Those Who Are Not Gone
A few years ago I received a phone call from my mother. She was panicked; worried for her brother, (my uncle, who we’d nicknamed Crow), who had been ‘pinched’ by the police, in Sydney.
“Slow down, Mum”, I said. “What happened?”
It turned out that after my Nan—Mum’s mother—had died, Uncle Crow was in the big smoke, chasing up some of Nan’s business to do with her unpaid, or as my people say, ‘stolen wages’. Crow was in Sydney to see a solicitor in Pitt Street who had been engaged as Nan’s legal representative before she died. My mother’s people were Kunya people. The Kunya nation are Aboriginal people whose ‘country’ is in what is now known as South Western Queensland—just above the state line between NSW and Queensland. My Nan was a traditional Kunya ‘Law Woman’. Nan raised her children and taught her grandchildren in the knowledge of the traditional Kunya ways.
Growing up in Bourke, NSW, next to the beautiful Darling River, I learned about traditional Kunya lore—the living practice of Kunya knowledge.
Nan’s husband, (my grandfather, Archie), was a Barkindji person. We are river people, and the beautiful Darling River is ours. That waterway, we know, was made by the Rainbow Serpent and it was given us through the Dreaming. It is a life force of the Barkindji people. Grandfather was a beautiful man—kind and gentle—who could speak eight Aboriginal languages. He could also speak English. Growing up, he witnessed the eight language groups come and corroboree at his place of birth, at Gundabooka. They spoke and performed their histories and stories; they discussed cooperation and ‘the Stranger’—the white people; and they painted their culture on the rocks.
During his lifetime, my grandfather heard the living voices of the eight language groups fall silent at the Corroboree ground at Gundabooka. He witnessed the last corrroboree.
Uncle Crow was Nan and Grandfather’s youngest son. Crow was so well loved; he had big watery eyes that ‘got’ everyone. People would kinda ‘melt’ and give him kindness and love. Well, on the occasion of which I write, Crow was sitting in a park near Central Station, alone, and speaking aloud, seemingly to himself. Oblivious to the concerned looks on the faces of those who passed him by, Crow continued to speak. A passer-by called a police officer, who spoke with Crow and then placed him under arrest.
My mother received a phone call from Crow later that day from “somewhere in Sydney”. I was also in Sydney on this day, working at the University of Technology, Haymarket. I didn’t have much to go on, but guessing that he would most likely be at the city watch house, I went there. After a frustrating hour of speaking with one police person after another, I learned that Crow had been taken to hospital for a psychological assessment. I tracked him down. It was towards sunset by the time I walked into the hospital. I got really lucky—perhaps Biamaii (the Great Creator) was looking after me, for the very first person I met upon arrival at the hospital was the psychiatrist who had in fact just seen Crow. “What you done with my uncle?” I asked, wild.
Crow was in a locked assessment room, alone. I went and saw him, “You right?” I asked. He looked up at me, his eyes filled with tears. I nearly decked that doctor when I saw the hurt in Crow’s eyes. I asked him, “Who was you talkin’ to Crow?”
“Mum,” he answered.
I told Crow that things would be alright, that there’d been a misunderstandin’, that’s all. You see, Crow had been arrested for “talking to himself in that park” … He had been crying when the police arrested him, but had no idea what for. Crow went quietly and had been taken to the hospital for a psychological assessment.
The psychiatrist asked Crow, “Do you hear voices?”
“Yeah…” my uncle answered.
By the time I arrived at the hospital, the doctor was about to admit Crow as a mental patient. It took me more than an hour to explain that my uncle had been ‘talking with’ his dead mother’s spirit. “See, Doctor,” I said, “When an Aboriginal person’s nearest or dearest pass away, it doesn’t mean that ‘they’ can no longer be with the living. Their spirit can ‘visit’ us, we can speak with their spirit form and ‘they’ still teach and guide us. “There’s no madness in Crow… You’ve asked a question, and he truthfully gave you his answer,” I told the psychiatrist. “Do you know anything about Aboriginal spirituality, or culture?” I asked.
“No,” he answered.
“So, based on your questions to my uncle, you think what? That he’s unwell, mad? You turn a key on him and lock the door?”
Finally the doctor did another ‘assessment’, this time declaring Crow to be suffering only from sadness.
By 8pm that evening, Crow and I were enjoying dinner at my place.
For Barkindji people, life does not end at death. We believe that when the body dies the ‘soul’ immediately enters the body of another living thing—this can be an animal; a plant; a rock; another human being, so in a sense, a person never leaves this world. We believe the soul can't reproduce and cannot die. We believe that there are seven souls in the world, unlike the Christian belief that there is one soul for every person. Barkindji believe that every person belongs to a soul category. This is the basis of our understanding of the spirit of our dead still being very much a part of our living lives.
When I speak of the spirit of a departed loved one, I am referring to an 'entity', a 'being' of sorts, but not a physical or human body, rather, it is the 'essential soul' of the dead—the 'power' … And it's also a question of truth, of belief too. For me, I believe that the spirit of the dead can and does in fact, 'appear' to me in visions, in dreams, and become 'present' in my life. For example, the 'spirit' may be present in a certain wind or breeze, which may blow, perhaps knocking over a cup or a vase, or shutting a door. The 'spirit' might be known to me through a certain smell—such as baking bread, or a certain scent or perfume such as the departed's favourite flower, which they loved during their lifetime. As such, I am of the belief that the 'spirit' of the departed can operate independently of me. I do not only have call their name to summon them. The spirit can 'come to me' as a warning of danger, for example. These warnings, that I have come to understand through my Aboriginal cultural learning, are real and I ought to take notice and consider that which is happening to or around me. In this sense, my dead ancestors still have an active role in my life.
As a writer and poet, as an academic, I am constantly operating from a perspective of imagination. This 'imagination' is also about belief, reality, truth … it's all subjective in some way. For me, I am not operating completely in another world when the spirits are in my life, or walk across my writing—across my art—for I believe that the spirits are able to be in my real world, here with me now, and they have always been here and will always be here with me. And so my 'living with' the ghosts is as real and present as my writing itself is real. I find great comfort in my knowing that the spirits of my ancestors are always near and available, informing and guiding my living in the every day.
In focus: ACT BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER, PAUL COLLIS
In December 2018, at the ACT Writers Centre (MARION) awards evening, Dr Paul Collis was awarded ACT Book of the Year for his poetic and political novel, Dancing Home. A proud Barkindji man who has currently adopted Canberra as home, Paul writes for the Centre about the ignorance that often surrounds his culture’s relationship with death, and how he approaches ‘absent’ loved ones in his writing.
This article was first published in BITE Magazine, Issue 4, 2019.
