Body Landscape Journals Quotes

“Diana tells us it is important to learn to sing and dance because that is how to learn the culture. Ilyatjari says that it is important for the white women to dance so that they become part of the re-creation of all those mayi (food plants). The performance for him not only functions to teach the white people about their country, it serves the traditional purpose of increasing the plants which produce the grass seed in the dreaming. Imagination can enable us to understand fictive realities that in no way resemble where we are coming from … to enter realms of the unknown with no will to colonise or possess (hooks 1991: 57–8).”
― Margaret Somerville, Body Landscape Journals

“Performance II Two Women Dreaming Landmarks Angatja, July, 1993 Each morning we open our eyes to an ever changing sky through patterns of feathery mulga leaves from an envelope of green canvas, a fire of mulga at our feet, and curved mulga branches at our head. The camp is a clump of mulga trees beside a little hill, a huge pile of reddish brown rocks, puli.”
― Margaret Somerville, Body Landscape Journals