As part of the Armidale Climate and Health project community consultation process we learnt was that care for Country was central for Indigenous community health and also planetary health. The question of how to be a non-Indigenous ally in this process was a really big question. We responded to it by thinking about the differences between how Indigeous people think about land (Country) and how non-Indigenous people think about land (Property) and tried to find ways of centring the Indigenous model.
In the New England area, much of Country has been sold off and enclosed as private property for residential and commercial agricultural uses. For a long time we discussed supporting the Indigenous community by running workshops that educated non-Indigenous land owners in creating local treaties to allow for Aboriginal access to private property in order to care for Country.
Instead, these conversations contributed to building momentum for a much bigger Indigenous-led project: Anaiwan Landback. This massive fundraising effort on the part of Anaiwan people resulted in over 240 Hectares of land being returned to traditional custodians. The ACHP project facilitators, Sujata and Jen, wrote about the significance of being part of his process as non-Indigenous people for Overland journal. You can read and comment on the piece here: https://overland.org.au/2022/03/on-property-prices-colonisation-and-climate-change/
