‘The Sovereignty of Water’

- written by Lorna Munro in response to Daniel Brownning’s BLACK BOX- Barangaroo

Invoke her
Why don’t you
By saying her name
Don’t you know she’s the one that calls the bringer of pain
She is sacrifice
She is fire
She is abundance
She herself would never ever have done this but since we are here
Go on and speak her soul
Til she raises in front of us
Til she can speak for herself
Then what would you say?
How would you explain to her that her name was being spoken this way ?Without ceremony
Disregarding the sacredness she held in her body
How do you tell a ghost, an element, an essence sorry?
I polluted you
I colonised you
I took your partner and child
I turned your veins into a trench
Experimenting all the while
Ignoring your pain I dug out purity and replaced it with alcohol and the stench
Of stagnant water and disdain
For yourself
Sewers hoarding
The life force
Placing boarders
Disrupting highways of ancient trade and song
Building harbours
Suppressing your left lung
And scattering your daughters ashes
On the governors lawn
After refusing her request to be born
In nothing more then a place of death
This place
has eyes
a head
and a mouth
and a breath
But no voice
No, not just yet
The ones that advocate and speak for her are ignored
So keep saying her name til she answers

I dare you
Just remember your intent
When she scares you
Remember how you trashed her shores
Industrialising her pores and collected the oil
Remember how you cut the markings from her back and drew diagrams in your journals
She never forgot
Water is alive
Just ask the people protesting against pipelines or fracking up
Our lives
She Has every right
To reign down
on you
So while our people are fed lead and you continued to plot and use her against us
I sit quietly
Whispering
Acknowledgments
Knowing how happy she would be that I respect her sovereignty
Her right to exist
Knowing her story and how I am connected to a higher purpose
Extending beyond the masses reach but right there at their feet

Surround
-ed
by it
Taabagoulie
Gu- Darra
Eating the land
And it’s foreshore
No hands
No feet
No heartbeat
but a nation of rhythm
In sync
I listen for every wave
bracing for the break
In sound
And what could come after
Waiting for her laughter
And when I can breathe again…and think
What you did to them
You can’t keep
Doing to me
Why can’t you see
Every time you speak her name you make her angry
Because you can’t even say it properly
You refuse her brilliance
But keep on taking
You write new laws
Our ancient ones you keep breaking
Whose names have you forsaken? Whose memory have you eroded
Cos we never forgot that pain
Mourning for ancient waterways
And a kardaicha woman’s name
No respect for this woman and this water
You see a cityscape
I see ceremoniously connected intersected space where time and place is liquid
Being erased with every column erected
And our people being moved on from this place
Lamenting now I am reminded that As long as white men continue to desecrate black girl magicians and water spirits
I take comfort knowing they are more likely to drown
We live on the largest island on this earth after all
We are surrounded by water
Our stories are found
Within our skin
We are fluid
Since the beginning