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Excerpted Inspirations #242

  • Writer: Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
    Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
  • Aug 3
  • 0 min read
[Canadian Morgan McLeod and Kirra from Queensland have just become roommates at Top Step, a space station orbiting Earth where they will learn to function in zero gravity, in preparation for merging with a symbiote that will enable them to live in space and join the telepathic community of Stardancers. Kirra is telling Morgan about why she made the journey.] “Back before the world got started was the Dreamtime, my people reckon. All the Ancestors dreamed themselves alive, then, created themselves out of clay, created themselves as people and all the kinds of animals and birds and insects there are. And the first thing they did was go walkabout, singin’ – makin’ the world by singin’ it into existence. Sing up a river here, sing a mountain there. Wherever they went they left a Songline behind ’em, and the Song made the world around there, see? So there’s Songlines criss-crossin’ the world, and every place is on or near a Songline, with a Song of its own that makes it what it is. That’s why we go Walkabout – to follow the Songlines and sing the Songs and keep recreating the world so’s it doesn’t melt away. Get it?” “I think so. All Aboriginals believe this?” “Most of us that’s left. Our Dreamings ain’t like whitefella religions. Our Songs were maps, trade routes, alliances, history: they held the whole country together, kept hundreds of tribes and clans living together in peace for generations. Even the whitefella couldn’t completely change that. Those of us they didn’t kill outright had trouble keepin’ our faith, but. Some of us went to the towns, tried on European ideas. Railroads were cuttin’ across Songlines. Our beliefs didn’t seem to account for the world we saw anymore, so we had to change ’em a bit. But we never got the Dreamtime out of our bones and teeth. Tribes that did … well, they’re gone, see? “So the last few generations, a mob of us left the reserves, left the cities and towns. We’ve gone back to the bush, gone back to bein’ nomads, followin’ the Songlines. There’s not many of us left, see. We want to touch where we came from before we go from the world. “If we’re gonna try to keep our beliefs alive, we got to make ’em account for the world we see. And space is part of that world now. We’ve got to weave it into our world picture somehow. Some o’ the old stories speak of Sky-Heroes, spirit Ancestors departed into the sky. If that’s so, they left Songlines, and Aborigines can follow them into space. That’s my job: to try and find the Songlines of the Sky-Heroes.” I was fascinated. The bravery, the audacity of trying to make an ancient pagan religion fit the modern world was breathtaking. “Why you?” “It’s my Dreaming.” She saw that I did not understand, and tried again. “Like you with dancin’. It’s what I was born for. My mob, the Yirlandji, we’re reckoned the best singers. And I’m the best of the lot.” There was neither boasting nor false modesty in her voice. […] “[...]See, what I’m special good at is feelin’ the Songlines. Been that way since I was a little girl. Whenever my mob moved to a new place, I always knew the song of it before anybody taught me. Yarra, the … well, a woman that taught me, this priestess, like … she used to blindfold me and drive me to strange country, some place I’d never been. And when I’d been there a while, sometimes an hour, sometimes overnight, I could sing her the Song of that place, and I always got it right. I got famous for it. Tribes that had forgotten parts of their own Songs, or had pieces cut out of ’em by whitefella doin’s, would send for me to come help ’em. So when the Men and Women of Power figured out this job here needed doing, there never was any question whose job it was.” “And you don’t mind?” I asked. It was sounding to me a little as though she’d been drafted, and was too patriotic to complain. “Mind?” she said. “Morgan, most of us do pretty good if we can get through life without screwin’ anybody else up too bad. How many get a chance to do somethin’ important, for a whole people? I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Oh, Christ, I made a pun. That’s just what I’m doin’: not missin’ it for the world.” -Spider and Jeanne Robinson, Starseed (1991) pp. 53-54, 56

 
 
 

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