Richard Collopy on Indigenous language and ecology

Richard Collopy: I do it with the children and there's some really good ones for people to know it's embracing that, your self. And for me it's kurran And then language helps hold that dynamic. So Ngatanwarr, Ngatuuk It's, hello, my name is Richard, or, Kangaroo, grey kangaroo. And my dynamic is where I walk and talk with respect equally and equal, give and take dimension. And I love that because all Countries of Australia, aboriginal Countries of Australia, have these things in Country, which, which are at the top. They have attained reverence.
One here is the manna gum tree, which is you know, the dynamic of the koala is completely hinged around it. And for them to be overgrazed or die, you know, can kill out a whole, wipe out a whole population and manna means to give and take- in language- equally. And it taught me a lot about how people used to manage the ecosystem.
The ecology with the management of koala numbers and animal numbers. And very early in history when, European guys started to shoot marsupials, what you could see every day, there's early police records saying that something had to be done about this because the only thing they weren't shooting was what they couldn't see or was up high in the tree. Mainly was the possum.
The possum numbers increased. Took over, sort of a bit over dominated the fauna thing. People couldn't get their bumbul drinks from the manna gum and they're the peak words of this country, which is a health tea drink. So then a few short years of people being removed to missions, the landscape changed. Sheep were introduced, grass, water holes dried up. All of these things changed very quickly overnight. And to be precise to the question again manna, manna alla tharka wangan gneyteung which is give and take equally, you know, based on that walk and talk around that dynamic of linguistically Talangatta Mepunga walking west you speak Werngul tallinanon, which is Koala speaking. Werngul is Koala. And it's how to describe the country. So you've got Mannas, white gum on rivers, and once we get to the Cape, there's an event in history, you know, dynamic in a song. It changes the language to the king parrot waettuurong tallinanon. And she flies east, and that happens at late spring after Pirt Koorook, after the spirit. That rain dimension that we've got here, late spring. The larger birds don't really come out into the hinterland until that's over with, and they start grazing on the coastal berries for the next six months.