Wendy McDonald: Stars, Night Herons & the Politics of Envy

‘Stars, Night Herons & the Politics of Envy’ is born of the 22/23 flood season. I live on a delta. An inland delta created by the dispersal of water across the landscape downstream from the ‘narrows’ or choke of the Murray River. Thule Lagoon where I reside and work is in Barapa Barapa country in the midst of this important ephemeral landscape. These works come from experience of place over time, with underlying stories of advocating for natural landscape.

Water awakens this country. Still water bodies reflect an expansive sky, filling with stars on clear nights. Our farm and lagoon ecosystems have been humming with the industry of water birds nesting to make use of the abundance. The red gold Nankeen Night Herons are part of the mix. Nocturnal water feeders, they shyly hide in the redgum canopies during the day. To me they are mysterious symbols of ecosystems that have cycled and thrived here for millennia. To the Barapa Barapa people they are an important totem.

Deeper context of the function of these places, is provided by ongoing research at The Pollack Swamp, Barapa Barapa village site (Pardoe, Hutton 2021).  A model of targeted environmental restoration using Aboriginal cultural heritage as a ‘proxy’ for biodiversity has been developed… the premise being that places where people have lived most permanently over thousands of years are logically the places with the most reliable water and rich, food source ecosystems. Local traditional owners, landholders and the community have rallied around this magical micro site. A place of refuge and renewal. A wider community vision for our forests and wetlands has been co-designed and published. Collectively, we are finding our voice. In the Spring of 23 we shared grief and disbelief when a government agency decision over ruled local land managers to withdraw environmental water from the site. The water bird colony, preparing to breed for the second consecutive year, abandoned their nests.

Achieving positive environmental legacy is extremely difficult in any system where power and policy are embedded in a ‘top down’ cultural model and locals are excluded and diminished. Outcomes and motivations are thus removed from place. Such a system allows community values, deep cultural knowledge and site specific, evidential science to be ignored or dismissed by government agencies using broad brushed policy for political atonement. How do we make sense of this? Maybe a power shift to the people of place creates a politics of envy?

I take comfort in the work of nature writer Wendell Berry. His words from his 2017 publication, The World-Ending Fire, accompany me as I paint. I love his advocacy for the value of knowledge of landscape in caring for environment…  his assertion that lived, deep experience of place will  ‘carry the knowledge of how a place may be well and lovingly used, and also the implicit command to use it ONLY well and lovingly’ (Berry, p115) .I carry these thoughts forward with me as an antidote to the politics of envy.

Wendy McDonald 2024

References:

Colin Pardoe, Dan Hutton, Aboriginal heritage as ecological proxy in south-eastern Australia: a Barapa wetland village, Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, 2021

Wendell Berry, The World-Ending Fire, Penguin Books, 2017