evokes that love.
Dorothea’s poem was originally published under the title “Core of My Heart”, sans the overtones of possession in the title by which the poem eventually came to be known. Over 100 years later, in 2017, another profound statement of heartfelt connection to country was published in the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
Yesterday most Australians rejected an essential aspect of the invitation from First Nations people at Uluru to “walk with them in a movement of the Australian people for a better future”. That essential aspect was their Voice. But Dorothea’s poem may remind us that we need to see this country as the core of all our hearts. And if we do, we may all then come to agree that we cannot reject the aspirations of first Australians for a Voice or treaty or truth without rejecting something essential about this nation – the need for a cohesive democratic state of political equals.
In the next decade I hope to provide ideas about acceptable ways in which we all might share this land as equals. These ideas go to the heart of the way we can establish a true democracy. I hope you find them valuable and that you will share them with your friends.
For an introduction to some of these ideas, see The People’s Constitution: the path to empowerment of Australians in a 21st democracy by Bronwyn Kelly. This book is available at the Australian Community Futures Planning website at https://www.austcfp.com.au/publications
Or listen to the audio version of The People’s Constitution on Apple podcast here.
Find out all about ACFP
Become involved in building plans for a better Australia here.
Thanks Bronwyn, moving, beautiful, and full of the kindness that was in deficit during the public discourse. That discourse was a source of shame. It was empty of the thread of connection to which you and the poem point, but which is hollowed out and exploited rather than embodied. Non-indigenous inhabitants are in the lack, having been removed, isolated and deprived of that richness which lies on the other side of 'the gap.' We might yet be awakened to the relationship which Mackellar valued and sought. This land and sea have the capacity to enrich our lives in more ways than material, but we will need to collectively seek what indigeneity means if we are to have any future at all.