Trawling the net today, trying to find a word for 'landscape' that didn't connote something separate from us, from me anyway. In my thesis I want to talk about 'country', about the spiritual connection to land, not 'landscape', which Judith Wright quite rightly says is a 'painter's term, implying an outside view'. Of course that is exactly what I am not talking about, given that my exegesis is about archetypes and our psycho-spiritual relationship with the 'land' (which in my case is really the sea and that marginal space between them)So now I have yet another page of notes to add to the tomes I already possess. BUT I have discovered things like Genius Loci and that there is actually something called Terrapsychology which is a 'multidisciplinary set of approaches for investigating the deep connections between us and our animate, sentient and reactive earth'. Wow, where have I been?
Anyway, I also stumbled on a beautiful site put together by Murdoch Uni that provides info about traditional Noongar culture (particularly around the Murdoch campus) in very bite-sized pieces. Check it out, the link is on the side bar. It features a piece done in Flash that pronounces quite a lot of Nyungar words and pics to go with it. So it looks like I have started learning bits of Nyungar.
Anyway, this does not solve my dilemma, because I am still looking for that evasive word. After rediscovering an obscure edition I bought at a book sale on impulse called Emplaced Myth, I have decided that the word 'country' for Aboriginal people carries such complex and vast meaning that I simply can't use it, but would still like to find a term that embraces much more than the physical environment and reflects my own feeling about nature and 'place'.
Image: Laurel Nannup, Boodjar
