The Children’s Country is the first book by an Indigenous Australian author, Goolarabooloo law man and custodian Paddy Roe, to be included in the occasional section, Critical Dialogues. The section engages scholars in interdisciplinary conversations on pivotal books that advance our understanding of the (post)colonial. This book focuses on the rights and obligations to spirit children or rayi as well as children of the future whose heritage is ‘rooted in the red pindan soil’ (p. xv) of Goolarabooloo Country, north of Rubibi Broome in the Dampier Peninsula of western Australia. Included are children of diverse Asian heritage whose ancestors worked in the pearling industry established in the late nineteenth century, as well as children who continue to arrive today. Paddy Roe offers his knowledge as a gift to children in Australia and beyond by co-writing this book with anthropologist Stephen Muecke. Paddy’s gift unfurls through conversations and gestures in his ‘office’ under the tamarind tree as well as drawings in the sand and walk-alongs.
The book illuminates the complexity of Aboriginal politics, white institutions that interrupt Bugarrigarra or the Law, and the persistence that is required to keep the Law alive. Therefore, although Paddy Roe gained recognition for his exceptional achievements by white settler Australia and received the Order of Australia medal, his long struggle for inclusive regional governance in a place with diverse Aboriginal heritage was overlooked after he passed away in 2001. Goolarabooloo Country became a part of the Yawuru Nation under the 2006 Rubibi Native Title determination (p. xxxi) supported by whitefella institutions (p. xxxiii). Learning how to walk for nine days along the Lurrujarri Heritage Trail, a Dreaming track that begins in Milibinyarri and ends at Cape Bertholet along the coast of the Dampier Peninsula created by Paddy Roe in 1987, keeps the ‘idea’ (p. xxx) of Goolarabooloo Country alive.
The experimental format of the book is an invitation to read, re-read as well as think, act, walk with and feel the love of Country amid the violence of multispecies extinction and planetary plunder. The privileging of Indigenous law, politics, science, economics and art unfolds in dialogues, stories (including in Aboriginal English) and reflections that are interspersed with photographs and sketches. I read the book on several train journeys from my home in deep suburbia to the city of Melbourne which immersed me in the materiality and spirituality of Goolarabooloo Country. This slow process of immersion involved learning how to feel and become with rayi, jila, the jigal tree, dinosaur tracks, footprints of Emu Man, bilbies, hawksbill turtles and humpback whales once threatened by plans for gas extraction from the offshore Browse Basin and the setting up of a plant at Walmadany or James Price Point. In the face of state-corporate collusions and the possession of land for gas extraction in 2009, the book maps the diverse network of Goolarabooloo’s allies who learn the laws and protocols of this multispecies place. They camped at Walmadany, counted migratory humpback whales from the Southern Ocean at the Murdudun platform, engaged in Indigenous science and staged concerts, protests and rallies with ‘living Country’ (p.108) in Rubibi Broome and beyond.
This collaborative book by Stephen Muecke and Padde Roe is an ‘experiment’ of walking with Country on a colonial frontier in the Kimberley region of Western Australia that calls for persistence given interruptions by whitefella institutions. Thanks Vanessa Burns and Lara Daley for writing these creative lines amid the precarity, vulnerability, breathlessness and exhaustion of the Covid-19 pandemic. When potential reviewers found it hard to continue, Vanessa and Lara felt the call of Goolarabooloo Country and offered their thoughts with humility and generosity to make this forum possible. Stephen’s response is poetic and invites whitefellas to ‘try harder’ in engaging with Indigenous concepts, protocols, languages and ways of being. Can a garbina or Goolaraboloo shield stage a dialogue with an Order of Australia medal? How do rayi etched on a lustrous pearl by Goolarabooloo artist, Butcher Joe Nangan tell the story of Native Title law? Maybe children today and children of the future will continue to ask and answer these questions in creative ways.
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Michele Lobo
Michele Lobo is an Australian cultural geographer. Her research invigorates debates on oceanic justice through a focus on Sea Country in Australia and Tide Country in India. Michele is Editor, Social & Cultural Geography, Reviews Editor, Postcolonial Studies and Council Member, Institute of Australian Geographers. She has published more than sixty scholarly outputs including three books supported by three prestigious national grants.