Caring as Country: singing up sovereignties

This chapter pulls back some of the powerful illusions of Western property – illusions that humans might stand separate from land, sea, and sky Country, be able to own and manage it. In doing this, we speak from our own places and our own relationships. Writing as an Indigenous and non-Indigenous, more-than-human collective, we speak from and as Bawaka and share insights into ways caring as Country manifests in Yolŋu Country as songspirals. Caring as Country insists on acknowledging humans’ place as part of Country. Caring as Country encapsulates more-than-human, multidirectional connectivities, responsibilities, and obligations. Country is different in the many Countries that make up the so-called Australia. Each Country has its own relationships, its own beings, custodians, and Law. Western concepts of ownership and property, which see humans as separate from the environment, and illusions of being able to own a separate nonhuman entity, conflict with Rom, Yolŋu Law, which conceptualises Country as sentient and agential, encompassing land, sea, sky, animals, and humans.