Celebrating culture and Country for NAIDOC Week 2021 with Shantelle Thompson
The incredible Barkindji Warrior talks about the power of connecting with people and the land during this important week for Australia.
Shantelle, tells us about the importance of NAIDOC Week for Australia?
NAIDOC is a week of events that celebrate Aboriginal people, culture, community and our histories. It’s a celebration of being the oldest living culture in the world and of our continual survival, our thriving and our resilience, particularly in the face of 230 years of colonial history.
Each year we have a different theme and this year’s theme is Heal Country.
It’s about our community showing up for ourselves and making space for that, but it’s also an invitation for the wider community to come and sit with us and join us in that celebration.
What does NAIDOC Week mean for you personally?
NAIDOC for me is about coming back to my community, coming back to my roots and bringing up my children in that space too.
And it’s not just in our community, but in our own home as well.
We will do things like have our own smoking or cleansing ceremony to clear the space so we can talk about what we’re doing and get excited about the events we are involved in. For my kids it means getting to perform and share their culture, see their cousins and connect with elders.
This time allows us to strengthen and deepen those relationships with Country, with ourselves and our community but it also keeps us grounded so that we can do that not just for one week of the year, but throughout the rest of the year as well.
How does connecting with your culture affect your wellbeing?
It strengthens me. When I move away from it and connect more to Western practices - like being busy, bingeing on TV, or just trying to get ahead - I find that I become sick. I become angry, frustrated, and easily triggered.
Sitting in the practice of my culture means slowing down, connecting to the earth, and making space to reflect and connect in a deep and meaningful way with my spirituality.
It’s about listening to my ancestors and knowing that I'm being supported in the work that I do and in showing up.
It’s also about being ok with not having all the answers.
When I do this I’m much more able to respond to life and to take responsibility for whatever is happening to me and around me. I’m able to be the cause-and-effect of my own life.
What strength does it give you to connect with your history and your ancestors?
It’s very humbling to think that I have thousands of generations of ancestors who have come before me and who have landed me where I am, and as who I am, today.
I also feel the responsibility to ensure that I leave the world a better place than the one I was born into. I’m planting seeds not just to affect change now but for my children and my grandchildren - for generations that I’ll never see. I’m thinking far ahead and asking, ‘How will what I do impact them, and what legacy will it leave for the generations to come?’
Connecting with my ancestors allows me to take on that responsibility and commitment but it’s also like a blanket of love and security, knowing that so many thousands of generations have walked this earth and lived consciously with the land and honoured that space.
What does this year’s theme of Healing Country mean to you?
Healing Country, to me, is about looking at sustainability and going even deeper with that but also calling for more committed work from the people who have the power and the monopoly over these spaces.
Water is not just water for us. It is sacred. Our rivers and our waterways are tied to our own wellbeing because when our Mother Earth isn’t coping, when our Country isn’t coping, neither are her people.
For me, it’s deeply connected to my own healing as well. As I heal the layers of my own trauma, I’m healing the layers of my ancestors’ trauma who have come before me.
I’m also healing forward, and that allows me to also heal Mother Earth. We’re interdependent with her and there’s a certain amount of arrogance and disregard in our current practices. But you can also see a shift as well - small businesses and conscious businesses are leading the way in creating that change and taking that responsibility to ensure that future generations will inherit something that is not a destroyed planet. That we have a hope of not only surviving but thriving.
What does being on Country look like for you?
As an Aboriginal woman, it’s very important to come home to Country, but for a lot of our community, they don’t know where they come from due to the enforced White Australia policy and the Stolen Generations. So it’s also about coming home to yourself.
For me, practice would be to get up before the rest of my household and before my responsibilities as a mum, and the distractions of the world, startup.
It’s about taking that intentional space in the morning, of 30-60 minutes, for myself. I’ll do some mobility and do 5-10 minutes of deep breathing. I’m terrible at mediation - my mind goes a hundred miles an hour - but even sitting with that and being able to accept that that’s not the intention of it is important. It’s about saying, ‘I’m the focus, I’m grounded.
I’ll also find some time during the day to sit outside and take a big, deep breath. I try not to take that moment to say, ‘Oh, it’s crap weather today’ or whatever it might be, but instead to touch a tree and say, ‘I wonder what that tree hears and what that tree knows?’
When I have bigger blocks of time, like on a Sunday morning, I have 90 minutes that’s just for me and I go down to the river. I go for a walk and I put my feet in the sand and in the water. That’s what it means to me to be on Country and connect with Country.
How do you help your kids to connect with Country?
With the kids, I notice that they’re getting drawn away from it younger and younger. I see so many kids with a screen in front of them, in prams or in trolleys at the supermarket, or with their phones. And I get it, when you just want five minutes of peace or you just need to get a job done, you’ll do what it takes to survive.
And when you have a busy schedule after school of sports and academics it’s very easy to think, we don’t have time for that.
For me, it’s about being very intentional that my kids do have that space, and sometimes they’ll say, ‘Oh here we go, Mum wants to go for one of her long walks again’. They’ll say, ‘We just want to sit inside’, or ‘We’ve had a really long day’. But I know how important it is for their sense of self and for their cultural practices.
At least three times a week, I’ve blocked time in our schedule to go outside, even if it’s just in our backyard, and sit on the grass, take our shoes off and connect with our feet. I’ll ask them, ‘How are you feeling right now?’, ‘What’s going on in your world?’ We take that time to sit together in a communal space in a circle.
On Saturdays, we go and spend some time in the bush to do a more intentional connection. And then we go camping about three times a year. Often they complain at the start, but then you see they start to take these layers off and really settle into themselves.
Sitting around a campfire at night and being able to look up at the stars - they start to let their imagination run wild and they slow down. We have deeper conversations or they just go quiet and have some time to themselves. It’s a really beautiful space but it’s really evident that you have to be intentional and disciplined about creating that space.
And finally, what are your plans for this NAIDOC Week?
For NAIDOC this year, we’re going to be spending a day out on Country with the kids, just going around the bush and trying to connect and learn some more. I’ve been doing some research and learning a bit more about my culture around tracking and bush foods so we’re going to have a go at that.
We’ll go to one of the flag-raising events in connection with the local Traditional Owner groups or the Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations.
At home, we’ll watch some documentaries with the kids and discuss that. And then there’s the fun part of taking the kayaks down the river and going and having a feed and sharing some deep yarns.
I’ll also do a couple of commercial events speaking and sharing my story and what culture means and inviting people into that space and asking them, ‘Why is it important to heal Country? What does it mean for your culture and for your family - what is your connection with the natural world?’
When we start to open up those conversations we get to share our cultures and our connections.